system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How can companies like Netflix and Uber survive with so much debt?
gpt
There's two main methods for a company financing themselves. Equity and debt.

Equity is selling shares of their own company. So you can borrow 1 million by selling an investor 10% of their company.
At the end of the year, any left over profits which the company has will typically be distributed to the shareholders via dividends. This is optional, but often recommended to keep your shareholders happy. 

The second method is debt. Say Netflix borrows 1 million at 5% interest for 5 years. Netflix is obliged to pay back those loans. However, as their profits are largely subscription based, they can rely on a fairly stable cash flow of income to pay off those debts. 

As long as Netflix consistently pays off it's debt interest, the total value of debt isn't too important. 

The benefit of using debt is through tax. Companies are taxed on profits, debt interest reduces companies profits. This means, by financing themselves via debt, companies such as Netflix can pay less tax, completely legally. This is called a tax shield.

As to how a company finances itself is largely dependent on how stable it's income is. Because netflix can rely on a very consistent flow of income through subscriptions, they take on debt, have no risk of failing to make their payments, and lower their taxes, all at the same time.