No. Profit maximization is often in conflict with sustainability. That's part of the devil's bargain of VC money. If it looks like your company will be a modest success, they will push you to make it a giant one no matter how much that increases the risk of failure.

You cannot sustain a business by losing money.

Yes, and I never said otherwise. You can sustain a business by breaking even. Or by making a modest profit. Which is what the great majority of businesses do.

Trying to make a massive profit is another activity altogether, and the quest to do so can easily destroy a sustainable business. As Reddit may learn.

That's not what he said. He said:

> Profit maximization is often in conflict with sustainability.

The head count increased ten fold since Spez took over. This is because VCs want billion dollar companies, not some moderately profitable ones. They want to deliver more (so more employees) and increase monetization, including by charging for the API.

If they stayed smaller it would have been more sustainable and wouldn't have to charge for the API.

Yes and: examples of modest success like craigslist, metafilter, ravelry, etc. Like you wrote elsethread, paraphrasing, avoid the trap of unicorn or bust.