They have revenue at least though, which wasn't really true of most of the dot-com failures.

Ah I have this perfect revenue generating machine, guaranteed to be able to get infinite revenue, just need to find a VC for it...

Here's the secret, you give me $1 and I give you $1.20 in return . rinse and repeat ad infititum

So... MoviePass? :)

Another important distinction is that a company like Airbnb could be profitable overnight if it wanted to. It is choosing not to.

I've heard this statement made many times about start-ups. The problem is often that, in changing their economics to generate a profit, they could allow competitors to take all their market share.

In the case of AirBnB with their $93b market cap to get a P/E of say 35, they would need to generate $2.6b in profit, so could they do that and not crater their market?

You have a good point. Still, many other hyped internet companies couldn’t be profitable even if they wanted to.

The average person has a really poor idea of what profit means because they analogize between their personal finances and a company's finances.

What profit means for a company is essentially: "Across my entire company, of all the things I could be doing, I couldn't find a single initiative that I believe will yield me a risk adjusted ROI that is greater than just leaving the money in a bank account."

Growing companies shouldn't be making a profit because they should be limited by their ability to execute on attractive growth opportunities fast enough. Mature companies can make profits because they've reached the limits of their attractive growth and now can be focused on harvesting the rewards.