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> Business success is users and growth and revenue.

To me, business success is only the profit, what my business makes after the expenses - free cash to invest or share to shareholders. Everything else can go to hell, I don't care (except when it relates to making profit).

However nothing wrong if someone else has some other metrics. However I don't really understand why to pursue something else in business.

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I completely agree that revenue gets too much airtime, at the expense of profit. I do think revenue can be a useful stat for startups, for example if it is a harbinger of future profit. Imagine you're spending $500k/yr on engineering to build a platform, and you're bringing in $500k/yr in revenue. In the early years, this means you have no profit. But if your product (perhaps Saas?) is one that requires much less upkeep than initial development, then you can be fairly certain that your business will become profitable once the early dev work has been completed.

Of course, you can't be naive here and forget to account for customer service, maintenance, etc., which all ramp up over time.

That line stuck out to me too. As someone on here said recently "revenue is easy if you're selling dollars for quarters".

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