Edit: This question attracted way more interest than I hoped for! I will need some time to go through the comments in the next days, thanks for your efforts everyone. One thing I could grasp from the answers already - it seems to be complicated. There is no one fits all answer.
Under capitalism, it seems companies always need to grow bigger. Why can’t they just say, okay, we have 100 employees and produce a nice product for a specific market and that’s fine?
Or is this only a US megacorp thing where they need to grow to satisfy their shareholders?
Let’s ignore that most of the times the small companies get bought by the large ones.
What I was taught literally in fifth grade was this: “A company is successful when its profit is zero.” Meaning, everyone has been paid and the company has lost nothing.
The way I was taught it was by the teacher asking the class and all of us getting it wrong with answers like “A company is successful when it makes a million dollars” and such.
I will never forget it.