...but where's step 2?

With reference to this post, commenter Mike asks, "But where's step 2?"

Mike: exactly.

For the uninitiated, "Step 3: Profit!" is a meme from Metafilter... someone notices a phenomenon (Step 1), skips over step 2, where you figure out how to monetize it--ideally by listing Step 2 as a placeholder with a question mark--and goes directly to step 3, where we're all on Easy Street.

(It apparently has its origins in a joke from an early episode of South Park about the business plans of the Underpants Gnomes.)

Before you dismiss this entirely, please consider that this was the entire business model that won billions of dollars in VC funding during the last dotcom boom.