[HN Gopher] The profitable startup
___________________________________________________________________
The profitable startup
Author : doppp
Score : 224 points
Date : 2025-11-01 03:18 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (linear.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (linear.app)
| timenotwasted wrote:
| It's really great to see the shift that has been taking place
| away from unicorns, growth for the sake of growth, and all the
| chaos that drove throughout. Maybe it's my own personal bias but
| I feel that these stories of low, slow growth; small teams, small
| wins but consistency are becoming more norm. While I realize
| there is still plenty of froth, it's inspiring and makes me
| hopeful for an industry shift in that direction.
|
| "And when we launched after a year in private beta, almost all of
| our 100 beta users converted to paid customers." -- That's a neat
| stat and one I'd be extremely proud of.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I could swear I read this exact same comment back in 2016.
| nine_k wrote:
| I'm used to thinking that a "startup" implies a small company
| with hockey-stick growth and eventual market domination,
| usually deploying large amounts of capital to fuel the growth.
| Otherwise it's just a sparking small business: a pizzeria is
| not a startup.
|
| It seems that the internet allows for a third option: a small
| company that grows slowly and organically which eventually
| captures a significant market segment, still staying small.
| GitHub was like that for many years since founding. Linear
| apparently is another example.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Is there a better word for these grow slow companies?
| all2 wrote:
| "Normal growth"?
| rebuilder wrote:
| Small business?
| eviluncle wrote:
| "hypeless growth"
| kchoudhu wrote:
| Businesses
| jacquesm wrote:
| Solid? Right up to the point some funded start-up starts
| giving away the same thing in the hope that they can fake
| it until they make it and take everybody else in the same
| space down with them.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Linear is a really, really good product though, so it is
| worth paying for.
| layer8 wrote:
| SME, bootstrapped business.
| palata wrote:
| I consider that it is a startup when it hasn't found a
| product-market fit, i.e. it is not profitable.
|
| As soon as it is profitable, it is a normal company. Small or
| big.
|
| An established company has established products and keep
| building/improving them. A startup does not have that: they
| just have ideas and try them until one works, or they run out
| of money. VCs consider it's worth fueling that "trial-and-
| error" with investments because they believe it is a
| competent team in a promising field. Nothing more, nothing
| less, it's just a lottery after that point. Just one where
| VCs and founders like to believe they are enlightened.
|
| Because the first idea you try is successful does not mean
| you know more than the (numerous) others, but rather that you
| were lucky at the first try.
| ido wrote:
| Maybe it's my own personal bias but I feel that these stories
| of low, slow growth; small teams, small wins but
| consistency are becoming more norm. While I realize
| there is still plenty of froth, it's inspiring and
| makes me hopeful for an industry shift in that direction.
|
| I prefer small teams myself too, but do keep in mind "an
| industry shift in that direction" would also mean far less
| demand for developers...
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Note that Stripe had followed that path already.
|
| They had 50 users after two years.
| rsanek wrote:
| Though, conversely, Stripe was money-losing for the first 15
| years of its existence.
| alberth wrote:
| 48 Comments | 8-months ago
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130480
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| This is just called a small business...
|
| The whole point of startups is that you take on massive
| investment to scale extremely quickly and outrun all potential
| imitators. It's not the only viable growth model, but that's the
| whole conceit of startups and what differentiates them for small
| businesses
|
| It's a bit silly to try to redefine the term b/c you want to self
| identify as a startup. Just come to terms with that fact you're
| running a small business
| azundo wrote:
| I think the point is there are many "startups" with similar
| revenue and growth to Linear that never become profitable. I
| don't think Linear qualifies as a small business and I don't
| think they're scaling less quickly than someone in same market
| with more funding and less profit.
| palata wrote:
| To me a startup hasn't found a product-market fit yet. That's
| the whole point, they're trying to find a way to get
| profitable. As soon as you are profitable, then you are a
| normal company.
| rubenvanwyk wrote:
| Being "startup" just means you're a business building something
| new or novel, it doesn't mean you automatically have to follow
| the VC-model for startups.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| if you start a bakery selling kimchi bagels, its not a
| startup
| Fomite wrote:
| They're disrupting the bagel market, leveraging their
| unique vision. Think of them as a DoorDash for people who
| want to come into their bakery.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Wouldn't the key difference be the growth trajectory? I see a
| startup as a small business that aims to become a big one. Most
| small businesses are comfortable at their size, but a startup
| is not. It could achieve that growth by taking on lots of
| investment, but that's not the only way.
