If there was one message delivered from the venture capital pulpitly recent (aka Sequoia, Ron Conway, et al), it’s that if you don’t have a business model, you’re cooked.

Gone are the days when you could start, grow and finance a business based on the notion that if we build it, they (consumers and advertisers) will come…and then somewhere along the way we - just like Google did - will find a viable business model to make it work.

That concept is as dead as the Detroit Lions’ playoff hopes.

What’s amazing is the “Hey look Mom, no business model” model was allowed to exist. You would think after the dot-com boom went bust that entrepreneurs and investors would have a better focus on fundamentals such as, say, how to generate revenue.

Not to pull a Robert Scoble and suddenly go doom and gloom but maybe we got suckered again. All the lessons learned seven or eight years about crazy schemes, companies raising lots of capital without a plan on how sell stuff and the hype/euphoria surrounding the Web’s Next, Great growth phase were mostly forgotten.

Instead, tons of ven