Regardless, the optics of venture funding changes this analysis because now we're looking at ROI and not just say, creating successful enterprises that create wealth and value.
The latter is the thing of interest to me. In technology we've focused too much on the former. A say, twenty person software company where everyone is paid well and the customers like the product is a worthy, fine goal. $5,000,000,000 MRR is fine as well, but the vegas-style way people think of tech shouldn't be the only road out there.
People know how KFC is different from McDonalds is different from Pizza Hut is different from Chipotle. Hell, most of the time they even know how Burger King is different from McDonalds (white meat chicken tenders and more meat in the burgers), how In'N'Out is different from McD's (simple menu, Thousand Island dressing, onion rings), and how Chick'Fil'A is different from KFC (sandwiches over buckets; Chick'Fil'A sauce; lighter frying). The extent to which these are viable as VC-backed chains is exactly the extent to which they can be differentiated in customer's minds.
Assuming they've eaten at Chick'Fil'A in the past decade, of course. Most people I know boycott it because of its horrendous anti-LGBT politics. (To wit: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/uganda-murder-gay-chick-fi...)
Is there a joke in here I'm missing? I don't associate Onion rings with McDonald's at all, and In'N'Out doesn't even have them.