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655 points jonkuipers | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.397s | source
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mdorazio ◴[] No.44504096[source]
Congratulations! But I’m disappointed with no mention of profit level in this post or another one linked. My last business I scaled to 500K ARR in less than two years, with $20K in total annual profit including the $0 my cofounder and I paid ourselves for many hours of work. I shut it down a year later and strongly regret the amount of work I put into it.

There’s an ARR metric trap in the founder community where people focus on revenue rather than on reaching a level of take-home income comparable to what they could make at a normal job. The former is a lot easier than the latter (especially in the US for people who can take home $250K fairly easily working in tech) - as the saying goes, you can make infinite revenue by selling dollars for 99 cents.

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1. FredPret ◴[] No.44504243[source]
If ARR grows enough, there should be plenty of room in there to pay the founders.

For extreme examples of ARR growth at 0% profit paying off, look at Uber, Amazon, and ServiceNow. I know these are very much outliers. All three had rapid revenue growth but profits at (or far below) zero. But for all three, the founders are sitting pretty today.

https://valustox.com/NOW

https://valustox.com/UBER

https://valustox.com/AMZN

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2. aledalgrande ◴[] No.44506260[source]
> For extreme examples of ARR growth at 0% profit paying off

Pretty sure parent was referring to gross profit, because that's what you'd look at to pay your salary. These examples are not relevant.