An internet-connected connected, cat-enabled, SaaS, Bootstrap-themed, social, app that does something, anything, can realistically imagine those numbers.
Certainly, from today's perspective (and at the time), these were internet heavyweights. I write this using Firefox, to whom Netscape was a direct ancestor. Visionary.
They were one of the last technology companies to produce, y'know, actual technology, a product, with a revenue model (originally the browser was a paid-for product for corporate use, free for personal use, then they pivoted to give away the browser to create a market for web servers - yes people used to pay for web servers+). Nowadays there's no actual technology being developed by the so-called "unicorns", just ways to trick you into viewing ads or side-step regulation.
+ I maintain to this day, having been in this business 20 years, that Netscape Enterprise Server 2.1 is the best web server ever written
Your point would be stronger (and just as valid) if you deemphasized the moralization with respect to skirting laws. Yes, it's important to illustrate where the "energy" is coming from, but most people will pigeonhole your entire point as curmudgeonly anti-progress.
But indeed, our community is in a sad state of affairs. The technology industry got taken over by the LA business model - hipster home runs. Money and social recognition made it easy for us to look the other way, and to even mislead our friends down this broken path of mass media 2.0. Most "startups" purport to deal with technology but are essentially just creating CRUD CRApps, inserting themselves as the new middlemen, and whitewashing it as empowering individuals.
Sure, but that doesn't mean your argument won't be perceived as such. The knee jerk reaction is to think "yeah but those laws are obsolete", and identify with the direct connection between driver and rider (as the "sharing economy" whitewash encourages).
I for one don't mind the obsoleting of taxi regulation by direct summoning (which itself solves most of what taxi regulation was a response to), but I also don't perceive Uber as looking to eliminate regulation - they are hoping to become the new middleman by owning the market, buying "appropriate" public regulation to create a barrier to entry, and then enjoying the security of a public organization with the accountability of a private one. Actual P2P empowerment would consist of a bona fide application that directly interacted with driver app, with appropriate reputation system etc. But of course there's inherently no "scalable" profits (aka rent) to be made off of that, so investors aren't lining up.
An internet-connected connected, cat-enabled, SaaS, Bootstrap-themed, social, app that does something, anything, can realistically imagine those numbers.
Certainly, from today's perspective (and at the time), these were internet heavyweights. I write this using Firefox, to whom Netscape was a direct ancestor. Visionary.