初创企业盈利挂帅对不对

    阅读关于知名初创企业的报道，每次看到记者大叫“他们甚至都还没有盈利”时，我都觉得挺逗的。

    我之所以提到记者，是因为正是这帮人让“致力于盈利永远是正确的”这一错误观点长盛不衰。此外，我也听到很多企业家（当然还有很多“正常人”）反复提到这一观点。

    盈利和增长间存在一种良性的矛盾。要加快增长，企业就得动用当前财务周期的资源，虽然投入这些资源后可能半年、一年都看不到增长。以销售团队为例，就很容易说明问题：如果1月份招了6个销售代表，每人年薪12万美元，即每月人工成本增加6万美元，但有可能这些销售代表4-6个月内都不会达成新的业务。因此，新聘这些销售代表会使第一季度的净利润减少18万美元。我知道这看来显而易见，但我敢保证一谈到盈利，即使聪明人也会忘了这一点。

    增聘人手并不总是正确的举措。必须知道新招的人能不能在短期内带来营收增长，或者能不能获得足够廉价的资本来填补损失，直到投资开始显现效益。

摘要：

    全世界大多数(98%以上的)公司（甚至包括科技初创企业）都应该高度关注盈利。盈利意味着拥有更多的自由度，这不是依赖他人资金时所可想象的。

    • 确实需要融资时，盈利能有助于举债。(因为很多投资者并不指望打造庞大的商业王国，他们看重投资对象能否实现经营盈利。)

    • 盈利能带来更多的退出机会。尽管谷歌（Google）和Facebook这样的公司会进行“人才收购”(至少截至2011年12月是如此)，但许多收购者都不乐意购买不赚钱的公司。他们考虑收购一家公司时，往往会考虑：“我需要多久才能赚回收购成本？”如果你还没有盈利，你对他们而言就完全是一个烧钱机器。

    • 盈利当然也会让公司更有能力熬过困难时期。

    不应以盈利为当前要务的人们包括：

    • 有机会或看到机会，有望打造极具可扩展性的业务、互联网规模企业的人。

    • 能从那些致力于培育互联网规模企业的投资者那里轻松获取资本的人。

    我想说的是，

    “如果你真的有一个很宏大的想法，市场中的其他人也会看到这一点，他们会和你竞争。

    如果你具有市场领先地位，那么现在进行融资和投资将能在其他人进入市场时给予你帮助。

    如果你不这样做，其他人肯定会！”

    I find it amusing when a journalist writes about a prominent startup and decries that, "They're not even profitable!"

    I mention journalists because they perpetuate the myth that focusing on profits is always appropriate, and then I hear many entrepreneurs (and certainly many "normals") repeating the same mantra.

    There is a healthy tension between profits and growth. To grow faster, businesses need resources in today's financial period to fund growth that may not come for 6 months to a year. The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people: If you hire 6 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 4-6 months. So your Q1 results will be $180,000 less profitable than if you hadn't hired them. I know this seems obvious but I promise you that even smart people forget it when talking about profitability.

    Hiring more people isn't always the right answer. You have to understand whether they're likely to yield revenue growth in the near term OR whether you have access to cheap enough capital to fund your losses until your investments pay off.

Exec Summary:

    Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused. Being profitable allows you degrees of freedom you don't have when you rely upon other people's money.

    • You may have leverage when you DO need to fundraise. (There are many investors who are not looking to build enormous businesses who value the fact that you can run a business profitably)

    • It allows you many more exit opportunities. While Google and Facebook will buy "acquihires" (at least as of Dec 2011), many acquirers hate the idea of buying companies that aren't profitable. When they look at buying your company they often think in terms of "how long will it take until I earn back the profits to pay for my acquisition price?" If you're not profitable you're purely a cost center to them.

    • Being profitable certainly makes your company more sustainable in difficult times.

    The characteristics of somebody who should NOT focus on profitability include those who:

    • Have or perceive that they have the opportunity to build an immensely scalable businesses. Internet scale.

    • Have easy access to capital by investors who are committed to building businesses at Interent scale

    As I like to say,

    "If you're really on to an enormous idea then other people in the market are going to spot that and want to compete with you.

    If you have a market lead then raising capital and making investments now will help you as others enter the market.

    If you don't, somebody else WILL!"