Default alive

A friend running a company was telling me about a run of hard decisions he’d had to make recently to get to a major milestone – hitting cash flow positive. Or, as he put it with a grin, going from “default dead” to “default alive.” It’s one of those lessons that’s easy to lose track of. Amid the noise of valuations and fundraising, it’s easy to forget that the whole point is to build a profitable business. Right now there’s a huge gulf between the AI haves and the have-nots. The haves seem exempt from any of this. Profitability, cash flow, none of it appears to matter. And for now, that’s true. While the party is on, it makes sense to dance. But the party will end. All parties end eventually. Which is why I keep coming back to a simple line: people come for the magic, but they stay for the math. The magic matters enormously. It’s what gets people to the door. And a rare few can hold off the math for a very long time. But the safe bet is that you’re not one of them. For the rest of us,…