難道不是所有公司都應該致力于盈利嗎？

????不一定。

????不妨看看下邊這兩家軟件公司，它們的毛利潤率都是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.

????第一年兩家公司看起來完全一樣，都籌得了150萬美元的天使/種子基金來維持這一年的運營，都虧損了100萬美元。

????66%的毛利潤率還算不錯（它們通過一家抽取33%傭金的經銷商銷售產品），但銷售規模還不足以支付IT開發團隊、管理、營銷和辦公費用等成本。很多互聯網初創公司80%運營成本都是人員費用。

????那么，哪家公司的經營狀況更好一些？

????答案根本無從知曉。一個沒有經驗的記者或許會遺憾公司B沒有“盈利”，或者作為一家典型的互聯網初創企業，完全沒有成本意識。畢竟，它在還沒有盈利的情況下就將運營成本翻了一番。

????它到底用這筆錢做了些什么呢？它融到了500萬美元風投資金用于發展業務。公司用這些錢擴充了技術團隊，以便能推出第二條產品線。公司聘用了營銷團隊來進行更廣泛的產品推廣。公司聘用了業務開發團隊，尋找將產品嵌入他人產品的機會，以此擴大客戶需求。此外， 公司還租賃了更寬敞的辦公室，改善了員工的辦公環境，以便更好地留住員工。

????如果它們的產品市場需求強勁，這些投資可能會帶來不錯的回報。

????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.