In fact, however, the revenue line is a servant—and to not just one but two masters. At the front end, it is servant to the entrepreneur’s cost curve, and at the back, to the venture capitalist’s hockey stick expectations. Revenue numbers, under this methodology, are . . . well, whatever they have to be. Once that sum is identified, then market analyst reports are scoured for some appropriate citations, and any other source of evidence or credibility is enlisted, to justify what is a fundamentally arbitrary and unjustifiable projection of revenue growth.
