I think some of you are misunderstanding the idea DHH is advocating. This is just part of 37signals' campaign to recognize profit as the primary measure of business success, as opposed to valuation.

It's more of a common sense understanding of business, and it involves less hand waving. Pretend you know nothing about stock markets. How do you become rich from running a business? Simple: take in a lot more money than you spend. If you don't do that, any secondary estimates of your "wealth" are in danger of collapsing.