I have a great book titled "e-branding", cost 50 cents at a used bookstore. It says, basically, spend all the money you can raise to get buzz and clicks, and don't worry about profit now. Of the companies they praised, most are now gone and forgotten.
When we were looking for a building, we toured several empty SoMa buildings. Things that had been meat packing shops and roofing companies were all tarted up, incredibly expensive and usually juvenile-tacky. We wound up with a fortune cookie factory.
Yup. Another big downswing is probably in the works. Once one VC panics, the rest will follow.
I think that you could make a nice living off a string of crowdsourcing failures.