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Comment by goodJobWalrus | Hacker News Reader

Do you know, were they ever profitable?

Yea 2008 to 2010ish. It would be silly to not invest into our growth right now given the opportunity at hand. We liked being profitable very much though and promised to be back at some point :-)

I don't understand how can they not be. I mean, compared to stuff like Snapchat or whatever which has dubious monetization schemes, Shopify is solidly built and offers a service that so many are willing to actually pay for. Maybe it's the costs of building things in the beginning? I really think they'll be fine... until at least Amazon or some other big player gets in their turf.

I think they're simply ploughing all their revenue back into growth through sales/marketing. If they wanted to they could turn down the customer acquisition spend and ride their recurring revenue to a tidy profit.

That depends. In the case of shopify probably yes, but you'd have to look very closely at the life-time value of those customers. There is a small possibility that if they turned down the rate of acquisition that the retention would be just poor enough that they would not make it to profitability, or alternatively that they would be profitable only for a short while.

This can be quite hard to establish, especially for companies that have raised significant capital (Shopify raised $120M+), they can keep that from happening for a long long time.

For companies that have not raised significant capital, if they're able to finance their growth out of their income stream then yes, they can convert to profitable overnight.

I believe their financials show they have yet to be profitable. That doesn't mean they couldn't be but as of now they are spending more than they bring in

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