Snowflake lost 350m last year
Unity lost 160m last year
Sumo Logic lost 43m last year
Jfrog lost 400k last year
Out of curiosity, is it normal for companies to IPO this far away from profitability, or is this a recent tech thing? I feel like it was a big deal when uber IPO'd so far away from profitability, now it seems standard.
I don't subscribe by this method.
Another thing to keep in mind is that IPOs are usually done for 1 of 3 reasons:
1) To allow an exit for investors
This means that you have to think you know more than their current investors do about their growth -- unless the investors have other specific timelines (sometimes they do), or else you're buying what someone else thinks is no longer a good use of capital.
2) To raise money
This means the company needs more cash, either for "growth" or because they will fail without it. Again, you should be certain that this company-in-need deserves more money.
3) To create a sense of "official-ness".
Some companies can be better respected in their industry and helps with their brand if they're public.
It's been reported that public CEOs often spend about 50% of their time working on matters that relate to simply being public. It's one of the reasons that Warren Buffett will sometimes take companies private after buying public ones -- to afford them more time and energy to work on the actual company. There's very little about going public that actually makes a company better.
It's a lot easier (for both sides!) to buy another company with your stock if there is more confidence in the valuation, that way everybody knows what they're getting (or giving away). One way to get a really, really solid valuation is to be publicly traded.
You can employ 1000 people at 50k Euro a year plus infra without hitting these losses, and one on one thousand is surely to come up with something. Not that I'd jump to do that without having a revenue plan. Niche products of products burning a lot of cash doesn't make a lot of sense.
Like, as a casual observer, it seems more common to hear of companies losing money than making money these days, especially outside of FAANG.