Most likely, they booked some advertisements to push revenue but didn't honestly account for the ad expenses. I've seen that way too many times with Indie products that they brag about large revenue numbers and "forget" to mention that profit margins are negative. I remember once hearing about a start-up that resold baby diapers at a loss. Obviously, they were easily able to scale up customers and revenue ...
"Critically, he did not understand margin. At the end of December when things were getting truly desperate, he said to me “Phil, just bring me a forecast that shows how much we need to sell to break even.” He did not understand, after three years of negative margin, that increased sales resulted in increased losses."
