isn't there a time when a company should stop growing via venture funding and start re-investing it's own profits? you know, like a sustainable company? how to determine when this points has come? (i thought yammer was already far beyond that point)
There are many reasons why a company would raise money when they could be profitable right now. And we don't even know that they are, or are in a position to be.
<quote>The new funding “is like an IPO without the headaches,” he said, adding that the start-up can now “stay private for quite some time.”</quote>
One could imagine a hypothetical world where profits paid as dividends to owners would suffice to give investors the return their business model requires but that is very much not standard practice in the US tech industry. To a professional investor (especially a VC firm), a profitable company that cannot be sold/IPOed is a failure.
I'll admit it is pretty surprising to me that they're still around.