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Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

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Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

#201

Post by Justsignedup »

ilamont wrote: post #196

I was basically alone. I didn’t have a team, nor an office. And San Francisco was full of startups raising gobs more money, building amazing teams, and shipping great products. Some of my friends became billionaires. Meanwhile, I had to run a “measly” lifestyle business. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I had to keep the ship from sinking. There's that term again, "lifestyle business." Uttered like a dirty word, wh…

"lifestyle business" is really just a small business that works, is self-sustaining, and not overly bloated to attempt to make obscene amounts of $$$.

I feel like this is exactly what most companies should strive for. They'll make better decisions that way.

Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

#203

Post by oh_sigh »

sahillavingia wrote: post #3
sixQuarks wrote: post #2

Ouch, number 2 employee at Pinterest - a $10 billion company that’s about to go public this year. He probably would have been worth an easy 100-200 million.

I prefer not to do the math.

Look on the bright side - maybe Pinterest would have failed if you stayed there.

Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

#204

Post by gav »

jboy55 wrote: post #157
gav wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close. If you start at 1 million users, 20% monthly growth for 9 years means you would have 13,375,565,248,934 users, or a little over 13 trillion.

You don't need 20% monthly growth for 9 straight years, but for your first year and maybe the second after your Series A you do. Although I'd say 10-20% is more the range. The reason this is true is that your investors are giving you a lot of money. Think of it this way, I have a big idea, and I've turned that into a small product making say 10k a month. What I'm telling the investor is that I NEED these millions to…

In your first few years your base is going to be low, is it a bad month if you went from 1000 to 1100 customers instead of 1200?

The way I think about things is that there is some market with a size Y (or, size X now, but with the hope it will grow to Y). You need to service a certain percentage of that market to achieve economies of scale that make a business worthwhile, and capture enough that you have some sort of moat. In the presence of VC-money, that percentage has to be high enough that there's an upside to investors.

Given that goal and the idea that you only have so much runway to get there, because you'll either run out of money, or risk a competitor capturing the market. As long as you are on the right trajectory things are good.

The reason that I think monthly growth is a poor metric because it's looking at the delta and ignoring the goal. It doesn't matter if you hit 10-20% or more every month if you aren't going to capture the total market you need to succeed. Also number of customers is a poor proxy, because you can have a weak business model and lose money on most transactions as demonstrated by Pets.com.

Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

#205

Post by TAForObvReasons »

Justsignedup wrote: post #201
ilamont wrote: post #196

I was basically alone. I didn’t have a team, nor an office. And San Francisco was full of startups raising gobs more money, building amazing teams, and shipping great products. Some of my friends became billionaires. Meanwhile, I had to run a “measly” lifestyle business. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I had to keep the ship from sinking. There's that term again, "lifestyle business." Uttered like a dirty word, wh…

"lifestyle business" is really just a small business that works, is self-sustaining, and not overly bloated to attempt to make obscene amounts of $$$. I feel like this is exactly what most companies should strive for. They'll make better decisions that way.

The great Scott McNealy quote about Sun really resonated with me:

> We kicked butt, had fun, didn't cheat, loved our customers and changed computing forever

... and in many ways, it seems like only a "lifestyle business" can really prioritize those over core revenue and growth metrics.

Bryan Cantrill's discussion is also great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2000

Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

#206

Post by themoat »

mindcrime wrote: post #167
zild3d wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, these two metrics are just as arbitrary as any other life-defining metric, "the number of healthy grand children you had", "the number of phish concerts you went to", "the number of Free AOL hours CDs you collected"

"the number of phish concerts you went to" Yep. For me it's "number of Mötley Crüe concerts attended" and "number of Trans-Siberian Orchestra concerts attended". (currently "4" and "4 or 5" respectively)

My wife and I have missed the Trans-Siberian Orchestra every year for 10 years, but we REALLY want to go. It's almost a running joke at this point. This year I set about a dozen alerts that'll start going off at the end of summer to make sure I don't forget to get the tickets.

Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

#207

Post by dwaltrip »

FiberBundle wrote: post #194
Retra wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal satisfaction doesn't matter once you're dead. Those other things do. And your entire assessment of your life at that point will be put onto other people. With that said, optimizing for after you're dead might be selfish and reasonably desirable, but there's a lot to be said for optimizing for tomorrow instead. Life would be pretty pointless if none of us were supposed to optimize for some enjoyment while we'…

Intentionally being provocative here, but by that logic, why does your effect on other people matter? You are unlikely to leave a lasting legacy, and the generation you do affect, will die as well.

> You are unlikely to leave a lasting legacy, and the generation you do affect, will die as well.

By this logic, culture and society would die every generation, and have to be rebuilt from scratch each time.

We all leave behind a "small" but far-reaching legacy that ripples out from our short lifetime. Each of the thousands of interactions we have with with other people and our general environment have a tiny but real impact that doesn't necessarily diminish to zero after we die. The change that occurs then has a small domino effect on any other person or system that it touches. And so on and so forth :)

My life today is deeply affected by the concerted actions of billions of unknown individuals from centuries and millennia past in ways that I can't even begin to fathom. I'm grateful for some of those impacts. For other impacts less so, but I hope to contribute small changes for the benefit those who live in the untold distant future.

Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

#208

Post by jVinc »

lancesells wrote: post #69

I've always liked Gumroad as a product and service but this line kind of bothers me: > There is, of course, the $178,000,000 we have sent to creators This money wasn't sent to creators. They sold products worth $178M + Gumroad fees through the service. The creators made the products, marketed the products, acquired the customers, etc. When I use Paypal to sell something they aren't "sending me money".

Might be a language thing, but if someone sends me money through paypal, I definitely would say paypal receives the funds from that person and then sends them to me.

Thus paypal can tally up how much money they have sent to their customers. I can't see how you could misunderstand that or think there is malice in the formulation. I can't possibly anyone would sit there thinking that gumroad ment he donated money to people or invested it.

Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

#209

Post by themoat »

Justsignedup wrote: post #201
ilamont wrote: post #196

I was basically alone. I didn’t have a team, nor an office. And San Francisco was full of startups raising gobs more money, building amazing teams, and shipping great products. Some of my friends became billionaires. Meanwhile, I had to run a “measly” lifestyle business. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I had to keep the ship from sinking. There's that term again, "lifestyle business." Uttered like a dirty word, wh…

"lifestyle business" is really just a small business that works, is self-sustaining, and not overly bloated to attempt to make obscene amounts of $$$. I feel like this is exactly what most companies should strive for. They'll make better decisions that way.

Reminds me of this talk from Vincent Woo (creator of Coderpad)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8UwcyYT3z0

Really made me rethink my priorities and has had me change the kinds of things I do.

Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

#210

Post by ilamont »

Justsignedup wrote: post #201
ilamont wrote: post #196

I was basically alone. I didn’t have a team, nor an office. And San Francisco was full of startups raising gobs more money, building amazing teams, and shipping great products. Some of my friends became billionaires. Meanwhile, I had to run a “measly” lifestyle business. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I had to keep the ship from sinking. There's that term again, "lifestyle business." Uttered like a dirty word, wh…

"lifestyle business" is really just a small business that works, is self-sustaining, and not overly bloated to attempt to make obscene amounts of $$$. I feel like this is exactly what most companies should strive for. They'll make better decisions that way.

Most businesses should strive to be self-sustaining. And if they make obscene amounts of money, all the power to them.

What I dislike is A) the view from startup land that there are only two types of new businesses, "startups" and everything else ("lifestyle") B) and the "everything else" category is somehow inferior or even some sort of hobby or vanity project. Sahil used the term to describe his own company, and at one point felt shame about it, even though he had a real business with real customers and real revenue.

That's how twisted the mindset in startup land has become, where real business owners are supposed to feel shame, and "success" is based on as-yet unfulfilled promises and raising a round?

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