content: It's fair to say the road to profit is simple:  Create service/good "for free" to get people on-board (this is Google's entire business model) Run service/good at a loss until critical mass (all tech monopolies business model) Once critical mass is obtained and you have established users and steady incoming, begin to monetize for-profit Continue to squeeze until user increase declines due to profit-seeking activity, proceed to milk as long as possible. Rinse, repeat.  That's tech profit in a nutshell. If you're a start-up, you just insert "get bought by tech monopoly" in step #1 because nobody actually wants to run one of these shitty human-facing endeavors long-term with how terrible people are these days, they just want to create something that's dopamine feeding and popular until it's sold by the monopolies that only sustain by buying their competition. It's all so tiresome and obvious, really.