Re:On buying startups before they get big (GOOG) (Score 1)

I haven't read the essay, but that sentence makes no sense. Finding companies when they are young enough to yield high returns on investment is what VCs do. Paul Graham is saying that companies who raison d'être is completely unrelated to investment (e.g. running a search engine) should compete with VCs in their own bailiwick? That's like saying "What companies should do is go out and purchase stocks when they're low-priced, before professional investors have puffed them up into something that costs hundreds dollars per share to acquire."