[faeriechangling]

Because SaaS business models were built around operating at a loss in order to gain a monopoly and rent seek?

[r_singh]

Loss?

Many (most? Except maybe asana) public SaaS companies have 20% cost of revenue AFAIK

[ksahin]

Yes loss. 70% of the SaaS companies that IPO'd in the past five years are loosing money. The median operating margin is -21%.

Source: https://blossomstreetventures.medium.com/q1-saas-metrics-dat...

[ffhhttt]

That doesn’t include R&D & marketing costs which make them unprofitable overall.

I guess they are betting that R&D costs are fixed(ish) or at least will grow slower than revenue. Which of course doesn’t always work, especially over the last few years where free money resulted in massive bloat.

[nathanaldensr]

And also built in a time of free Fed money laundered through VCs.