Měly by se startupy starat o ziskovost? Další novinky v 10

Jsou určitá témata, která ani někteří z nejchytřejších lidí, se kterými mluvím a kteří nejsou orientovaní na startupy, nemohou plně pochopit. Jedním z nich je, zda záleží na ziskovosti. Je běžné, že lidé na koktejlovém večírku slýchají, jak sebevědomě prohlašují, že nějaký známý startup určitě vybuchne.

Nebo znáte ten druhý – ten, kde Snapchat ztratil 2 miliardy dolarů za pouhé jedno čtvrtletí. Dvě zatracené miliardy! Jaká pohroma! Except that they didn’t actually lose $2 billion in cash. It was a stock option incentive related “expense” but I bet you didn’t know that because in an era where we only read the headlines — they must be a train wreck losing billions. (They actually lost about $175 million in cash in that quarter, FWIW. See appendix if you want to know more on this.)

“How could they succeed when they’re not even profitable!”

If you hire 6 senior sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business for 6 months. Your profitability will go down for 2 quarters while your growth may increase dramatically in quarters 3–12.
I know this seems obvious but I promise you that even smart people forget this when talking about profitability. 70–80% of the costs of most startups are employee costs so what you’re really talking about when a company is unprofitable is that they are growing their staff ahead of their revenue.