I completely agree that revenue gets too much airtime, at the expense of profit. I do think revenue can be a useful stat for startups, for example if it is a harbinger of future profit. Imagine you're spending $500k/yr on engineering to build a platform, and you're bringing in $500k/yr in revenue. In the early years, this means you have no profit. But if your product (perhaps Saas?) is one that requires much less upkeep than initial development, then you can be fairly certain that your business will become profitable once the early dev work has been completed.

Of course, you can't be naive here and forget to account for customer service, maintenance, etc., which all ramp up over time.