[PheonixPharts]

I'm always surprised how often people naively talk about "runway" when looking at the health of a startup (or any company).

These arguments always presuppose that the reason companies exist is to keep people employed, and thus 'runway' assumes they can keep doing that is for N years.

But runway is a more or less meaningless piece of information unless you're looking at just a few months and have to close shop soon.

Whether a startup or a publicly traded company, you only invest because you think that runway most certainly ends in a massive reward for you. The claim that "hey we can keep existing for N months!" is not interesting to investors. Even if a startup has 10 years of cash on hand, if they aren't showing the potential for rapid growth, especially when investors are less interested in risk, they're still going to die.

[reactordev]

The runway is for takeoff, not landing. When you run out of runway you crash. If you’re still talking about runway, you haven’t taken off yet.