Lastly, if the main battle for a certain segment is over for more than a decade, the incumbents seem to get lazy if they continue dominating the market for too long. Look at eBay for example, or Linked.In - they have stopped innovating and basically get worse with every "Facelift", but there's still considerable demand with a lack of alternatives. It's a long shot, but possible with great execution.

There is not an SME on their team in any area where they see a problem to fix - they 'only' have money.

they need to augment their team with an SME in an area they are willing to fund

Then here is their next problem:

Who is willing to get behind this team given the statements - There is only one reality - a confident founder who can provide them the vision to build something - and they provide the funding and maybe the CFO... but they may overly think of themselves as "technical" and meddle in the running of such an enterprise - which means doom.

These guys should simply take their funds and invest - not found shit. they will fail and bring down too many people (their employees) if they try...

That's a fair point. The key, I think, is understanding when a market is susceptible to entry by another player. But part of making that judgment is understanding the different dimensions along which you can compete, which is why I find The Discipline of Market Leaders so valuable. That was the first book I read that really made the case that it isn't necessarily just about your product. Likewise Crossing The Chasm makes a pretty good case that you can always (well, almost always) segment a market to a degree that there's a place where you can compete.

I’m sure there’s something in their diverse backgrounds that intersect in a way that solves a critical problem. For me, the thing that’s missing in their process is actually building a prototype and getting in front of a user to validate what they think they know.

I have a tremendous degree of regard for mcuban, and I think his advice has merit. But I wouldn't say either "trumps" the other. These pithy sayings are handy, but there's a lot of nuance to both of them (IMO) and the devil is in the details.

Should Google have decided not to pursue search because of Altavista, Dogpile, Magellan, Northern Light, Yahoo, and DMOZ? Should Facebook have eschewed social networking because of Friendster, Myspace, Livejournal, etc?

Sometime just being better than the other guys really is enough.

In terms of sales, GoDaddy is six times the size of the Dallas Mavericks business, and ~20 times the size Broadcast.com was before the dotcom bust.