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Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

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Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#31

Post by Estragon »

mattmanser wrote: post #24
e-dard wrote: post #15

This is great. However, did I read the article right - by the time they launched they had spent 300K? Here's a question - is it possible to ever do something like this without the requirement of finding 300K via consulting gigs first? I assume that given there were 3 of them and they spent only a few months building it, they didn't need all of the 300K on salaries. I suppose you would have to grow the product from a…

I wonder if that price was the opportunity cost of not being billed out at $x per day.

That's how I interpreted it. They do attribute it all to "development costs," so it must mean something like that unless they brought in outside help.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#33

Post by juddlyon »

One detail left from the analysis: these guys are already well-known for their UX work amongst the crowd most likely to purchase Flow.

Reminds me of when Guy Kawasaki launched Alltop for "only 10K." Yeah, 10K + 500K worth of PR that comes with having an enormous following.

This is not to diminish what Metalab or Guy Kawasaki do, I'm admire both. But it's not like these results are as reproducible as they infer without significant connections.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#35

Post by dkrich »

dkrich wrote: post #30

Sorry, this is just a shameless ripoff of 37Signals and Rework. This whole "you only have to work a few hours a day" philosophy will only take you so far. That's just simple economics. If something is that easy to build it means there are very low barriers to entry. When there are very low barriers to entry, profits eventually get squashed to zero. The only exception to this is when you are first to market with somet…

Aww, I guess I hurt some feelings. Sorry about that. (Not really, downvote away!)

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#36

Post by TDL »

dkrich wrote: post #30

Sorry, this is just a shameless ripoff of 37Signals and Rework. This whole "you only have to work a few hours a day" philosophy will only take you so far. That's just simple economics. If something is that easy to build it means there are very low barriers to entry. When there are very low barriers to entry, profits eventually get squashed to zero. The only exception to this is when you are first to market with somet…

"The only exception to this is when you are first to market with something unique."

The "first mover" advantage is largely a myth. Many successful companies that dominate their market segments weren't the first entrants in that segment.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#37

Post by acabal »

Bamafan wrote: post #25

Nice product and the team seems very talented. But whenever I read these stories (from 0 to $8 billion in 3 monthz!1!!!11), lots of important details are left out. #1 How are you able to connect to 4,000+ paying customers so quickly? Actually, that's it. I'm guessing any number of HN guys could create this product. But we don't know how to get people to buy it.

That's what I'd like to know. How did they get so many people interested in yet another project management app (I swear I hear about a new one every month)? That's the most crucial piece of info they could possibly share, anything else is not really useful at all, frankly.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#39

Post by dkrich »

TDL wrote: post #36
dkrich wrote: post #30

Sorry, this is just a shameless ripoff of 37Signals and Rework. This whole "you only have to work a few hours a day" philosophy will only take you so far. That's just simple economics. If something is that easy to build it means there are very low barriers to entry. When there are very low barriers to entry, profits eventually get squashed to zero. The only exception to this is when you are first to market with somet…

"The only exception to this is when you are first to market with something unique." The "first mover" advantage is largely a myth. Many successful companies that dominate their market segments weren't the first entrants in that segment.

> The "first mover" advantage is largely a myth. Many successful companies that dominate their market segments weren't the first entrants in that segment.

I think this depends upon how granularly you bucket the different companies. If you just use broad strokes and say "Apple wasn't the first to make a cell phone", then what you are saying is true, albeit at ignoring the fact that they were the first to make a cell phone with a glass touchscreen, advanced software, app store integration, and sustained improvements. Now if you put companies into that bucket, you basically end up with Apple. Samsung followed, and makes outstanding products in the exact same space, but in that bucket, Apple is the leader.

Apple is an oft-cited example, but I'll bet that if you look at any product that leads its space, it was the first to do what it does in exactly the way it does it. The reason I'm skeptical about how well this can work for project management saas companies is that there are only so many pixels to manipulate on a screen, and only so many ways to organize a project. If you are making a "me-too" product you will lose out in the long run. That's all I was saying. Not sure why people get so upset with facts.

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