Building a money making business

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to look at many startups across different industries. The sheer number of VC backed startups never seem to amaze me, and there’s so many companies building some really cool shit.

I only get to do a deep dive in a very small portion of these companies so quite often it’s literally checking out the website and then getting a synopsis via Pitchbook. I’ll admit that I only probably understand the product of 50% of the companies that come through. Many others are in spaces where I have no expertise in, such as deep tech, healthcare, biology, etc.

Then there’s other times where I understand their product and just have no clue how this company could be a viable business that makes money. Fully acknowledging that I could be very wrong about some of these companies, I believe that a lot of these companies that received funding are very likely a product of the post-pandemic cash is free world.

With the market turning, I suspect a lot of investors will start asking, “how do you make money or plan to make money?” Unfortunately for a lot of these companies, many won’t be able to give a clear answer to that question.

There’s a lot of great ideas and products out there, but if you can’t make money, then you don’t have a business. Very few companies (ahem OpenAI) can pull off building something without even thinking about monetizing. For the other 99.99% of companies, you better start thinking about your business plan versus just building a product.