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raw_anon_1111today at 5:29 AM2 repliesview on HN

So you are saying a company should never reinvest profits in the company to support another money losing business until it’s profitable?

Should Netflix for instance not invested money from renting DVDs to invest in a streaming service?

Apple not use the profits it was making from selling Apple //e’s to create the Mac?


Replies

cyberaxtoday at 7:55 AM

> So you are saying a company should never reinvest profits in the company to support another money losing business until it’s profitable?

If it makes it impossible to set up a competitor? Absolutely, yes.

> Should Netflix for instance not invested money from renting DVDs to invest in a streaming service?

Netflix was not priced below the cost of production from the beginning. You're confusing sustainable pricing and paying off all the capital spending immediately at launch.

A better example is Doordash when it was heavily subsidized by VC money: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 And it now faces several anti-trust lawsuits.

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tovejtoday at 7:47 AM

Subsidizing the cost of developing a product isn't necessarily bad, but predatory pricing that prohibits competition would be.

Not sure that this case is either. This is just idiots breaking the TOS.

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