Volume is vanity profit is sanity

Ontem à noite li "Prejuízos da Farfetch mais do que duplicam em 2019 para 373 milhões de dólares". Entretanto, de tarde tinha lido "Is Silicon Valley’s Love Affair With Direct-to-Consumer Brands Over?":

"When investors of the direct-to-consumer shoe brand Birdies pressured the start-up to burn through the $10 million it raised by buying more online ads and doubling the employee headcount, founders Bianca Gates and Marisa Sharkey resisted.
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“Our investors [were] like, ‘Spend the money!’ and intuitively, we were like, ‘This is silly,’” Gates told BoF. “Why grow faster if it costs us more to acquire customers than to sell the product?”
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But the sentiment among investors seems to be shifting, Gates said. “It was like a one-eighty. Now more than ever, there’s pressure to show profitability and product-market fit.”
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Few startups in the product category have been able to secure lucrative exits for their investors. Many are stuck on a cycle of aggressive forced growth, followed by fundraising higher and higher rounds to facilitate that growth — all without regard to profit.
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“You have this double whammy of increased customer acquisition costs and more competition, and this combination can be deadly,”
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As a result, venture capitalists — especially those investing in later stages — are shifting their strategy to invest more cautiously, favouring profit over revenue and organic marketing over Instagram ads, industry sources say.
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As valuations drop, the metrics that determine these figures are also shifting. Revenue used to be the prime indication of valuation for brands, said Frederic Court, founder of Felix Capital. “But eventually, these businesses will have valuations driven by profitability… it’s about generating a healthy profit margin.”
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Eventually, these businesses will have valuations driven by profitability.
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Investors today are less focused on growth metrics and topline numbers and more focused on the bottom line"