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Is Amazon the best example of this? Their retail arm was never long term loss making in the way e.g. Twitter was, if I recall correctly, but rather more like br

Is Amazon the best example of this? Their retail arm was never long term loss making in the way e.g. Twitter was, if I recall correctly, but rather more like break even because all profits were ploughed into growth. I don't know how much money Amazon raised but back when Bezos started out there weren't the same kinds of insane sums being tossed about by VCs. Also Amazon's moat isn't really its website, which is mediocre at best, but its backend systems like fulfillment. Plus brand recognition, size, general efficiency etc.

CheezeIt 5y ago
Amazon raised $54 million in its IPO in 1997.
useryman 5y ago
What amazon did to diapers.com is a very good example of burning money to kill a rival. Especially because they launched their campaign while trying to buy them.
mnowicki 5y ago
In Amazon's case it's not using VC money to outcompete similar businesses, it's using their own money to demolish any competitors in the thousands of niche categories they sell products for. The diaper.com thing is the most popular example, Amazon tried to buy daipers.com, daipers.com said no, amazon sold their own diapers for such a low price they were losing money on each sale in order to put diapers.com out of business or nearly out of business. Forget how it ends, either diapers.com went out of business, or they had to sell to Amazon in the end for a small percentage of the original offer