81–90 of 204 posts
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While exit strategies might be fewer during a recession, the point of starting now is that the economy will (hopefully) be out of the recession by the time you want to exit (typically beyond 12-18 months).
Yes. Startups generally take 3-5 years to succeed. The economic situation that far ahead is effectively random, so you can discount it.
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The grow-users-before-revenue strategy has several spectacular success stories: Google, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, etc. etc. That's not to say it's the only valid strategy, but it's certainly a valid strategy. In fact, it probably has the highest payoff, albeit with the highest variance.
From my pov those are anomalies, rather than the norm. For every Google, Youtube and Facebook, there are thousands of startups with similar strategies that fail. I think it is safer to go the long route and start small, working your way to the top, charging a price right from the beginning. If your application is useful, users will pay for it.
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> I would look to solar and certain other viable alternative energy options right now as the next major tech growth sector. Right. The next wave is further electrification, new power generation, and first world infrastructure renewal. New advanced rail and massive rail line build outs. Rebuilding sewage and water systems. Alternative energy. Revamping agriculture for expensive oil and scarce fresh water will also be…
Why stop there? I think the next wave is that the world will revert to a mainly agricultural economy. I'm sure artisans will make money here and there (repairing plows and so on) but they will be auxiliary...
"investors tend to be less willing to invest in bad times. They shouldn't be. " Angels probably should. Many of them just had a 20%+ decrease in their net wealth. Investing is an activity for them, like golf, not a profession. They shouldn't make themselves feel uncomfortable financially. There's a difference between which action has the highest EV and which one you should take.
"What if you quit your job to start a startup that fails, and you can't find another? Good hackers can always get some kind of job. It might not be your dream job, but you're not going to starve." Hmm, isn't that kind of a low bar? I worry that I'll be 40 before I know it, with no savings to show for my years of work. Isn't opportunity cost a concern? Perhaps PG really is writing for the young.
I sure get the same impression. Start ups are for twenty somethings who are not married. If you are 30+, married and with a mortgage then forget it.
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MS and Apple happened to come along when the microcomputer was really starting to take off, and they were able to ride that wave That was the point I was making with those examples: that technology evolves independently of the stock market. So if it's time to build the Apple I or Altair Basic, do it whether the economy is good or bad.
Technology doesn't evolve independently of a market for it. While "make something people want" is true in any economy, the problem is that what people want changes with the state of the economy. So startup founders need to reassess the market for their products (building iPods or building pacemakers?), and I'd guess many will decide this is not the right economy for their startups, and some will now discover new oppo…
pg was a lot more fun when he used to talk about other things than making money all the time.
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Amazon had a business model from day 1. I don't think they really apply to this conversation. They weren't profitably early on, but that's way different from not having business model. "Among the biggest internet companies, most of them followed this strategy." You could be right, but I honestly have no idea. What sources are you using? How are you measuring this? "It paid back the purchase price in the first year!"…
From the Alexa top 20 global ( http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&la... ): Yahoo - users before revenue, success Google - users before revenue, success YouTube - users before revenue, undecided Microsoft - revenue before users, although their internet properties consistently lose money. Not really an internet company. MySpace - users before revenue, success (MySpace is profitable already) Facebook…
"investors tend to be less willing to invest in bad times. They shouldn't be. " Angels probably should. Many of them just had a 20%+ decrease in their net wealth. Investing is an activity for them, like golf, not a profession. They shouldn't make themselves feel uncomfortable financially. There's a difference between which action has the highest EV and which one you should take.
But don't you think they'd witness a similar discount in the valuations?
pg was a lot more fun when he used to talk about other things than making money all the time.
Can you point to one essay where he uses the phrase "make money" or some variant thereof? More to the point: To me, a startup isn't about money. It's about freedom. That's where I've found much to like in his essays.
So who should start a startup? Someone who is a good hacker, between about 23 and 38, and who wants to solve the money problem in one shot instead of getting paid gradually over a conventional working life.
So writing about startups is always implicitly about making money. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)