The profitable startup
16 comments
·November 1, 2025timenotwasted
nine_k
I'm used to thinking that a "startup" implies a small company with hockey-stick growth and eventual market domination, usually deploying large amounts of capital to fuel the growth. Otherwise it's just a sparking small business: a pizzeria is not a startup.
It seems that the internet allows for a third option: a small company that grows slowly and organically which eventually captures a significant market segment, still staying small. GitHub was like that for many years since founding. Linear apparently is another example.
BobbyJo
I could swear I read this exact same comment back in 2016.
kylegalbraith
This idea makes the rounds on HN quarterly. I think folks reading this need to check their business model. Every company is slightly different and unique to how they are solving a particular problem.
That said, knowing how you get to profitability or what you need to change in your model to get to it are fundamental things to know. But just because Linear did it the way they’ve outlined here, doesn’t mean that is what will work for your model.
cmatza
I’m a little suspicious of this because every startup says that they don’t hire the next engineer, they hire the next great engineer.
I think a lot of the value is taking the ordinary engineers (by hacker news) and letting them actually do something. Staying small helps this, because you are not thinking of the business ops burden of not building microservices. You’re building your single dockerized app.
MarcelOlsz
I've been through the "we only hire 10xers" interviews and they always miss the forest for the trees. They are the most heinously absurd interviews I've had. Most recent one was 6 live interviews amounting to 8ish hours for a frontend role + take-home assignment lmao. Not even for good money.
masterzachary
The boot strapped startups I've seen that have had this holier than thou attitude that they are somehow selecting the best engineers by only having a tiny team have always had the absolute worst tech, the worst engineering, the worst leadership and usually also the worst processes that I've ever encountered.
jmtulloss
Linear is a venture funded company
comradesmith
Yeah, but they know how to make money
alberth
48 Comments | 8-months ago
contrarian1234
This is just called a small business...
The whole point of startups is that you take on massive investment to scale extremely quickly and outrun all potential imitators. It's not the only viable growth model, but that's the whole conceit of startups and what differentiates them for small businesses
It's a bit silly to try to redefine the term b/c you want to self identify as a startup. Just come to terms with that fact you're running a small business
rubenvanwyk
Being “startup” just means you’re a business building something new or novel, it doesn’t mean you automatically have to follow the VC-model for startups.
contrarian1234
if you start a bakery selling kimchi bagels, its not a startup
mitthrowaway2
Wouldn't the key difference be the growth trajectory? I see a startup as a small business that aims to become a big one. Most small businesses are comfortable at their size, but a startup is not. It could achieve that growth by taking on lots of investment, but that's not the only way.
azundo
I think the point is there are many "startups" with similar revenue and growth to Linear that never become profitable. I don't think Linear qualifies as a small business and I don't think they're scaling less quickly than someone in same market with more funding and less profit.
aguacaterojo
"Linear raises $82M in series C funding at $1.25B valuation to challenge Atlassian"
It's really great to see the shift that has been taking place away from unicorns, growth for the sake of growth, and all the chaos that drove throughout. Maybe it's my own personal bias but I feel that these stories of low, slow growth; small teams, small wins but consistency are becoming more norm. While I realize there is still plenty of froth, it's inspiring and makes me hopeful for an industry shift in that direction.
"And when we launched after a year in private beta, almost all of our 100 beta users converted to paid customers." — That's a neat stat and one I'd be extremely proud of.