| aguacaterojo wrote:
| "Linear raises $82M in series C funding at $1.25B valuation to
| challenge Atlassian"
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| interesting.. one wonders then why they raised funding if
| their income is covering all their expenses
|
| unless they have some creative definition of profitable
| _puk wrote:
| Speed of growth.
|
| Being profitable is one of the best times to raise. You
| don't need the money, but it'll accelerate the next phase
| of growth.
|
| Retaining profitability after raising is probably harder as
| you're expected to spend that money to grow.
|
| I'm sure it can be done if you've raised with the right
| people and you keep focus on ARR per FTE.
| darkwater wrote:
| > Speed of growth
|
| But the post we are discussing is literally about hiring
| slowly and only if really needed and only hiring the
| "next great engineer".
|
| I understand that the post words are written deliberately
| in a way open to more interpretations, and the "only if
| needed" can apply to "we need to take on more Atlassian
| customers so we need this and that".
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| And if you raise after you're already profitable, you
| have a lot more control / leverage over the terms and who
| is involved.
| masterzachary wrote:
| The boot strapped startups I've seen that have had this holier
| than thou attitude that they are somehow selecting the best
| engineers by only having a tiny team have always had the absolute
| worst tech, the worst engineering, the worst leadership and
| usually also the worst processes that I've ever encountered.
| comradesmith wrote:
| Yeah, but they know how to make money
| jmtulloss wrote:
| Linear is a venture funded company
| cmatza wrote:
| I'm a little suspicious of this because every startup says that
| they don't hire the next engineer, they hire the next great
| engineer.
|
| I think a lot of the value is taking the ordinary engineers (by
| hacker news) and letting them actually do something. Staying
| small helps this, because you are not thinking of the business
| ops burden of not building microservices. You're building your
| single dockerized app.
| selcuka wrote:
| Also only hiring great engineers is an existential risk. Every
| time someone leaves, you lose a part of the business that is
| hard to replace.
|
| It sounds counter-intuitive, but mediocracy usually works
| better in the long run.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| You need a mix - a team of only stars will fail, and a team
| of only mediocre members will fail.
|
| You want one or two stars, chemistry among the whole team,
| and good fundamentals.
|
| Good sports examples: the LA Dodgers, 90s Chicago Bulls (a
| few stars, a few normal players, good fundamentals, and great
| chemistry)
|
| Bad sports examples: the 2023 Mets with Verlander and
| Scherzer (both overpaid divas with bad attitudes that hated
| each other), the current Yankees (a few stars, no
| fundamentals or discipline)
| rkomorn wrote:
| I'm a Dodgers fan and I'm kinda confused by your take that
| the Dodgers roster is different from the 2023 Mets or
| current Yankees.
|
| If anything, the Blue Jays are the example, not the
| Dodgers.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Sorry, I was talking about the previous iteration of the
| Dodgers that beat the Yankees. I haven't been watching
| this year, other than Ohtani doing Ohtani stuff.
|
| The previous Dodgers were stacked, but I meant that they
| had good chemistry and fundamentals. They beat the
| Yankees because the Yankees just made too many mistakes.
|
| The Mets hired highly paid stars but couldn't find
| chemistry, as nobody could get along. They did have some
| good eras with DeGrom, Syndegaard, etc, but if I
| remember, many of those stars started out small and grew
| into their stardom with the team.
| selcuka wrote:
| Exactly, that's why I said " _only_ hiring great engineers
| ".
|
| For startups it's best to start with at least one or two
| good technical co-founders, as the risk of losing them is
| lower when compared to an employee.
| move-on-by wrote:
| Hiring great engineers is only part of the problem. Management
| and product needs enough vision and foresight to allow the
| great engineers to execute. It's doesn't matter how great your
| engineering team is if you keep redirecting them like a deaf
| stubborn dementia patient.
| agrippanux wrote:
| Management and product needing vision and foresight is an
| excellent call out. I can't help but think a lot of these
| self-proclaimed 9-9-6 startups are in reality 11-3-6 startups
| with a bunch of wasted time padding to 9-9-6.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Keep in mind "great engineer" will be a subjective term that
| means different things to everyone.
