It’s funny you mention apartments, because that is exactly the comparison i thought of, but with the opposite conclusion. If you buy an apartment with debt, but get positive cash flow from rent, you wouldn’t call that unprofitable or a bad investment. It takes X years to recoup the initial debt, and as long as X is achievable that’s a good deal.
Hoping for something net profitable including fixed costs from day 1 is a nice fantasy, but that’s not how any business works or even how consumers think about debt. Restaurants get SBA financing. Homeowners are “net losing money” for 30 years if you include their debt, but they rightly understand that you need to pay a large fixed cost to get positive cash flow.
R&D is conceptually very similar. Customer acquisition also behaves that way
Running with your analogy having positive cash flow and buying a property to hold for the long term makes sense. Thats the classic mortgage scenario. But it takes time for that math to work out. Buying a new property every 6 months breaks that model. That’s like folks that keep buying a new car and rolling “negative equity” into a new deal. It’s insanity financially but folks still do it.