Comment by stuartjohnson12

It has been trendy in Silicon Valley recently to use inappropriate accounting methods to measure ARR.

Joe, a regular guy: Makes $120k at his desk job

Joe, the businessman: Made $20k in 32 days, $228k ARR

Joe, who launched 5 months into development and did 60k in the first 2 weeks: $1.5M ARR

In all three of these examples, Joe's financial outcome is the same. This business does not have any longevity, and all of its revenue is from converting paid advertising of various kinds. It's still impressive, but is most likely a >10x exaggeration on even the lifetime revenue he makes from this. Which is of course circular, because the reason he's doing all this is to make a business out of monetising the audience of people who want to make money.

All of this is clever social climbing, but is clever social climbing the thing that should be rewarded by colleges?