October 31, 2025
Ramen beats unicorn steak?
The Profitable Startup
Small teams, real cash — or just a ‘small business’
TLDR: Linear says tiny teams and early profits beat big spending, and they reached profitability fast. The crowd is split between cheering the end of unicorn hype and blasting it as “just a small business,” making founders rethink hiring sprees and what “startup” even means.
Startups chasing profit instead of venture-fueled growth? Linear says yes: keep teams tiny, build better, and boom—profitable in 12 months. They even shout out “ramen profitability” (surviving on customer money, not investors) and suggest a simple gut-check: revenue per employee. But the real feast was in the comments, where the community went full food fight.
One camp is swooning. “It’s really great to see the shift,” cheered one fan, who’s tired of unicorn mania and loves slow, steady wins. Another dropped receipts with a past HN thread, implying this debate is a recurring saga.
Then the knives came out. A fierce skeptic snapped, “This is just called a small business”, arguing that real startups take big money to blitzscale—speed over serenity. A harsher take accused “holier-than-thou” bootstrappers of having the “worst tech, worst leadership, worst processes.” Others rolled their eyes at Linear’s hiring mantra: everyone claims they only hire “great” people. One pragmatist countered that small teams work because regular engineers get to ship real stuff without meetings galore and tech buzzword traps.
Memes and jabs flew: ramen bowls vs. unicorn steaks; “understaffed as a flex”; fewer meetings equals more product. The verdict? No consensus—just a very loud split between Peaceful Profit monks and Venture Velocity speedrunners, and it’s wildly entertaining to watch
Key Points
- •Profitability is framed as control and independence, enabling focus on mission and growth pace without reliance on investors.
- •Paul Graham’s 2009 concept of “ramen profitability” is cited as a signal of customer demand and fiscal discipline.
- •Linear became profitable 12 months after launch, following a year-long private beta with nearly all 100 users converting to paid.
- •Small, intentional teams are advocated to maintain quality and reduce overhead; Linear hired first after six months and doubled annually.
- •Revenue per employee is recommended as a key metric, with $500k–$1M per employee suggested for startups and $1–2M for public companies.