Honestly I didn't mean exploited in a judgmental or negative way. Exploited as in saw the opportunities and made the most of it. Not a bad thing. The bad things are the crappy economic rules in Steem and how long it has taken to address them.

I have every confidence that with a better Steem economic system you would still have been building businesses, they'd just be different ones that fit within that system instead of the crappy system we have/had.