Wealth & Money Quote by John Doerr

Venture capital has a talent for making the mundane sound inevitable, and John Doerr’s comparison to early Google is a masterclass in that alchemy. The line is almost aggressively unromantic: an “up-and-running site,” not a visionary cathedral; “wasn’t losing very much money,” not a heroic burn; “wasn’t making very much money,” not a triumph. Then the pivot: “but it was growing.” In startup culture, growth isn’t just a metric; it’s a moral argument that future cash flows will eventually materialize, that traction is proof of product-market fit, and that scale will do the heavy lifting that profit can’t yet do.

The intent is reassurance with a VC’s calibrated understatement. Doerr is speaking the language of screening: this is what a company looks like when it’s past the napkin stage but not yet a business in the old-fashioned sense. The subtext is that conventional profitability is the wrong yardstick for a networked product at the moment it tips from “project” into “platform.” Growth becomes both evidence and weapon: evidence that users care, weapon against skeptics who want tidy margins too early.

Context matters because invoking Google is a cheat code. It smuggles in hindsight as credibility, encouraging listeners to see a current bet as “the next one.” Doerr isn’t merely describing a financial condition; he’s narrating a familiar VC fable: the awkward middle phase where the spreadsheet looks unimpressive, but the curve looks like destiny.