It's absolutely essential to be able to differentiate between gross profit and net profit to establish unit economics, especially as the scale of a newly founded operation may drastically change relative to some amount of fixed capex or SG&A expense.
Of course. But here we're talking about the opportunity cost of the founders and other employees so gross profit isn't as relevant. Context matters and the context here is that the founders and employees would probably have a much higher take home split amongst all of them if they were to work in the wearables division of a large company like Google or Apple.
The difference between gross profit & net profit for companies like this is largely comprised of employee & founder salaries (SG&A and R&D). That delta is literally paying for their opportunity cost. Net profit is most relevant to shareholders.
