A business that has never raised capital or financed should not be taken seriously in compassion to one that has done both and built a revenue base in the 10's of billions.
I have had a company that also did millions in sales with no debt or public equity. I would not compare what we did to what a major company has done and claim my experience means I would run the public company better. That would be arogant and deserving of a bit of teasing.
Great!
One can make that point, in exactly that way, without calling a fellow business owner's business a lemonade stand, thereby equating them with a child instead of an adult that is supporting themselves and their family.
In fact - you've made exactly that point, very well, seriously, and in a way that contributes to the board and doesn't do so by being rude or diminishing people / being mean.
I personally haven't owned a business, even a lemonade stand, that has done anything noticeable in revenue. I respect everybody who has, and especially everybody who's operated their own business that also provided them their exclusive means of support.
You end with an interesting point - there can be a fine line between good natured ribbing / teasing, and diminishing / demeaning somebody. My original post was made because my reaction to the comment was that it wasn't good natured ribbing / teasing - it was mean spirited. What actually caused me to post is that it's those little things that can kind of slide from occasional little things, into frequent big things, that diminish the overall quality of the boards. At least for me.
Repeated enough, the boards descend into Seeking Alpha comment threads, or something equally useless and ugly, and I don't go there anymore. I'd be really disappointed if these forums went that direction. I'm definitely not a mod so I hold no power or voice along those lines and I might even earn myself a time out for speaking out as I have (in which case I've earned it).
The way I see it - the quality of our community isn't solely in the hands of the mods. They've taken on a greater responsibility than the rest of us have, but we're all responsible. We express that responsibility every time we post - what we choose to post, what we don't post, how we say it, what we add to the conversation.
In these cases where the line between something intended to be humourous, and something that can be taken badly - I bias towards not saying anything, or I decorate it with smileys and stuff to make it extra clear that I'm adding some humor.
