Many times companies can inflate revenues, or the revenue is very costly to acquire. These are two examples, though I don't know enough about Simply Hired to s

Many times companies can inflate revenues, or the revenue is very costly to acquire. These are two examples, though I don't know enough about Simply Hired to say if they did either. 1) Companies with Ad Revenue quote the gross amount, rather than the net they keep. So let's say that someone spends a dollar on advertising. 60 cents may go to the website that hosted the ad, 10 cents to their software vendor, 20 cents to an exchange, and 10 cents to the buyer's website. Everyone counts this as a dollar of revenue, even though they're passing through most of the costs. This is most often seen in advertising or other reselling markets. 2) They spend $2000 in advertising to get a customer with a lifetime value of $1000. Sometimes this is a deliberate Ponzi scheme, other times it's done with honest intent. It can be very hard to predict lifetime customer value.