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Comment by typicalrunt | Hacker News Reader

Nicely written and invokes a bit of an emotional response from me. But just a bit...

And then I realize that this person (whoever s/he is, real or fictional) has suffered from the fundamental problem of all business: profit. For some reason, the IT industry as of late has dismissed profits and traditional business rules for the sake of fictional ideals like pageviews, user signups, and such. And while the latter things matter somewhat, there must be a directed line from those metrics to dollars and cents, because utility companies (electricity, Internet, water) like to be paid in dollars and cents, not promises and wishes.

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Profit is every bit as fictional of an ideal as a pageview or user signup. Most business activity do not take into account the externalities (corn is "profitable" but heavily subsidized by the government and most manufactured goods end up in a landfill that's not paid for by the company) that are created but not accounted for in the "Profit and Loss Statement"

You can't pay your employees with page views. Profits (or revenue, to be a bit more precise), on the other hand, are directly exchangeable for rent, food, payroll, keeping the lights on, and other such necessities.

The dollars a farmer uses to make payroll are fungible. It doesn't matter if they came from a stupid government subsidy or a sale at a farmer's market.

You pay your employees with capital, which can come from customers, the government, banks, credit card companies or investors.

Most tech startups do not generate a lot of cash in their early stages, which is why they raise capital from investors who purchase equity stake in the company because they believe the company will be valuable down the road. Page views (and more so user signups/engagement) are one metric by which investors make the decision to invest capital.

Guys, this is what modern capitalism is all about.

Sure, and I bet you buy your food with stock options.

Unless you're one of the many Instagram-like startups that have higher burn than revenue and still get paid handsomely.

Or no revenue at all, in the case of Instagram.

Many technical people are uncomfortable with business because it's too organic. It would be really nice if X amount of effort guaranteed Y amount of dollars, but that's only somewhat predictable some of the time.

There's also that whole marketing thing (which I understand the need for, but will never understand the thing itself) that can drive tech people batshit.

there is a big difference between bootstrapping a business and going for VC as a start up.

It's great to be either but please dont ridicule one or the other because you prefer one type yourself.

ps. I have a bootstrapped business like you talked about so I know what you mean. It is weird to hear from my friends that work at funded start ups about the crazy money being spent. But we need to realise they have to build scale extremely fast.

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