Announcing the investment on the GitHub blog, CEO Tom Preston-Warner admitted it wasn’t that they necessarily needed it: “Our company has been profitable for years, is growing fast, and doesn’t need money. So why bother? Because we want to be better. We want to build the best products.”
So, you were assuming that they weren't making a profit based on some sort of gut feeling that they were "still in start-up mode", but you used quite absolute language suggesting personal knowledge of the state of their books.
Why the heck would GitHub take $100 million in investment and still push for earning a profit every quarter? Does it make any sense to you? Now you can see why I'm confused.
The idea that taking investment automatically means you would actively forgo earning a profit is kinda odd. You take investment to grow, not because you have an allergy to profits.
Not really. Say you take $100 million in finance, so you are now $100 million in debt and you are probably not going to put the money in the bank, but spend it. When you spend (invest) the money, that is taken away from earnings and you can spend more than you earn thanks to the financing. Even if the company's valuation goes up because of these investments, they are still taking a loss now. You have to take a hit now to grow and earn more later.
I'm not an accountant, and this is just my uninformed understanding.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/24/github-one-million/
Or this: http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/news/github-gets-100-million-inve...
Announcing the investment on the GitHub blog, CEO Tom Preston-Warner admitted it wasn’t that they necessarily needed it: “Our company has been profitable for years, is growing fast, and doesn’t need money. So why bother? Because we want to be better. We want to build the best products.”