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A comment on Hello, GitHub. Parent comment

Re:Hello, GitHub by wpietri on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @01:21AM (#17235175)
We don't know how far they were from being profitable. But even unprofitability is not a big problem these days. E.g., Okta IPOed in the red with explicit plans to keep losing money for the foreseeable future.

Github was making over $200m/year, and was poised for strong growth in enterprises as they got with the times. I expect they could have gotten to GAAP profitability whenever they needed to. But they should have kept spending on growth to maximize market share.

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Re:Hello, GitHub by scarface74 on Wednesday June 06, 2018 @01:13PM (#17248976)
How does being profitable and IPOing stop a company from being an acquisition target (see LinkedIn)? Just like the private investors could be swayed by a tempting acquisition offer so can public investors.

The only way that you guard against being an acquisition target is to remain private and not take money from outside investors.

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