You need profit. Without it, your business will die.

A corpse can be in perfect, mechanical condition, but without blood — without a regular heartbeat pumping blood throughout the organism — the body will die. For a business, profit is that blood.

In the software industry, there’s a ridiculous trend to structure companies that live intravenously off someone else’s blood. Many companies are set up to be incapable of supporting and nourishing themselves — often because of too much staff and “focusing on growth” — all the while using venture capitalists or angel investors as the blood bank.

It can’t last forever, and worse, it creates childish, win-the-lottery type dreams in young business people.

The silly analogy I heard this week was, “Would you rather own 100% of a $2,000,000 company or 10% of a $100,000,000 company?” (The speaker neglected to offer hypothetical timelines and a discount rate for our consideration.)

To demonstrate just how ridiculous that question is, why don’t we ask, “Would you rather sleep with a beautiful, famous movie star in your house? Or with five beautiful, famous movie stars all at the same time on a yacht off the coast of France under the full moon on a Tuesday in June?”

Obviously, it’s ludicrous. The chances of either scenario happening are statistically insignificant. Most importantly, the fantasy is irrelevant to running your business (and also irrelevant to your sex life.)

Ignore the lottery-mentality fantasizing. They don’t make your business or your product any better. In fact, they probably make both worse.

Instead, get to work. Focus on building a healthy, self-sustaining business. Build a great product. Charge more for it than it costs you. Repeat.

Make it profitable, and keep it profitable.

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