[Idiot_in_Vain]

I love privacy, but the majority of people in the world seem not to understand it's importance.

No, there are no "zero expectations for a company to ever turn profitable". If you ever tried to get investor money you'll know how hard is to prove to them you have a good path to profitability. Even if all of YCombinat companies except one lose hundreds of millions, the last one can turn into a Facebook, worth hundreds of billions.

[Idiot_in_Vain]

dmitriid, you seem to not understand the simple fact that if one of a hundred startups an investor financed turns into a big success he can make big profits overall, despite 99% of the companies lost him money.

[dmitriid]

That literally means "no expectation of profitability". Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35012114

[bryanrasmussen]

sure, no expectation of profitability on a single investment, expectation of profitability by distributing investments over a large amount of companies.

[dmitriid]

> No, there are no "zero expectations for a company to ever turn profitable". If you ever tried to get investor money you'll know how hard is to prove to them you have a good path to profitability.

And yet, YCombinator's top companies lose billions for years and keep getting the money. What's the "proven path to profitability"? The flimsy belief that "just wait a bit and we'll have a next Facebook?"

Most of the companies that get mentioned as "big innovative companies" in HN threads have been around for 5+ or even 10+ years, lost incalculable amounts of money, never turned a profit, and we're led to believe that there's an expectation to turn a profit in any of these scenarios.