Too many salaries.

VCs want you to go big or go home so they want you to hire. Hiring decreases your runway dramatically.

$100 million lasts practically forever for 2 people. $100 million lasts through most problems for 10-15 people. $100 million doesn't last very long at all for 100 people.

It should be noted that outside of the US tech bubble, $100m lasts plenty long for 100 people, even with overheads.

> outside of the US tech bubble, $100m lasts plenty long for 100 people, even with overheads.

Outside where? The EU? Plenty long... like 5 years?

150K per employee on average with overhead (additional benefits, tax contributions, health care -- whatever other expenses). 15,000,000 a year.

Add in real estate, equipment, other capital expenses. Yeah, looks like ~5 years.

If you have $100m, the implication is that the VCs want to see a unicorn (>$1 billion). You will be engaging in a lot of sales, marketing and engineering activity to get there. Your activity is expensive.

And nobody is getting $100 million anymore. Good raises are now in the $10 million range and that doesn't last long at all even if you only have a small number of employees.

+ fancy office etc. Remember what twitter office was offering with no profit for the company? any extra was coming from companies potential profit

It’s a nice meme about Twitter being an atrocious business etc (and it wasn’t great/it was struggling for much of its existence), but Twitter made $1.2 and $1.4 billion in profit in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

Wasn't lifetime profitable

Like most high-growth tech businesses throughout most of their lifetime. Fair critique of the industry at large IMO, but it’s very much “by design.”