E-commerce Growth-to-Profit Shift

A story about how e-commerce investor sentiment shifted from growth-focused to profitability-focused models.

"In the years prior to our decision, growth was in style - companies were growing like crazy. But then when they started suddenly failing, investors got smart. They said 'Maybe burning a ton of money just to grow the top line revenue is not the smartest thing for this kind of company.'

E-commerce is not like a SaaS company - it's not super high margin and you can't just make small tweaks to right the ship if you needed to become profitable. A lot of folks in the space had become jaded by e-commerce because of some of the exits that happened in recent years. Take Gilt for example - a lot of investors lost money on that, though some made money.

This shift in sentiment factored into our decision making. Our philosophy has always been that growth for any given category comes in and out of style, but profitability is always cool. It's also the harder thing to do."