Revenue is not a metric of success at all.

Grabbing market-share if you have investors that are ready to burn cash infinetely. Find a hot niche, buy a banana 1 USD, sell it for 0.10 USD.

Example: Cursor, they became popular because they were selling ChatGPT unlimited for 20 USD / month.

When they launched, just a reskinned VS Code, "fastest growing AI company"

No coincidence they were bought by SpaceX, who wants to consolidate revenue even if non-sense as long it helps other investors to exit. It shows rapid growth.

Profit is the real moat.

One example: Nvidia. Proprietary tooling, proprietary IP, proprietary hardware, no alternative, expensive.

Revenue is moat. Ask Amazon. Or Alibaba. Or Temu.

You don't know what Cursor's game plan was. Maybe acquisition was their plan.

Buying at $1 and selling for $0.1 is still viable as long as they have money in the bank, until they achieve their goals. Most startups start out that way. Even giving away their services for free.

Obviously there will be failures. Doesn't mean they have no moat. Can you say a business with 100 customers and $1000 debt is less viable than one with a single customer and no debt?