41–50 of 175 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Monopoly was literally invented to illustrate the deceptions of capitalism. Great game.
It's the regulations that stop you building more places that are the issue : - )
“This forced other disciplined startups to loosen their ad spend to be competitive in the venture-market industry and created an era of capital-inefficient businesses. With time, this will re-adjust back to historical norms and the process will be painful.” I thought this was a pertinent quote. You’re going to see many companies deciding to become cash flow positive instead of growing. And if the business is stable,…
One of the interesting questions for me is how long this adaptation will take. I think there are a bunch of things that could make it pretty laggy. E.g., the fact that so many execs have spent so many years in an unsustainable capital environment. Or the amount of VC money still sloshing around waiting to be applied. Or the number of VCs who basically built their careers on these kinds of unsustainable businesses. Ho…
I have seen so many startups over the past few years, with A rounds up to $25 even $50 million where the CEO has zero business experience, they are literally learning by the seat of their pants.. They have gone from some experience as a tech lead for a small team, to the next day to running a large company. Obviously, there will be the odd outlier Zuckerberg type, but many of them are going to be totally out of their depth when the burn rate and path to profit (or even revenue in some cases) start to close in.
2024 will be a bloodbath in the startup world.
I would nitpick the title a bit. Revenue is never easy. I think they should rephrase as "Revenue is relatively easier than profit especially if you have PMF". Once you hit PMF (which is where most startups fail), you can just pour money into growth and that's when revenue generation becomes relatively easier.
Remaining profitable is likely even harder, as other people will rush in and start providing similar products or services at competitive prices. In a heavily financialized system, the common solution is monopolization (buying up startup competition using pools of capital) - leading to situations like TicketMaster, which gets away with providing low quality-of-service to artists and their fans because they have no alt…
Regulated markets in a capital-centric economy serve, in aggregate, the interests of those who control capital, and therefore also drift toward monopoly. Liberals either don't understand this or are simply being deceptive by promoting the continuation of capitalism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are we looking at the same numbers? I think Amazon was basically breakeven for 20 years, from 1997 to 2017: https://www.marketplacepulse.com/stats/amazon-net-income-112 And it looks like that recent profitability is more about AWS than their traditional core business: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/aws-powering-the-internet-a...
I see three negative Q3s before the chart basically explodes in the last couple of years. All other quarters saw profits around 100 million. It is only the chart that looks break even... And a couple of negative Q3 results are absolutely normal in commerce, especially eCommerece. All the stuff sold during Q4 needs to come from somewhere. So no, Amazon was definitelway more than just break even with three negative qua…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My dad had great ideas for businesses. Yet each one he started failed for him. Why, because he has such unrealistic view on how long the payback period will be. He even founded with a partner what is now a national company, but at the time it did not make a big profit in the first year, so he sold his share of the business. He had "Get rich Quick" fever, and never saw that bussiness rarely become an overnight success…
Interesting to think that the company which he divested from may have made it because of his exit.
Almost unrelated, but I also learned what was capital efficiency and payback period after playing Monopoly for the first time in years. Long story short, when the properties were eventually sold out, I burned my cash flow to buy more of them to other players, at a high price, when they needed money (it would also allow them to play longer) My logic was that by owning the most properties and by building houses and hot…
Monopoly was literally invented to illustrate the deceptions of capitalism. Great game.
I love payback period, it's a great metric. But it's easy to take it too literally. It's meant to be a tool to help you make prioritization decisions ("what if we do this instead of that"), but people often use it as a management report ("we did this; here's the verdict"). Here's a SaaS example: if it costs you $1000 to acquire a customer that pays you $100/month, the PBP is 10. That doesn't sound amazing. But you ha…
My dad had great ideas for businesses. Yet each one he started failed for him. Why, because he has such unrealistic view on how long the payback period will be. He even founded with a partner what is now a national company, but at the time it did not make a big profit in the first year, so he sold his share of the business. He had "Get rich Quick" fever, and never saw that bussiness rarely become an overnight success…
People start businesses for emotional reasons, not logical ones, and vastly, vastly underestimate the amount of money they'll need to get the thing off the ground. Entrepreneurial people are inherently optimistic, (and they have to be), but he said their estimates were typically off by ~5x. If you think you need a million dollars of runway, you probably need 5 million. If you think it'll take a year to achieve profitability, it'll probably take 5 years.
I would nitpick the title a bit. Revenue is never easy. I think they should rephrase as "Revenue is relatively easier than profit especially if you have PMF". Once you hit PMF (which is where most startups fail), you can just pour money into growth and that's when revenue generation becomes relatively easier.