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My Startup, a Retrospective

rdegges.com

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Re: My Startup, a Retrospective

#31

Post by spullara »

wpietri wrote: post #30
spullara wrote: post #11

This looks like it is probably a great lifestyle business (based on the claimed API requests and pricing) but I'm not sure that I would call it a startup. It sounds like it hasn't even had an employee devoted to it until recently. There isn't anything wrong with that at all but for a "startup" this wouldn't be a great outcome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company

Wrong, wrong, wrong. He searched for a repeatable and scalable business model. He found it. He scaled. He delivered excellent ROI to his investors. That's a startup. People who think it's not real if it doesn't involve angels and VCs and TechCrunch write-ups and whatnot are fashion victims. Pity them.

No one claimed this business wasn't real. I think you are the one that is the fashion victim that wants everything to have the same label. Honestly, you can probably define a startup as a company that hasn't figured out and proven their business model yet — clearly he doesn't meet that criteria.

Below you will find a comment by the OP that suggests he is going to really scale the business by expanding the offering and focusing on it. Probably using the revenue he is generating. Which is awesome — no need for VCs for his business as it was profitable from day 2. For this next tier of growth though, it probably will be a startup, one where he isn't sure whether the investment will pay off or not. If you ask me, that is the essence. Once you've figured that out, it isn't really a startup anymore.

Re: My Startup, a Retrospective

#32

Post by habosa »

I really like to hear success stories from honest people with a real value-adding product. This isn't just some social mobile app or a marketplace for X, you solved a real pain point for a lot of people. Congratulations on all the success and good luck going forward! Thanks for taking the time to break all of this down for HN.

Re: My Startup, a Retrospective

#34

Post by pydanny »

DjangoReinhardt wrote: post #19

Django n00bs like me owe a great deal of our learning to Randall. His book, 'The Heroku Hacker's Guide' is an excellent resource for anyone looking to deploy a Django project quickly and cleanly to Heroku. To that end, he also created a fantastic Django template `django-skel`[0] that uses good industry-standard practices. As a newbie, `django-skel` helped me understand code modularity and the importance of organizing…

I'll toss in my own two cents. Thanks to a discussion with Randall we started working on what eventually became Two Scoops of Django. The 'The Heroku Hacker's Guide' was an inspiration, and his promise to be one of the reviewers gave us the confidence to get started.

I'm delighted OpenCNAM has done so well and I wish him the best in the future. :-)

Re: My Startup, a Retrospective

#35

Post by prottmann »

rdegges wrote: post #17
spullara wrote: post #11

This looks like it is probably a great lifestyle business (based on the claimed API requests and pricing) but I'm not sure that I would call it a startup. It sounds like it hasn't even had an employee devoted to it until recently. There isn't anything wrong with that at all but for a "startup" this wouldn't be a great outcome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company

We didn't need VC or anything like that to get started, so our expenses were very low. It also did (and does) generate quite a bit of revenue, so I'd say it's definitely outside the 'lifestyle business' category. In the end we had all partners (3 of us), and a full time employee -- so it was fairly big I'd say (all with profitability, etc. from day one). Along the way we could have definitely hired more engineers and…

You made the strategy you felt good with and that cant be wrong. :)
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