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!"