I worked for 4 startups that were operating for years at a loss with revenue, all are profitable today and all were acquired.

My current startup is also not profitable, we're burning money but we're already signing big contracts and I hope in a year or two we keep growing rather than become profitable (1B+ valuation in a year).

Becoming profitable, even at this point is just a matter of deciding to stop expanding - but neither us nor our investors want this given there is so much potential for growth and more revenue streams on the line.

this is ycombinator's news aggregators, I suspect you're not going to get a "don't take risks and build things" vibe - it's a startup accelerator after all :).

> most startups and tech darlings survive only by continuous infusion of unlimited investor money.

Investors making long bets is a good thing, I’d argue.

> They are profitable

Citation needed. With this type of company and business model, it's highly unusual to be profitable, so the burden of proof is on those who say it is.

They raise more capital and get more debt and try to lower burn rate but the original comment was talking about the 2010s mindset of "growth before profit" where you want more users/revenue to get acquired by a bigger player that can better monetize you.

The fact Discord isn't profitable (and hasn't been) is well documented.

Also, operating at a loss isn't necessarily bad (i.e. if you expand or spend more on R&D your profits shrink). Companies might choose to spend more on R&D and not be profitable (e.g. Amazon for a long time).

I'm not a business person, so take this with a grain of salt, but my understanding is that this is common for a lot of smaller startups and tech companies.

If you can raise funds outside of revenue (i.e. outside of directly selling your products), you can keep operating even if you're not actually generating any income directly. Typically that will be in the form of investment and loans. So even if your expenses (incl. repayments for outstanding loans etc) are higher than your revenue, you can stay in business as long as you can convince enough investors that it's still worth their while to give you their money.

I don't know whether this is true for Discord specifically, but I understand it's a fairly common strategy, especially for companies where their best chance of success is by being the only player in a given market.

It took Uber 15 years to make their first profit

https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/8/24065999/uber-earnings-pro...

This is particularly an ironic comment given that this is the forum run by a company that invests in companies that are not yet profitable and are often not profitable for years if ever

> Companies must make profit, or they vanish.

Oh, buddy. That's how it's supposed to work, but that is not how it works at all.

This is a big misconception (though not one I’m used to seeing in the HN crowd).

Companies can operate at a deficit for many years without vanishing, usually because they have venture capital funding or investor backing.