"We survive by breathing but we can't say we live to breathe. Likewise, making money is very important for a business to survive, but money alone cannot be the reason for business to exist."
I don't really see much of a difference. If a company must make money to continue to exist, then I think it's reasonable to say that company "exists to make money." Of course, that doesn't mean is exists only to make money.
Lots of bookstores, cafes, antique shops, whatever, are labors of love. And not only things like that. A bakery---a good bakery!---exists to make good bread. It has to sell that bread and cover its costs, etc., in order to do that, but it doesn't exist in order to make the money necessary to cover its costs. If that were why it existed, it would be easier to abandon the end of making good bread!
The practical difference disappears when your operating margin is 0. When you have money left over after paying your essential expenses, though, you can do stuff. Like, if you're Microsoft and you have 60 billion in cash, you can have a big R&D department that sometimes engages in blue-sky research.
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There's a lot of room between "exist to make money" and "must make money in order to exist". Like, a staggering amount of room.
Exactly, reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:
"We survive by breathing but we can't say we live to breathe. Likewise, making money is very important for a business to survive, but money alone cannot be the reason for business to exist."
I don't really see much of a difference. If a company must make money to continue to exist, then I think it's reasonable to say that company "exists to make money." Of course, that doesn't mean is exists only to make money.
Lots of bookstores, cafes, antique shops, whatever, are labors of love. And not only things like that. A bakery---a good bakery!---exists to make good bread. It has to sell that bread and cover its costs, etc., in order to do that, but it doesn't exist in order to make the money necessary to cover its costs. If that were why it existed, it would be easier to abandon the end of making good bread!
The practical difference disappears when your operating margin is 0. When you have money left over after paying your essential expenses, though, you can do stuff. Like, if you're Microsoft and you have 60 billion in cash, you can have a big R&D department that sometimes engages in blue-sky research.
Do you consider a company like Raspberry Pi or Oxfam to "exist to make money"? They certainly need money to exist.
there's also a lot of pressure when you're public