MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs
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Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs
#2I'm curious if there's interesting data, information, or anecdotes about bootstrapped, well-intentioned, well-executed startups being utterly floored by VC-funded competitors. Particularly if the "average" or most common reason behind a bootstrapped failure diverges significantly from the 'common sense' reason, i.e., "bootstrapped startup couldn't move fast enough/expand quick enough/hire great talent because bootstrapped startup didn't have the money".
Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs
#3I'm curious if there's interesting data, information, or anecdotes about bootstrapped, well-intentioned, well-executed startups being utterly floored by VC-funded competitors. Particularly if the "average" or most common reason behind a bootstrapped failure diverges significantly from the 'common sense' reason, i.e., "bootstrapped startup couldn't move fast enough/expand quick enough/hire great talent because bootstr…
Although not a numerous, there's some data in the following website:
Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs
#4Then it's not called a start up, but a normal company. How is that a revelation?
Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs
#5I'm curious if there's interesting data, information, or anecdotes about bootstrapped, well-intentioned, well-executed startups being utterly floored by VC-funded competitors. Particularly if the "average" or most common reason behind a bootstrapped failure diverges significantly from the 'common sense' reason, i.e., "bootstrapped startup couldn't move fast enough/expand quick enough/hire great talent because bootstr…
Although not a numerous, there's some data in the following website: https://www.indiehackers.com
Data that is mostly outliers in an industry with 90% failure is not data at all.
Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs
#6I'm curious if there's interesting data, information, or anecdotes about bootstrapped, well-intentioned, well-executed startups being utterly floored by VC-funded competitors. Particularly if the "average" or most common reason behind a bootstrapped failure diverges significantly from the 'common sense' reason, i.e., "bootstrapped startup couldn't move fast enough/expand quick enough/hire great talent because bootstr…
I don't have any such anecdote, but I can't even think up a hypothetical, either. If said bootstrapped company was both "well-executed" and didn't fail because it "didn't have the money," what kind of reasons would you be thinking about?
Losing to a competitor would mean you're not failing because you didn't find a market need. So you would screw up managing it, or by not spending to market/hire/add capacity fast enough. The only other reasons I can think up seem idiosyncratic (maybe well-funded competitor got regulatory approval or a big partnership from a VC intro?).
Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs
#7It's called doing something kinda boring, consistently and doing it well. It's hard to say in software when you really need huge capital if you can start with the following:
1. Some financial understanding of how to invoice, pay taxes and write contracts - the business side
2. Manage people, setting expectations and holding people accountable, while empowering them to be successful in there job as clearly defined when hired
3. Take action to address the immediate. Reds of the customer while always keeping an eye on the longer term needs - always be available and responsive to needs of the customer - email, phone, chat
4. Have a solid foundation in the technical aspects of what you are building and operating
If you have these 4 things and a product that is a good fit in an emerging market than raising capital is probably not necessarily needed because you have the resources and skills to make it happen. I think probably a 5th requirement is you have enough personal capital to pay for your living expenses until the business is making enough money. Also avoid hiring until you can pay for double the salary of the first hire... this way if you are wrong you have some padding and it's proved you can work through hard times. I remember thinking before our first hire that this was way too much stress and it would be so much easier when we have more people. Now at 16 employees, it's an order of magnitude harder but I'm much more prepared than I was back then. The children analogy is good I think. When you first have a child you think this is going to be hard but they grow with you and so it's not so bad it's even kind of fun
Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs
#8Then it's not called a start up, but a normal company. How is that a revelation?
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Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs
#9I'm curious if there's interesting data, information, or anecdotes about bootstrapped, well-intentioned, well-executed startups being utterly floored by VC-funded competitors. Particularly if the "average" or most common reason behind a bootstrapped failure diverges significantly from the 'common sense' reason, i.e., "bootstrapped startup couldn't move fast enough/expand quick enough/hire great talent because bootstr…
So far in our space call tracking - we are competing quiet well vs all VC backed companies and I believe we are doing the opposite- holding our ground and in many cases out performing them. The only thing they have on us is more sales and marketing
Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs
#10I'm curious if there's interesting data, information, or anecdotes about bootstrapped, well-intentioned, well-executed startups being utterly floored by VC-funded competitors. Particularly if the "average" or most common reason behind a bootstrapped failure diverges significantly from the 'common sense' reason, i.e., "bootstrapped startup couldn't move fast enough/expand quick enough/hire great talent because bootstr…
I don't have the source, but I read that having VC cash to burn was partly responsible for YouTube's success. They did things like iPod giveaways and hired tons of designers to quickly iterate on the site.
They had many competitors that were earlier to market, but ultimately lost out to YouTube.
Edit: here's the source[0]:
> Youtube acquired traction over it's competitors by their funding strategy, product strategy (growth rate) and a liberal interpretation of the DMCA. As illustrated and extensively researched by Mr Jaffari,, YouTube tried many tactics to gain differentiation over it's competitors. In the end, YouTube's growth hack was the only metric that mattered, conversion of viral buzz into users.
> When YouTube debuted it was already late to the party with numerous competitors growing quickly. The company copied and experimented with the interfaces of it's rivals to establish a baseline. Then they applied liberal amounts of Venture Capital to organize a star development team that would iterate product faster than it's rivals. Finally they adhered very loosely to the DMCA laws leveraging primarily copyrighted content to build viewership against more generally viewable Flash player technology.
…
> The first and largest strategic advantage for YouTube was their investors, Sequoia Capital. Other Start-Ups were already in this space with more traffic, but with a major investment the sector had validity. This created coveted Bay Area buzz, while larger more established start-ups were largely ignored being outside of the echo chamber. For example VideoEgg.com (Who chose to move to the bay), Break.com (Then Big-Boys.com), Revver.com (Also LA Based), StupidVideos.com and Vidiac.com/StreetFire.net (Atlanta Based).
> On top of the buzz Youtube leveraged VC investment to land a major blow to it's rivals. They went Ad-Free. It took YouTube over 12 months to pass Vidiac's traffic but with an interface clean of ads and a cost no object design team, YouTube's competitors could not iterate on designs quick enough. The development staff would see a feature on other sites, copy it, improve it, release it. An example of this behavior is the Flash embed video players that could be placed in MySpace that was already being employed by other services. Youtube let their competitors figure out the hard problems such as UX flow, user requirements, feasibility, copied it and spent more. With better funding of development, servers, bandwidth Youtube offered their users better site performance and quicker adoption of technology. For example an early metric of success was the acquisition of content contributors. Expensive encoding solutions could process an uploaded video into a streamable format but sometimes this process could take hours and the users had to wait for their video to be ready. YouTube could buy more encoders and cut this time down to 15 minutes offering bloggers quicker video to market times. Using Flash over QuickTime and Windows Media, embed code was more universally able to deliver a consistent if inferior video experience. Inferior until the delivery of Flash 8 when the On2 CODEC was introduced giving Flash full screen and high quality videos.
0. https://www.quora.com/How-did-YouTube-gain-its-initial-tract...