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I like this article, and I think it's a good reminder, but it's also a reminder that you need to weigh each and every business and idea individually.

For example, Google and Amazon were definitely idea companies. Neither made any money -- and, in Google's case, wasn't even sure about how they'd make money -- for quite some time. But, both have seem to have done acceptably well.



To be fair though, both of those companies are extreme outliers. If you start off with a stack of funding (and lots of great advice from smart and well-connected people) then you can hop right into the big picture stuff. However, if you're a small bootstrapping company you absolutely have to get profitable as soon as possible.


Google made a fair amount of money relatively early on by licencing their search engine to portals like Yahoo, etc.




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