That isn't the unpopular part. The derided part is doing so with poor unit-economics. You still need to make a profit or what is the point?

Another big difference is that is very common to run at a loss early on in the life of startup ... but when examined more closely the marginal costs should still make sense. If you are small enough that R&D overhead, or hiring ahead of revenue (growth investment) is overshadowing the top-line ... well that is the just normal startup finances. But there still needs to be a business model where it will make sense with enough sales, and the cost will have sub-linear growth relative to the revenue.

How many Unicorns are actually making a profit? Hell how many Deca or Centi-Unicorns are profitable? There's probably hundreds of billions of value in companies that are not and don't have clear paths to profitability.

So I think we've moved from it being ok to be unprofitable when you start a company to it being ok to be unprofitable for decades...