Charles HudsonFounder and Managing Partner, Precursor Ventures

Did Startups Forget About Profitability?

12 May 2025 · 0 min

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A short interview clip with Charles Hudson discussing how venture capital shifted its emphasis from early profitability to prioritizing growth starting around the mid-2000s. Hudson argues that startups historically reached profitability earlier (pre-2000s) but that the industry adopted a growth-first mindset and largely never returned to profitability-first norms.

It's funny, back in the stone ages of venture, like, companies got profitable, like, fairly early in their life. It was an important step to make sure that the business actually worked because you were going to take that company public someday. And we've, we're pretty far away from that.
When did that change? Can you hearken back to those days?
And about mid-2000s, it's like, everyone's like, well, growth is more important. We'll solve profitability later. We never sort of came back to that in the venture business.