$30 million wasn’t spent building one thing that sold for $3 million. That money funded years of R&D, product iterations, licensing, operations, legal, compliance, infrastructure, payroll, marketing, everything that comes with trying to build a tech company in public markets, during one of the most volatile periods in history. It wasn’t a straight-line investment with a neatly labeled ROI. It was a complex, multi-front effort.
Calling it all a “$30 million to $3 million loss” is like walking into a scrapyard and laughing at the value of a race car that blew its engine, while ignoring the podium finishes, sponsor exposure, or the learning that built the next car. It’s selective memory with a side of bad math.
The race car analogy is cute, but let’s finish it: sometimes you wreck the first car to build a faster one. That’s not failure, that’s the price of the next lap.