&gt; Oh, you mean like Salesforce? No, wait, they had an IPO and they still only rarely show a profit.<p>This is a very common argument. It&#x27;s also wrong.<p>Salesforce earned $6.7B of revenue in 2015^. It spent $3.2B of that revenue on sales and marketing, in other words getting new customers. It made $100M total profit.<p>If Salesforce stopped caring about acquiring new customers, it could cut sales and marketing spend by 90%, down to $300M. It would then have $3B of profits.<p>Financials (see page 7):
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;s1.q4cdn.com&#x2F;454432842&#x2F;files&#x2F;doc_financials&#x2F;2016&#x2F;Q4&#x2F;CRM-Q416-Earnings-Press-Release-w-financials-(1).pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;s1.q4cdn.com&#x2F;454432842&#x2F;files&#x2F;doc_financials&#x2F;2016&#x2F;Q4&#x2F;C...</a><p>^ Technically between Feb 1, 2015 and Jan 31, 2016, and labeled in the report as Fiscal Year 2016.