Sounds like there is a lot of survivorship bias to me. "We were profitable because we did it right, and we don't understand why one would decide not to be profitable".

I think it's important to note that if you're building your business and you are profitable, then you're lucky: you're doing something that you find cool, and it's bringing money.

> What holds you back is rarely team size – it's the clarity of your focus, skill and ability to execute.

This, to me, confirms what I said: nowhere they mention anything like "luck". "Being in the right place at the right time", etc.

The reason startups grow without being profitable is because they "fake it until they make it". They pretend that it's all normal and it will work in order to convince VCs who have no way to know if it's true or not, and don't care (it's just another bet).

Of course a founder won't say "we're not profitable because our company is failing". They will truly believe that they're not profitable because they are on the way to get profitable, through growth. But the numbers are here: most startups fail.

It's always tempting to believe that you succeeded because you are strictly better than the others. And that's the whole point of founding a startup: if it succeeds, the founders want to be rich. The first employees will be "compensated" for their lower salary and extra hours, they won't get rich. The founders have to believe that it's all their doing and that they deserve to get rich and not the other employees, that's an obvious cognitive bias. Otherwise how would they feel about themselves? I don't think it could work.