I'm going to have to disagree here Mark, for a few reasons. First, I don't think it had anything to do with there not being enough money or VCs "pulling out". In his entry he said that they had enough money to sit lull for a few years, work hard on the same path, and see what happens but Ev wasn't satisfied with that. Second, I highly doubt that his investors weren't still interested considering that Ev and his team were some of the most well-known entrepreneurs from the dotcom bubble all grouped together and taking on pondcasting -- there was (and is) still a lot of room in the podcasting industry and I'm sure if any team could do well in it, it's Ev and his team. I doubt that this will become a trend in the industry, just because first-time entrepreneurs (the kind that makeup the majority of Web 2.0 startups I presume) just don't have a few million dollars of their own money sitting around in an account somewhere, waiting to be used for a VC buyout. If they do have that kind of money available, why even take an outside investment? Why lose that control? Ev said that they raised too much money and didn't want to be locked into what they said they'd spend the money on, so he bought them out. I think it's a unique situation caused by one entrepreneur's conviction.