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> "Amazon famously circles around the profitable/not-profitable line frequently" I dont agree with this common saying. Amazon was founded in 1994, IPO in 1997

> "Amazon famously circles around the profitable/not-profitable line frequently" I dont agree with this common saying. Amazon was founded in 1994, IPO in 1997, and made a profit by 2003. Amazon's philosophy is to reinvest money, thus they swing between profit/loss. Amazon went from selling books online to everything online + AWS + Echo + Go Store, etc etc. So it took Amazon to make a profit, but they truly were growing, not paying people to buy movie tickets. Conversely, usually when people say 'look at Amazon' when talking about profitless companies, we are talking about companies that spent a decade + private, IPO with huge valuations, slowing growth, and huge losses with no profit in site. Dropbox for example, founded in 2007 and IPO'ed 11 years later with an 8 billion valuation. A 100$ investment in Amazon would have yielded 127k$. To give you that kind of growth, dropbox would have to reach a market cap of 10+ trillion. This is a huge problem because people are treating these unicorns like growth companies, when their best years are behind them and with their valuation, its mathematically impossible for them to have the huge growth that companies such as Amazon, Netflix, Google had. I think rules need to be enforced / changed to prevent companies from staying private so long. This shenanigans is going to cost generations saving for retirement significantly.

wokwokwok 7y ago
I’m puzzled by who you think is suffering by having companies stay private like this? > This is a huge problem because... Why is it a problem? Suck it up; if you’re an investor do your due diligence, just like with any other company.
- scarface74 7y ago
  It’s a problem because if you’re not a “qualified investor” you don’t get to take advantage of most of the gains as long as the company stays private.
- mhermher 7y ago
  Because the public market is clearly being used as a greater fool pool for bad investments.
scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago
I would not even call Netflix a success story until they can prove they will retain customers when the currently most popular content is being pulled
- scarface74 7y ago
  I agree and they have already proved they couldn’t. They use to say that their investment in content will keep attracting users even when its not new - ie their library content has value. But they admitted that they didn’t sign up as many new customers last quarter because they didn’t have big new releases to attract customers. They are still taking on billions of debt for both licensing deals and to create new content while their major upcoming competitor - Disney+ - has multiple income streams from their content and most of the cost of content has been repaid multiple times by the time it reaches Disney+. Streaming is also a feature and not a standalone product for Amazon, Disney, AT&T and even Apple. None of these companies live or die based on their streaming product, it’s just a check mark.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Disney will not have the large catalogue that netflix has. If you like Disney $6 a month is great but this won't put netflix out of business.
    - scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago
      But Disney seems to have all the franchises that everyone wants to see. Add to that the major broadcasters are also pulling content, it's not just Disney. NBC, ABC, CBS are all pulling their content from Netflix and creating their own Disney+-like competitors to Netflix. HBO never even put it on there (they have had HBO Go for a while).
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Netflix has a large catalog, but most of it is either crap or owned by other studios and networks. They are all taking their content back to start their own service.

wokwokwok 7y ago

I’m puzzled by who you think is suffering by having companies stay private like this? > This is a huge problem because... Why is it a problem? Suck it up; if you’re an investor do your due diligence, just like with any other company.

scarface74 7y ago
It’s a problem because if you’re not a “qualified investor” you don’t get to take advantage of most of the gains as long as the company stays private.
mhermher 7y ago
Because the public market is clearly being used as a greater fool pool for bad investments.

scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago

I would not even call Netflix a success story until they can prove they will retain customers when the currently most popular content is being pulled

scarface74 7y ago
I agree and they have already proved they couldn’t. They use to say that their investment in content will keep attracting users even when its not new - ie their library content has value. But they admitted that they didn’t sign up as many new customers last quarter because they didn’t have big new releases to attract customers. They are still taking on billions of debt for both licensing deals and to create new content while their major upcoming competitor - Disney+ - has multiple income streams from their content and most of the cost of content has been repaid multiple times by the time it reaches Disney+. Streaming is also a feature and not a standalone product for Amazon, Disney, AT&T and even Apple. None of these companies live or die based on their streaming product, it’s just a check mark.
- wolco 7y ago
  Disney will not have the large catalogue that netflix has. If you like Disney $6 a month is great but this won't put netflix out of business.
  - scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago
    But Disney seems to have all the franchises that everyone wants to see. Add to that the major broadcasters are also pulling content, it's not just Disney. NBC, ABC, CBS are all pulling their content from Netflix and creating their own Disney+-like competitors to Netflix. HBO never even put it on there (they have had HBO Go for a while).
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Netflix has a large catalog, but most of it is either crap or owned by other studios and networks. They are all taking their content back to start their own service.