Understand it from the point of the VC. They were trying to sell a story about a “visionary” who could create a hotel brand without paying for the people and infrastructure that make it all work. It takes time and money to build and do quality control for quality hotels. That doesn’t make for 1000x ROI though.

Easy to understand when you know they were never interested in selling quality hotel room nights, but rather trying to cash out on the equity.