Uber and others now placing profitability above growth
This article from the Wall Street Journal caught my eye this morning. It highlights the shift in investor sentiment from growth to profits. This is consistent with the post that I wrote last week about lessons from the 2000-2003 crash of the early internet. Companies are being asked to match their expenses to their revenues not their dreams. Or as my friend Ash Karbasfrooshan said in a memo yesterday, “every expense is a luxury not a right”.
The business of the internet is very different now than it was twenty years ago. Then our industry was nascent, not even adolescent, all promise and hopes that we could change the world. Now the web and all of its variants (mobile, web3, etc) are an essential part of our daily lives and for that reason, an essential part of global business.
The next downturn–it may or may not merit “crash”– may hurt but I doubt that it will be the near-death experience that we encountered twenty years ago.