|
| To Meta, it might mean cream of the crop, $1m+ engineer. To
| early Google, it might mean Stanford grad with deep CS
| knowledge. To a no-name startup, it might mean someone who
| accepts the job who takes initiative and knows how to crank out
| ugly code quickly on AWS and makes good prioritization
| decisions.
| kylegalbraith wrote:
| This idea makes the rounds on HN quarterly. I think folks reading
| this need to check their business model. Every company is
| slightly different and unique to how they are solving a
| particular problem.
|
| That said, knowing how you get to profitability or what you need
| to change in your model to get to it are fundamental things to
| know. But just because Linear did it the way they've outlined
| here, doesn't mean that is what will work for your model.
| physicsguy wrote:
| The reason everyone did it was: interest rates.
|
| When interest rates are low the cost of borrowing is low. Now
| investors can get returns by parking their money so the value
| proposition has to be stronger for them to invest in the first
| place, hence companies are now needing to show profitability
| earlier.
| yes_man wrote:
| This, and another angle is that whatever market you are in, it
| is harder to run profitable margins if your competitors can eat
| the market while sustaining losses. And there was a lot of
| money around to sustain those losses.
|
| Not to say it wasn't possible to be profitable during zero
| interest rates, Linear being an example, but the competitive
| landscape is certainly healthier today for companies trying to
| be profitable.
| senko wrote:
| For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear,
| simple, and wrong.
|
| There are a number of other reasons that (might have)
| contributed to greater or lesser extent:
|
| * rush to capture users and get acquired (the buyer can worry
| about profitability)
|
| * race to the bottom by multiple competitors (you might want to
| be profitable but can't command a high price because others'
| are artificially low)
|
| * ignoring costs that were rising faster than anticipated
| (wages, cloud costs, etc)
|
| ... and probably many more.
|
| Not saying you're completely wrong, but ZIRP is just part of
| the picture.
| antonymoose wrote:
| I would argue that everything you've listed are just
| downstream of ZIRP.
| senko wrote:
| I would not agree, as these sorts of things were frequent
| before the latest round of ZIRPs:
|
| * Uber IPOed in 2019, had a loss of $8.5b that year;
| interest rates were around 2%
|
| * YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65B in 2006, it
| lost ~$350m in the year before and the entire music
| industry was suing it; interest rates were around 4%
|
| * Facebook bought Instagram for $1b in 2012, which at that
| point had no revenue and no plan how to achieve it; this
| was smack in the middle of the previous ZIRP cycle, however
| I don't think anyone would say that Instagram wasn't a huge
| success either for the founders or for Facebook
|
| I would agree ZIRP fuels those things (to unhealthy
| levels), but not that it's always the root cause.
| darkwater wrote:
| > I would agree ZIRP fuels those things (to unhealthy
| levels), but not that it's always the root cause.
|
| It you were to set a house on fire with just a lighter in
| your hands, you would not succeed. If you have a lighter
| and a tank of gasoline, you might probably succeed. ZIRP
| was the fuel, the lightener and your will are the "root
| causes". But with no fuel, no fire.
| senko wrote:
| In the interest of clearly communicating:
|
| I used "fuel" in the meaning "to make people's ideas or
| feelings stronger, or to make a situation worse", not "a
| substance that is burned to provide heat or power", see
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/learner-
| english/...
|
| I did provide two quick examples of these effects
| happening in the absence of ZIRP, so it is clearly _not_
| always required.
|
| As, sadly, is not a tank of gasoline or ill intent to set
| a house on fire - these things can happen by accident,
| often a single spark is enough.
|
| There's plenty of literal fuel beside gasoline, and
| there's plenty of "startup growth at all costs" fuel
| beside ZIRP.
| jasode wrote:
| _> ZIRP was the fuel, the lightener and your will are the
| "root causes". But with no fuel, no fire._
|
| But the "Z" in "ZIRP" is literally _zero% interest_ so
| your reply doesn 't seem to address the gp's counter-
| examples of >0%. Other examples of non-zero% interest
| rate time periods include 1990s high-interest rates of
| +5% with Amazon in 1994 losing money for 7 years, PayPal
| 1998 losing money for 3+ years, Google 1998 losing money
| for 3+ years.
