It’s not real money
In early 2007 I went to a five-day training session at the Poynter Institute for newspaper editors.
One of the people in the course was a young editor at the San Francisco Examiner. She was a few years older than I was, and we were among the youngest participants, so we hung out. She and her husband were selling their home and moving into a $1.1 million loft.
This was at or near the peak of the housing bubble, before it seemed like every other news story was about foreclosures, underwater mortgages, sub-prime loans and toxic assets.
She wasn't much older than I was, and her husband had a job that paid well but not rock-star well, so I asked: “How can you take on a $1.1 million loan?”
Her answer: “It's easy once you accept that you'll never pay it off and it's not real money.”
So as astute as Andy Baio is, when he talks about how $1 billion isn't out of line for Facebook to pay for Instagram, it makes me think that maybe it not being real money isn't limited to real estate.
I swear this is the last I'll post about it.