Zynga is a perfect case study for everything that is wrong with the modern VC funded, Wall Street bailed-out pyramid scheme known as a "startup".

The smart folks have realized that going public is where the money is at. And you don't need to produce value to go public, you just need to get Wall St. to be your evangelist and convince ignorant investors that your company's shares will be worth more than their IPO price at some uncertain point in the future. Does this sound familiar to anyone else? Yes indeed, its the same old "Penny Stock" scheme that common folk fall for (see: Wolf of Wall St.). This well oiled money printing machine evolved out of the Dot Com boom, wherein it existed in a functional but crude state. It has since been perfected.

So, what is a start-up? Is it a vehicle to solve a problem? Or a marketing-based ponzi scheme designed to pump and dump stock after stock in IPOs, making the "investors" unfathomably wealthy at the expense of common folk through zero-sum wealth transfers?

This is the real question Sam Altman and PG have to answer. Because it seems to me for every Elon Musk, there are hundreds of Mark Pincus clones, just itching to ride the next wave all the way to the bank.