|
| Those counter-examples means the simplistic narrative of
| _" ZIRP is The Reason"_ does not explain everything.
| Those non-profitable companies were immediately scaling
| out to win the market and didn't wait for year 2008 ZIRP
| to do it.
|
| Today, OpenAI (and other AI startups) are losing billions
| and _expect_ to lose more billions in the upcoming years
| even though the current interest rate is ~4%.
| stackskipton wrote:
| >Today, OpenAI (and other AI startups) are losing
| billions and expect to lose more billions in the upcoming
| years even though the current interest rate is ~4%.
|
| AI stuff is little different. If OpenAI and others hit
| AGI or anything remotely near it, the money is in theory
| massively endless. So investing when you could get 4% in
| a company that would return 10000% makes sense.
|
| However, 4% in a company growing 15% in their field with
| profit margin of 10% means if only 1 in 5 survive, you
| have lost money so investors pull back.
| antonymoose wrote:
| I would consider the few unicorn examples provided to be
| outliers.
|
| For most of the 2010's ZIRP created a startup gold rush
| with everyone trying to leverage the same "burn money,
| get users" strategy you've outlined.
|
| Excepting the current AI bubble, you cannot play that
| strategy today. Investors started demanding real results
| in the post COVID inflation years and continue to do so
| today, or else don't invest at all in high-risk ventures
| with no tangible results.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I'm in my third startup. My first one (founded 2013) was acquired
| by the second one after a year. That one failed around 2018. The
| first one was a small technology company where my co-founder and
| I (both techies) made the classical "build it and they'll come"
| mistake. They didn't come and just as we were running low on
| savings, we met the CEO of startup #2 who was a classical
| business founder and had already secured a huge seed round (~3M
| euro). He had the ideas and the money, we had the tech. So we
| joined forces. The next few years we tried lots of things and
| pivoted a few times. But in the end product market fit remained
| elusive and the 3M was gone.
|
| I went off and did a bit of consulting, freelancing, etc. And
| five years ago, I helped out a friend who was working on a
| bootstrapped company that I liked. And we kind of had
| complementary skills (not repeating my first mistake). It was the
| beginning of the lockdowns. I had nothing better to do having
| just come out of a lucrative project that got cancelled because
| of the lockdowns (and probably because it was doomed anyway). I
| had built up a bit of reserves over the past two years. My friend
| had just come out of an intense year of juggling projects for a
| big consultancy firm. And he had his own startup past. In short,
| we hit the sweet spot of being old, wise, and experienced enough
| to maybe pull this off and we weren't looking for pizza money.
|
| An important lesson I learned in my pre-startup corporate career
| is that making teams smaller makes them go faster. I once had a
| gridlocked team that wasn't getting anything done. We split the
| team and immediately things moved faster. Less meetings and
| debating. And infighting. And stress. More coding. I applied that
| in startup #2 and while we ultimately failed, I re-affirmed that
| losing team members can actually accelerate development. The team
| was down to just 2 people (me and the CEO) by the time we had to
| pull the plug. But not for a lack of trying. We were crazily
| productive. We both did the work of 2-3 people and stepped way
| out of our comfort zones for the last two years of the company.
|
| The lesson I took from the second startup is that investor money
| makes you lazy and that you don't need it if you can step up and
| do stuff yourself instead of being lazy and hiring too many
| people. Money removes urgency and tricks you into not focusing
| and postponing key work that needs doing, over-staffing, and
| losing focus. Having stared at having to abandon my third startup
| because we have been running on fumes continuously for the last
| five years has kept us laser focused on fixing our huge looming
| financial problem. For us that meant confronting the elephant in
| the room: getting customers to understand what it is we are
| selling. This took us years.
|
| The tech didn't change much (though it got better of course). It
| flipped around a year ago after lots of failed experiments with
| getting others to sell our tech. Founder sales is the way to go.
| It requires founders that can build and that can sell. You need
| both skills in the team and preferably in all founders.
|
| We've flirted with investors of course. But for about two years
| they struggled to understand what we are trying to do and in the
| last few years we proved that we were onto something by
| generating revenue without them. In an alternate universe we
| might have gotten invested in but at this point we don't need
| them and they don't want us for that reason.
