初创企业盈利挂帅对不对

难道不是所有公司都应该致力于盈利吗？

    不一定。

    不妨看看下边这两家软件公司，它们的毛利润率都是66%。

Shouldn't All Companies Want to Be Profitable?

    Not necessarily.

    Let's consider the following two software companies, both of which have 66% gross margins.

    第一年两家公司看起来完全一样，都筹得了150万美元的天使/种子基金来维持这一年的运营，都亏损了100万美元。

    66%的毛利润率还算不错（它们通过一家抽取33%佣金的经销商销售产品），但销售规模还不足以支付IT开发团队、管理、营销和办公费用等成本。很多互联网初创公司80%运营成本都是人员费用。

    那么，哪家公司的经营状况更好一些？

    答案根本无从知晓。一个没有经验的记者或许会遗憾公司B没有“盈利”，或者作为一家典型的互联网初创企业，完全没有成本意识。毕竟，它在还没有盈利的情况下就将运营成本翻了一番。

    它到底用这笔钱做了些什么呢？它融到了500万美元风投资金用于发展业务。公司用这些钱扩充了技术团队，以便能推出第二条产品线。公司聘用了营销团队来进行更广泛的产品推广。公司聘用了业务开发团队，寻找将产品嵌入他人产品的机会，以此扩大客户需求。此外， 公司还租赁了更宽敞的办公室，改善了员工的办公环境，以便更好地留住员工。

    如果它们的产品市场需求强劲，这些投资可能会带来不错的回报。

    Both companies look the exact same after one year. They both raised angel / seed money of $1.5 million to fund operations in their first year of operations. Both companies lost $1 million in their first year.

    Gross margins at 66% is fine (they're selling through a reseller who takes a 33% margin) but their sales aren't yet large enough to cover the costs of their IT development team + management + marketing + office costs, etc. In many Internet startups 80% of the operating costs will be people.

    So which company is better run?

    The answer is that you have no way of knowing. A naive journalist might lament the fact that Company B is "not profitable" or is being a typical Internet startup and not worried about costs. After all, it doubled their operating costs when it wasn't even profitable.

    What did it actually do? It raised $5 million in venture capital to fund growth. It used the money to hire a bigger tech team so it could roll out its second product line. It hired a marketing team to promote its products more broadly. It hired a biz dev team to work on deals where its product could be embedded in other people's products as a way to increase customer demand. It got a bigger office space so its employees would feel comfortable and it could improve employee retention.

    If there was strong market demand for their product then this investment might pay off handsomely.