3 ms·

I wonder if you hypothetically had a list of every tech startup in the last decade, if the total net profit would be positive.

• adventured 9y ago
  I think if you narrowed it down to every tech start-up that took on venture capital at some point in the last ten years, the answer would be a resounding no. It might be positive if you included all tech start-ups over ten years (any of the others that make it ten years pretty much have to be profitable by necessity and there are dramatically more of those than the well-publicized VC backed companies). The red ink pile from the VC companies is epic though, so the others may still not be close to an offset. I'm not aware of any tech start-ups from the last ten years, that are printing income at an impressive level (something akin to the profit ramp of a Google or Facebook). Airbnb might be a candidate for a large income generator, that segment has good margins if expenses are tightly managed; it was founded in 2008, so it's about to age-off that list. There certainly may be some young profit machines hiding in China, as a universe unto itself it can be difficult to track all the start-ups there. Jinri Toutiao for example, is at or around $2.5x billion in revenue for 2017, after just four years, a rather extraordinary growth rate for an ad business. As an aggregator, you'd think that would have tremendous margins, but they're raising tons of capital, so I'd guess they're currently spending at a very high level.
  • B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
    > The red ink pile from the VC companies is epic Adding it all up would be interesting. The data may even be available.
• eru 9y ago
  If you include founders' opportunity costs (they could have worked for a steady paycheck at eg Google instead), it's sure to be negative.