|
| Things are genuinely looking like we might hit the hockey stick
| curve soonish now. We have some very serious leads for multi-
| million euro deals. We're completely bootstrapped. We did
| everything with a small and lean team. We're down to three people
| and it's great. We might start expanding soon. But we're going to
| be super picky about who gets to join next. We don't want to
| derail our company with the wrong hire.
|
| It could all still fail. That's the nature of any startup. But
| we've vastly improved our odds through hard work. I'm more
| confident than ever it will work out. And yet the reality remains
| that many startups don't make it. What can I say; I'm an
| optimist. Pessimists don't build successful companies.
| portaouflop wrote:
| I hope you succeed. But I think it's all down to luck; of
| course some work is required but I don't think that hard work
| necessarily matters. Or any of the stuff you mentioned. In my
| experience you can do all the "mistakes" you mentioned and
| still come out on top. And not to piss in your cereal but
| having leads for $bigcorp means nothing until a deal is inked.
|
| Ps: and I'm very pessimistic; the scary thing is it's all
| random as shit
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| You create your own luck. There's a difference between
| fatalism and pessimism. A pessimist might still choose to act
| despite expecting failure. A fatalist just gives up.
|
| You create options for success through hard work. You need
| luck and inspiration to stumble upon the right options, and
| you need experience and wisdom to recognize it when you do.
| And you can do everything right and never get there. But
| without putting in the hours you likely don't create the
| options nor gain the wisdom to judge them correctly when you
| do. Don Reinertsen coined a notion of option value in his
| books and presentations on Lean 2.0. It's something that
| resonates with me. Lots of startups practice Lean 1.0 which
| is more like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
|
| > And not to piss in your cereal but having leads for
| $bigcorp means nothing until a deal is inked.
|
| Very aware of that, obviously.
| cantor_S_drug wrote:
| > The lesson I took from the second startup is that investor
| money makes you lazy
|
| Marc Andreessen has made statements that align with the idea
| that abundant capital can lead to poor decision-making or a
| lack of discipline among founders. The core of his perspective
| emphasizes the importance of resourcefulness, persistence, and
| an intense focus on building the business over optimizing for
| fundraising.
|
| "Too much capital breeds sloppy execution": While this specific
| quote might be from another source, it reflects a sentiment
| consistent with Andreessen's philosophy, which values the
| discipline forced by resource constraints (bootstrapping) in
| the early stages of a startup.
|
| Wasn't there a whole movement of Lean startups? What happened
| to that?
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Being profitable is no bad thing - but you can be _too_
| profitable, too.
|
| My startup, my cofounder was obsessed with profitability - I was
| far more focussed on growth. In theory, not a bad balance - but
| in practice, his drive towards profitability meant that we ended
| up underinvesting in the business - millions of pounds sat in our
| coffers that could have gone to hiring, could have gone to
| maintaining and building upon our core mission rather than
| focussing on a profitable sideshow - and in the end, while the
| business still exists, it is now Just Another Agency, rather than
| the tech startup it once was.
|
| Anyway. These days I run my own affairs, and place emphasis on
| long term growth and keep short term profits to the absolute
| minimum needed to live well enough.
|
| It's good to make a profit - but business should be viewed as any
| investment should be - let it compound.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| totally agree with this, operating cash flow positive +
| internal reinvestment seems like the best mix for an early
| software company
| joeiq wrote:
| Very good point. Some profitability while maintaining alignment
| with core principles is an excellent outcome too.
| joduplessis wrote:
| Not to denigrate the content of the article or Linear - because
| it's a fantastic tool - but easy talking about profitability when
| you're able to spend a year in private beta, focusing on product.
| This is like talking about creating your own wealth, but not
| mentioning you have a trust fund.
| kijin wrote:
| You don't need a trust fund to keep a small team eating ramen
| for a year. Lots of people start businesses with just their
| savings and maybe a small loan.
|
| Maybe that's not the kind of company you'd like to build, but
| if it's the only option given your financial circumstances,
| ramen it will be.
| an0malous wrote:
| Is that what Linear did?
| kijin wrote:
| Linear founders had "savings" from previous exits. Some of
| the early ones really were ramen-scale from what I can
| tell.
|
| So that's one way to come up with the capital you need.
