[jadbox]

> "Showing off revenue and number of accounts is showing off a tiny portion of the picture"

Showing revenue is not "tiny" by any means. Considering that the vast majority of businesses hide this from the public, I think it's very notably "something larger than tiny".

> "but practically speaking [they] are broke"

How do you know this?

[iamjs]

>> "but practically speaking [they] are broke"

> How do you know this?

They were not claiming a fact, they were posing a hypothetical.

[satvikpendem]

They mean even in the hypothetical how would they know, without open books? They're just theorizing, same as with revenue.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

It is not theorizing to say "a company with $N of revenue and ($N - $1) of operating costs is essentially broke".

Of course, the whole point is that you typically would have no idea of the numbers unless the books are open and include both numbers. Which Ente is not doing.

[gortok]

I’m speaking of things I have personally witnessed; but won’t go into more detail than that, for various reasons.

[Batman8675309]

Man I love this kind of "evidence" that can't be dismissed, that is ultimately just a big "just trust me bro".

[gortok]

I’m going to give you just one way that a business could do just what I’m saying.

Did you know there are whole businesses that lend money through ‘receivables financing’? Basically if you have outstanding invoices, you can get the money for those invoices now, and you pay (let’s say) 15% in interest to get that money now. https://www.allianz-trade.com/en_US/insights/receivables-fin...

All else being equal, your profitability just went down by 15% taking that receivables loan; but businesses are willing to lend money at varying degrees of interest while the company that took that money still looks like they’re in great shape if you were to look at their revenue, but 2 or 3 of these sorts of advance loans can hurt a company really quickly.

The issue is that it takes a long time, if a business is engaging in shady business practices, for them to be held accountable (if they ever are), and there are lots of ways to keep a business afloat while effectively robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[thevillagechief]

Does this really need any evidence? There's lots of businesses that are in this situation, ambling along for years until they run out of runway. Not saying anything about the original blog. There are even actual fraud cases you can look up.

[xnickb]

Yeah I don't understand why people jumped on this. Thread-OP was saying pretty obvious if not trivial things. Without knowing how much they spend knowing how much they earn is a useless data point.

[satvikpendem]

Not worth getting doxxed or breaking NDA for imaginary Internet points.

[IndySun]

>...won't go in the more detail...various reasons...

I wish you had said that in your opening comment. Would've helped me consider where you were coming from.

I'm just making an overall remark, wondering what you're inferring, and more widely still digesting this entire post.

[inigyou]

Is it really hard to imagine a business with 20MM revenue and 21MM expenses?

[0xbadcafebee]

Not hard at all, virtually every tech unicorn spent more than their revenue. Famously today it's all the AI companies.

[holistio]

18 employees on <$100k is not exactly rich.