It looks like this instead:

Raise funding with an idea and impressive founders

Spend 6 months building up a product

Submit to the app store and launch with much PR fanfare

Fail to hit product/market fit

Relaunch with version 2.0, 6 months later

Add Facebook Open Graph

Try buying installs with Tapjoy, FreeAppADay, etc.

Repeat until you run out of money

Not much different, unfortunately.

The problem is that startups in the Valley are extremely narrow minded and aesthetically snobbish in their mobile approach.

1) There are 1 billion feature phone users around the world who have perfectly usable app stores.

2) You need to launch in more languages than just english, and on more app stores than just the US market -- Chinese, Hindi, Spanish and Portuguese at a minimum.