By DAVID SEGAL
Published: September 18, 2010
IMAGINE you are a venture capitalist. One day a man comes to you and says, “I want to build the game layer on top of the world.”
You don’t know what “the game layer” is, let alone whether it should be built atop the world. But he has a passionate speech about a business plan, conceived when he was a college freshman, that he says will change the planet — making it more entertaining, more engaging, and giving humans a new way to interact with businesses and one another.
If you give him $750,000, he says, you can have a stake in what he believes will be a $1-billion-a-year company.
Interested? Before you answer, consider that the man displays many of the symptoms of a person having what psychologists call a hypomanic episode. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — the occupation’s bible of mental disorders — these symptoms include grandiosity, an elevated and expansive mood, racing thoughts and little need for sleep. ...
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