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Their secret is not having delusions of grandeur. VC convinces us that a business is not a success unless it eats the world within ten years. In actual fact, many businesses make a very modest profit and took decades to get big enough you might consider them a success story. That’s fine. Shareholder value is not the only kind of value.

Not starting out with $500 million VC debt?

And not needing to somehow show 50% growth year after year.

"Profitable" is just a calculation of inputs and outputs, what it actually looks like varies wildly. Manufacturing and tech/service industry and infrastructure are totally different types of business, often with radically different types of startup costs, cashflow, growth patterns, ownership models and employee compensation expectations.

Their secret is volume

Volume