151–160 of 331 posts
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Ads: doubleclick, bought Maps: bought Youtube: bought Android: bought What else?
Source on Maps please. They bought KeyHole or whatever, fir Google Earth maybe. But Maps itself was started in-house, no?
This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? Well, it might be on paper or in the imaginations of the founders, but what does it really mean? To me, it's worth nothing. The real problem is: these companies start to operate from the perspective of "having" those millions of dollars. This is why they hire too many people for too much money. They…
Once you have investors, they want their money to grow, and this is not possible by staying small. We have invested in a startup we work with, and given the high risk of failure, I would not be happy with a meager growth rate of I'm a big fan of bootstrapping myself, and it's the best model IFF you can get by without investors. If you, like SoundCloud, have a product that does not break-even, then you will need inves…
...but when you have an 80% loss rate, you have to play the game more than a hundred times to reliably make your money back.
...but I doubt you're investing in hundreds of companies; which means, you're probably walking away with nothing.
Remeber, those numbers only work at scale; in small numbers 80% failure for 5x return = you get nothing. Just like the soundcloud investors will.
Never do a music industry startup unless you have a billion dollars, can raise a billion dollars, or plan to be acquired by a company with a billion dollars to spare. That's the table stakes for going toe-to-toe with the big three. They'll bleed you to death with licensing fees, deputise you into their copyright enforcement police, upload their songs to your platform on one hand while suing you with the other, and al…
Best comment in the thread. It shows that one of SoundCloud's key problem is an oligopolostic industry they are dealing with.
This sounds like terms dictated by the Mob. It's quite telling that the deal also conferred ownership on a content holder in order to be able to license and pay handsomely for their content. This is only one of the big 4 they were negotiating with too. By the time they get done negotiation with the other 3 they would have likely given up 15% of the company. Note the big 4 all have stakes in Spotify as well[1].
At any rate I think this should have been a sign that they were going down the wrong path. Propping up these labels and hitching your wagon to them, only to have to constantly renegotiate your deal with them every couple of years seems contra to a platform that gave artists direct access to music fans without the middle man.
[1] http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-owner...
This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? Well, it might be on paper or in the imaginations of the founders, but what does it really mean? To me, it's worth nothing. The real problem is: these companies start to operate from the perspective of "having" those millions of dollars. This is why they hire too many people for too much money. They…
> This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. A single case never proves any generalisation. (I'm not taking any position here on what such valuations mean in general - it's not something I know much about).
This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? Well, it might be on paper or in the imaginations of the founders, but what does it really mean? To me, it's worth nothing. The real problem is: these companies start to operate from the perspective of "having" those millions of dollars. This is why they hire too many people for too much money. They…
Once you have investors, they want their money to grow, and this is not possible by staying small. We have invested in a startup we work with, and given the high risk of failure, I would not be happy with a meager growth rate of I'm a big fan of bootstrapping myself, and it's the best model IFF you can get by without investors. If you, like SoundCloud, have a product that does not break-even, then you will need inves…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once you have investors, they want their money to grow, and this is not possible by staying small. We have invested in a startup we work with, and given the high risk of failure, I would not be happy with a meager growth rate of I'm a big fan of bootstrapping myself, and it's the best model IFF you can get by without investors. If you, like SoundCloud, have a product that does not break-even, then you will need inves…
The x5 return takes partial responsibility for the 80% failure. These foolish business pivots trashes the brand. If there's only one high-return idea in the room and it's clearly hazardous and unlikely to work - there should be no obligation to take it; an investor didn't drop millions to be squandered foolishly.
The entire industry is an RPG played with real people and real money.
Sometimes returns happen, but in many cases they seem to as much by accident as careful design.
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There's a word for that: a business. If someone built a bar in your neighborhood, would you call it a startup? It meets all your criteria. But at that point the word becomes useless. You could argue that it's not a new service. Yet some of the most successful startups applied technology to old ideas, like Craigslist and eBay.
New bar would still offer the old service (beer). Startup will offer new product/service.
If tomorrow 250 people are queuing to get a drink from your bar, you won't be able to cater to their needs, nor the next day, opening a new brick-and-mortar business takes a lot of time.
A startup would be able to scale (after a couple of days / week) and fulfill the customers' needs.
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When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth startup. We don't make millions, we don't "disrupt" the industry, yet we solve our customers' problems and delight them. We won't ever run out of money, as we carefully check each and every expenditure, and have growing savings in the bank. When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth…
That definition of "startup" is very valley-centric. Most of the rest of the world still means it the way the grandparent meant. A small, fairly young company that is building a new product/service.