[unreal37]

If all you're doing is building a project management app, yeah it's easy to be profitable.

The trick is when you're trying to take risks and innovate. It took Amazon a long time to be profitable. It took Uber a long time to be profitable. It took Facebook a long time to be profitable.

When it's a land grab - when you're racing against other companies in a new market like AI - you need to burn money fast to run fast. Can't take a year in private beta.

[a-priori]

You could dismiss almost any company as "if all you're doing is building an X app...". It's a no-true-Scotsman argument.

Even setting that aside, not everything is or should be a land grab. It's notable that all the examples you provided — Amazon (at least, its initial online store product), Uber, Facebook — are all B2C plays and I don't think that's a coincidence.

[enra]

I tried to ask examples of this yesterday[1], but afaik the patterns seems to be think throwing money at the problems works in undifferentiated, maybe transactional categories like food delivery, ride share, e-commerce etc where the software is not the product, it's just the payment method or the market place. The market places are also localized so you have these countless local turf wars, until you regain some kind of dominance or balance. Then deep tech, hardware etc is harder where you need large initial investment. Social networks because they need the critical mass, and usually there isn't a direct business model available.

I'd argue most b2b/enterprise software is a new version of something that already exists or addressing a need that already has a market. Business model is also very clear, there is very little network effects usually other than reputation and customer proof. Yet most the startups not even close being profitable.

In my mind most software products are differentiated so in the end the main success comes from getting the differentiation right for the market, not outspending the competition.

1) https://x.com/karrisaarinen/status/1892700146414096549

[garrickvanburen]

All three of those examples strategically traded profitability for marketshare, and at a time when money was very cheap. This is what is meant by "prioritize growth over everything else."

That is not today's environment.

When it's the focus, profitability can be easily achieved somewhere between day 1 and month 18.