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No, most companies do not work this way. Most companies that lose this staggering amount of money go out of business quickly. We are living in a time of "event

No, most companies do not work this way. Most companies that lose this staggering amount of money go out of business quickly. We are living in a time of "eventual profitability" where some companies have immense privilege to lose an immense amount of money, are encouraged to lose it to build a large company in hopes of creating a sustainable model. Right now there's not even profitability on the horizon. Losses increase with more revenues which is horrible. All we saw was a negative 2nd derivative of cash loss but there's no telling whether the delta will be fast enough to produce an actually profitable company.

jhall1468 8y ago
No offense but Amazon did exactly this for nearly 2 decades. I don't know why you think Lyft is somehow an exception to the rule. They aren't. Hyper Growth is not the stage you start looking at P/L statements. If they were generating big profits, there would be little point in going public at all.
- docker_up 8y ago
  No offense, but you're exceptionally wrong. Go through their financial statements. They were barely profitable on a GAAP basis for a long time. Barely profitable is entirely different from massively bleeding money. Barely profitable means they were making profits but reinvested them into their business. The stories are entirely different.
  - jhall1468 8y ago
    Amazon went public in 1997 and posted it's first quarterly profit in 2002. So while it wasn't for 2 decades they were absolutely bleeding money until then. Their stories are not entirely different, they are extraordinarily similar. Both nascent markets, both money losers at IPO, both needed cash to continue their growth story. Do you understand the purpose of an IPO? It's a funding round. If you have a ton of cash on hand, or your profitable but don't have a growth area that requires large capital, there's literally no reason to go public. That's why Lyft is going public now and nobody is talking about Airbnb. The former needs cash to continue it's massive growth in new markets, the latter is a profitable company with low capex that doesn't need a funding round.

jhall1468 8y ago

No offense but Amazon did exactly this for nearly 2 decades. I don't know why you think Lyft is somehow an exception to the rule. They aren't. Hyper Growth is not the stage you start looking at P/L statements. If they were generating big profits, there would be little point in going public at all.

docker_up 8y ago
No offense, but you're exceptionally wrong. Go through their financial statements. They were barely profitable on a GAAP basis for a long time. Barely profitable is entirely different from massively bleeding money. Barely profitable means they were making profits but reinvested them into their business. The stories are entirely different.
- jhall1468 8y ago
  Amazon went public in 1997 and posted it's first quarterly profit in 2002. So while it wasn't for 2 decades they were absolutely bleeding money until then. Their stories are not entirely different, they are extraordinarily similar. Both nascent markets, both money losers at IPO, both needed cash to continue their growth story. Do you understand the purpose of an IPO? It's a funding round. If you have a ton of cash on hand, or your profitable but don't have a growth area that requires large capital, there's literally no reason to go public. That's why Lyft is going public now and nobody is talking about Airbnb. The former needs cash to continue it's massive growth in new markets, the latter is a profitable company with low capex that doesn't need a funding round.