Entrepreneur

50%

How are we defining solid and profitable? I think answers depend on this definition.

Bullshit.

There’s no way to generalize this. Each use case is different. But the zero interest loans and revenue with no profits days are likely over… for now lol

You can do it much faster. However the quicker you rise to profitability the less stable your foundation is and the deadlier are any changes to the market. In my example I went from nothing to purchasing 500k in goods within roughly 6 months. When the Ukrainewar played with the electricity prices the company exploded though. There was no foundation to keep it afloat until you pivot.

Depends on the entrepreneur. I started profitable because of the way I executed.

If you're building a funded tech company, this may be true. Most people can't afford to feed themselves and put money into a business for that long and there are more than enough bootstrapped businesses. There may be some truth to it taking 5-7 years before the business is noticeably more profitable than if you had a job.

As others have said there is a lot of diff factors but I think it’s generally true. I’ve run many different businesses and 5 years is kind of the sweet spot I’d say. Sure we prob made our first dollar of profit in year 2 but getting the business to the point it is enjoyable and actually paying real money without me having to run the day to day has always easily been 5 years.

It took me 6 years to become 100% independent (I don’t need an outside job to pay my bills and support me and my wife), so that sounds about right.

It's a general thought process and usually guys who say that are ones who are never deeply involved in building businesses.

You define how soon you want to be profitable and work towards that goal. No one else can tell you.

Why the heck would it take 5-7 years? It takes 1 second to infinity, there's no one answer

Im assuming solid profitable means a team of employees which makes sense. It takes years to build a solid team with dedicated roles as well as build the infrastructure so it can run smoothly. The first few years you're still finding your footing in the market and figuring out how many sales people and managers you need.

Ive built solid profitable businesses in a day before but they don't require employees or any infrastructure. You can build an app, place it on a market and sit back watching the profits roll in, but that's not the old school business.

I can only answer within my exp in my business.

It depends, how much you want to reinvest the profit. My business alr make a solid profit since year 2. But i chose to reinvest it and commit to enjoy the profit after 5years. Well the truth is, i dont stop reinvest everything until now (going 9 years)

Depends on what are your goals, and also the way you do it, everybody’s different, so everybody has it’s own rythm. I went for a business that doesn’t require a lot of investment, very profitable, but I can’t sell the company it’s not worth anything, the only thing that is worthy, is my work and my way to do it. But still, I was on net profit of 4/5k€ after 3 months and now I’m at 6k€/month after 10 months, my goal is to get to 8/10k€/month next year and then just maintain it. I did not invest a lot, and the market is not new, so there’s no big risks.