| Start something, grow it, sell it for $$, and invest that
| $$ in a new company that you hope will be worth $$$$. Rinse
| and repeat. You don't have to make it big on your first
| try!
| plumthreads wrote:
| A $4.2 million seed round from Sequoia also didn't hurt.
| Maybe they were able to eat pizza instead of ramen
| because of that.
| sergioisidoro wrote:
| > investors are quite interested in profitable companies that
| also grow fast.
|
| I'm gonna dispute this. We're currently profitable, and to do so
| our growth is just "good" (80-100% yoy). We're also raising a
| smaller amount because we want to return to profitable as soon as
| possible, and repeat the cycle. Being profitable hasn't been a
| big selling point in our discussions.
|
| Either our growth is not high enough, or our round is not big
| enough, as they are so used to seeing ridiculously inflated
| projections from the last decade.
|
| Furthermore being profitable also removes a lot of leverage from
| investors. That might make them shy away from a discussion
| because they know they can't twist out arm as easily.
|
| I agree tho, I wouldn't want to build our company any other way
| than being profitable. Just saying that being profitable is not
| something investors seem to like as much as we thought.
| bingemaker wrote:
| Having lots of money to throw at moonshot problems is always
| important. The current breakthrough of the 2020s is LLMs. I
| wonder if such breakthroughs can be achieved with this kind of
| approach.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I think it's an important thing to remind yourself of sometimes
| that there's a pretty significant difference between a startup
| and a small business. In spaces outside HN, small businesses are
| the default form of business, and there's plenty of merit to
| running one even in tech - not everything is scaleable, nor does
| it need to be. If you can identify a niche, generate profits, and
| provide business value and support the livelihood of your
| workers, that can be enough. Startups can be very impactful, and
| the tech sector has thrived as a result of the model, but the
| growth obsession and leverage is not mandatory.
| palata wrote:
| Sounds like there is a lot of survivorship bias to me. "We were
| profitable because we _did it right_ , and we don't understand
| why one would decide not to be profitable".
|
| I think it's important to note that if you're building your
| business and you are profitable, then you're lucky: you're doing
| something that _you_ find cool, and it 's bringing money.
|
| > What holds you back is rarely team size - it's the clarity of
| your focus, skill and ability to execute.
|
| This, to me, confirms what I said: nowhere they mention anything
| like "luck". "Being in the right place at the right time", etc.
|
| The reason startups grow without being profitable is because they
| "fake it until they make it". They pretend that it's all normal
| and it will work in order to convince VCs who have no way to know
| if it's true or not, and don't care (it's just another bet).
|
| Of course a founder won't say "we're not profitable because our
| company is failing". They will _truly believe_ that they 're not
| profitable because they are _on the way_ to get profitable,
| through growth. But the numbers are here: most startups fail.
|
| It's always tempting to believe that you succeeded because you
| are strictly better than the others. And that's the whole point
| of founding a startup: if it succeeds, the founders want to be
| rich. The first employees will be "compensated" for their lower
| salary and extra hours, they won't get rich. The founders _have
| to_ believe that it 's all their doing and that they deserve to
| get rich and not the other employees, that's an obvious cognitive
| bias. Otherwise how would they feel about themselves? I don't
| think it could work.
| brazukadev wrote:
| If all comes to luck, we can safely remove it from the equation
| when talking about success.
| palata wrote:
| That's complete nonsense. Do you safely remove luck from the
| equation when talking about the lottery?
| brazukadev wrote:
| Of course. There are many ways to increase the odds to win
| the lottery, bets, games.
|
| You can't discuss luck but you can discuss everything else,
| like frequency. More attempts, more opportunities to get
| lucky. This is kinda obvious, no?
| palata wrote:
| Sure, you can discuss everything you want. Magic
| incantations and religion, too.
| jonah wrote:
| Sure, the chance of winning scales linearly with how often
| you play.
| palata wrote:
| But if you play 10x more than me at the lottery and win,
| it will still mostly be luck.
| arthurofbabylon wrote:
| > Profitability isn't unambitious; it's controlling your own
| destiny.
|
| Even better, profitability is all about a harmonious developer-
| customer relationship. This was alluded to later in the essay,
| but I believe it is worth emphasizing. The entire point of
| business is to serve customers. That relationship is everything,
| and profitability indicates the presence of net-positive impact.
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