>>"Success" is such a vague concept
Actually its not in terms of business.
Success = Profit + Long term sustainability in doing so.
Actually its not in terms of business.
Success = Profit + Long term sustainability in doing so.
Success in a business context means a positive rate of return on the resources invested. Or to refine one step further, a return that is positive and superior to the next best alternative for the deployment of said resources at a given level of risk.
Instagram, among many others, most certainly generated ample return on its initial invested resources without ever generating profits.
See Amazon (or as noted below, Instagram).
However I also think that is a problem for many people who want to startup. They don't usually think about how they'll show a profit and manage to run their business within that profit. Investor money gets them started and an exit by selling an unprofitable yet growing business to a larger company is the goal.
Yet the media and the community celebrates founders for all sorts of things and call it "success" when it's not. So yes, it's incredibly vague, and the existence of an accounting formula means nothing in the founder psyche.