This is one of the challenges that every start-up has to face someday. When funding is easy everybody runs after the group because that is what differentiates you from all the other competitors. When the funding dries up profitability becomes the most important metric because it pretty much decides your survival. You may not be profitable but having a path to profitability is very important.

Looking at your start up as an umbrella under which you have couple of early-stage start-ups and couple of late stage start-ups is a good way of handling this problem. Making sure that new areas of business or new locations as new start-ups where you cannot concentrate on profitability but will have to concentrate a lot on the growth part of it while making sure that the older ideas as the older locations or moving towards profitability gives you the confidence that you at least have a path towards profitability.

Even if you don't have a dire need for profitability at least stopping once in awhile to make sure that you are not completely driven by growth but you can turnaround the loss per order or the unit economics in a short span of time can give you a lot of confidence and also you'll be able to convince your investors better. How long does it take for you to stop on the growth accelerator pedal and making sure that you will be able to reach your path to profitability in next six months or one-year can be a major game changer.

Think of this like driving your four wheeler with limited fuel. Let's say that you know your next refuelling station is in hundred kilometre and you know that considering the amount of fuel that you have in your car and mileage that your car provides you know that you can definitely make it to the refuelling station before you run out of fuel. Then you don't need to worry about saving fuel and you can press the accelerator pedal at your will. But let us say that in between you say that you may not have enough fuel to the fuel station then you try to take your leg off the accelerator pedal and you try to drive it in such a fashion so that your mileage increases and the moment you know that you have enough fuel you can again start hitting on the accelerator.

The sex of your starter pretty much depends upon balancing between acceleration and driving in the echo mode based on the visibility that you have and the opportunities that you get. Driving an accelerated more throughout your journey can also be risky because children out of fuel and your journey is cut short at the same time driving an echo mode throughout is also bad because most of your competitors can overtake you. so it is pretty much about finding that delicate balance between the two and making the most out of both growth and profitability. And if you're able to grow while you are profitable you're pretty much unstoppable and you should make use of all the resources that are available to you and scale as much as possible while making sure that you have a great team and you build great culture which will make sure that you can keep on going in this journey while creating value for yourself your team your investors and your customers.