“The complicated part is not getting customers, it’s getting the product to the customers,” said Paulo Lerner, Rewinery’s founder, who fled San Francisco for Br

“The complicated part is not getting customers, it’s getting the product to the customers,” said Paulo Lerner, Rewinery’s founder, who fled San Francisco for Brazil. “If they charge a lot, it loses the appeal. If they charge less, it has a lot of appeal, but at the same time, they are running on losses.” In other words: the revenue up-and-to-the-right graph (the fetish of the moment) is misleading. There's a broad class of crappy businesses that can easily generate revenue, but will never be able to generate profit. We're back to the 1999 strategy of giving away dollars for 95 cents, and making up the difference on volume.