Venture funded companies often function differently than traditional businesses.

There's a fundamental reason why they are called startups and not businesses.

The uncertainty there is with regard to profitability in startups is not comparable to traditional businesses where you buy for X and sell for more than X.

It sometimes takes years to figure out a way to monetize startups with a path to profitability.

Airbnb reported its first ever profitable year in 2022, after 15 years of crazy hard work.

It took Amazon 9 years before turning a profit, and Facebook 9.

Snapchat has taken 12 years and is still not profitable.

Considering all this, the hate towards indian startups and their founders is absurd.

Cred and Kunal Shah, Lenskart and Peyush Bansal, etc are being compared against bootstrapped ( or profitable ) founders.

The thesis which influencers provide in this context is a perfect example of vanity metrics as mentioned in The Lean Startup.

Some startups are trying to build upon an emerging market like cred or build one like airbnb.

Success or failure is obscure, all we can do is learn and improve upon business fundamentals these entrepreneur stories teach.