Actually if you push the reasoning in the article a bit it can make sense.
When they buy the company, they buy:
- the users and the revenue (which may be losing money for growth as explained)
- and also a product that should be easier/cheaper for them to sell to their existing customers. So they can have a very cheap batch of customers that grows their revenue a lot without increasing their upfront cost too much
-> it's like the up-sells/upgrade in the article: it's much cheaper to acquire but makes the same money
( eg:
- you have 1M clients
- you lose money because it costs you 1.5R to acquire a customer and you're growing
- the company buys you with 10M clients, and it's only 0.1R for them to sell it to these clients because it's an up-sells/upgrade
-> they'll make money with your product even if you can't! )