4 ms·

I would argue that these companies represent "Companies that realized they needed to raise funding to remain competitive" A lot of startups that taking early f

• j45 13y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean. A company that needs investment to survive is quite different than a company that's self-funded and profitable prior to funding, who decides to take funding to accelerate growth using the growth engines already discovered as a starting point. Companies who raise funding, do so to start looking for a business model that scales, is repeatable, and generates revenue (and hopefully profit) because they don't have one already.
  • jnsaff2 13y ago
    I think what he means is that even if the company is profitable now without making an extra push someone else could take a large portion of their market share by spending a lot of (VC) money.
    • jusben1369 13y ago
      Correct. I agree reading back I was a little opaque. These companies made it to profitability. But then they realize that they're a risk of not being able to stay at profitability, or even survive in the long run, without raising significant capital and thus invest ahead of revenues. I think the spirit of this post is to highlight profitable, bootstrapped, long term companies. It's questionable whether GitHub, BigCommmerce, Braintree etc are in that group.
      • j45 13y ago
        I think there might be an assumption that a company can't stay at profitability without funding. Profitability itself means having more money than you need to cover your expenses, and pay for growth. If you look into highly profitable bootstrapped businesses, you'll see they are not at risk of dying without funding.