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It's like these investors never learn that the "our unit economics are horrible, but it'll be worth it when/if we become a monopoly!" philosophy rarely plays out well.

The same industry that harps on about how disruptable old school monopolies are, is somehow buying into that? I don't get it.

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I mean, the strategy has created all of the biggest winners: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Spotify, eBay, PayPal, (maybe) Airbnb, etc.

Each of them effectively monopolized something for close to a decade.

It’s not a failed proposition; it just might be harder to pull off in some spheres than others, and harder as more money gets funneled into startups, and harder as the giants jump into your newly minted market, or acquire that new market.

In the winners within your examples (I'm not sure why Spotify and Airbnb are on that list), the economics around their unit costs were fantastic, because they aren't selling physical goods or services. That's the main difference between those companies and WeWork/Uber: There's no way to drive margins low enough at those companies to justify valuing them like Google.

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