It's not out of touch to question metrics when it appears a company was dumped on public investors with no profitability in sight. Growth is not success; profit is, growth is simply the mechanism by which you're supposed to reach profitability.
If we define success as cashing out, sure, success. It feels like the delta in journey between building a sustainable, profitable business that handsomely rewards you at your exit and "congrats on your lottery ticket" is growing by the day. Let's not kid ourselves, investor dollars chasing after your equity when you go public and with no evidence profitability is possible is a rare lottery ticket that has paid out (or maybe not so rare! See: Adam Neumann/WeWork).
EDIT: I want to really stress that this isn't "sour grapes" but more echo chamber fatigue. If you are founders at a startup, who grow it into a unicorn, are delivering value, your employees and customers are happy and delighted, and you're profitable, those are the folks who deserve to be congratulated when they IPO and become billionaires and are who you can learn the most from on your own startup journey.
> If we define success as cashing out, sure, success.
That's the only definition of success that matters to VCs.
Even if the company is not around in a year, if they were able to dump their stock to investors^Wspeculators^Wsuckers before the meltdown then it's bagged as a win.
F-4 they are clearly on a path to profitability...
It seems silly to even focus on profitability at IPO when credit is so cheap. Growth trajectory is rewarded and based on the S-1 they are growing in a healthy enough fashion. This is VERY different than WeWork which had massive amounts of debt on their books and didn't have a plan out.
Again, if you keep getting hung up on profitability you aren't really realizing what stage Doordash is at or the maturity level by which companies are expected to be profitable
If we define success as cashing out, sure, success. It feels like the delta in journey between building a sustainable, profitable business that handsomely rewards you at your exit and "congrats on your lottery ticket" is growing by the day. Let's not kid ourselves, investor dollars chasing after your equity when you go public and with no evidence profitability is possible is a rare lottery ticket that has paid out (or maybe not so rare! See: Adam Neumann/WeWork).
EDIT: I want to really stress that this isn't "sour grapes" but more echo chamber fatigue. If you are founders at a startup, who grow it into a unicorn, are delivering value, your employees and customers are happy and delighted, and you're profitable, those are the folks who deserve to be congratulated when they IPO and become billionaires and are who you can learn the most from on your own startup journey.