I disagree with the article because so many of these "unicorns" (yet another term underlining the neoteny and magical thinking of the Valley) aren't building the future. Building the future can pay off at VC-acceptable levels in the long term, but does not consist of huge-in-four-years-or-dead gambits.

It's true that, in the Valley, burn rate doesn't much matter. Your one job as a VC-funded startup CEO is to keep investors interested in you and happy. Throwing them expensive bones is better than throwing no bones. With the former, you may need to raise money in 18 months instead of 24, and they'll ask you a lot of questions about why the bone you threw them cost so much. With the latter, they fund your competitors, and then it's over because they've found a shinier, newer toy and, while you might want to switch stage to a sustainable lifestyle business that doesn't need VCs, in practice it's hard to do that in a company that was never built to last (and that probably couldn't withstand an "oops, we grew too fast" layoff) and because investors often won't let you hold growth to a sustainable rate.