Money is just a consequence. I always say to my team, 'Don't worry too much about profitability. If you do your job well, the profitability will come.'
If you're trying to get to profitability by lowering costs as a startup then you are in a very precarious and difficult position. You need to grow through profitability.
Profitability is the consequence of doing business in the right way, to honor God.
Working with limited resources is an excellent way to hone skills that will serve you well for the rest of your career. You will prioritize profitability from the start.
One of the things we urge Y-Combinator companies to do is to have profitability in grasp. If you need to get profitable before your A round of money, you ought to be able to do that.
Companies should not have a singular view of profitability. There needs to be a balance between commerce and social responsibility... The companies that are authentic about it will wind up as the companies that make more money.
Too many startups get in the habit of continually raising more and more money, which has the deleterious effect of both pushing out profitability and limiting your exit options. The less rounds of capital you need to raise, the more of your company you get to own.
When things are going awry, it's time to put the blinders on and do your job. Just do your job. Don't worry about the other guy, don't worry about the wins and losses, just worry about what the very next play is.
Don't worry about your individual numbers. Worry about the team. If the team is successful, each of you will be successful, too.
You will always need more capital than you think, because it will always take you longer to reach profitability than you can imagine.
A policy of subsidizing failures will end in an economy strewn with capital-guzzling industries long past their time of profitability - old companies that cannot create jobs themselves, but can stand in the way of job creation.
Your typical business just measures the metrics that have to do with the profitability of the business one way or another. But you can have metrics that measure employee happiness and the morale. You can also do direct customer surveys; you can track it over time. You can do supplier satisfaction scores as well.
Do a good job. You don't have to worry about the money; it will take care of itself. Just do your best work - then try to trump it.
When you have to worry about paying the rent, you're never bored. You're just happy to have that job. But once you don't have to worry and reach the point where it's no longer about the money, you're able to look at other opportunities outside of your comfort zone.
Profitability is the only way to control your own investments.
Wall Street is always too biased toward short-term profitability and biased against long-term growth.
I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs hear all this talk about profitability and realize they need to lower their burn. So, they just start chopping off perks and people.