The Fatal Pinch
paulgraham.com
The Fatal Pinch
1–10 of 208 posts
Re: The Fatal Pinch
#2One way to avoid the fatal pinch is the Dickens approach:
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.
In a world with AWS and pay-as-you go services, it's more and more possible.
Re: The Fatal Pinch
#3One way to avoid the fatal pinch is the Dickens approach: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery. In a world with AWS and pay-as-you go services, it's more and more possible.
(Zero sarcasm) can you possibly explain, in different words, what this means?
Re: The Fatal Pinch
#4One way to avoid the fatal pinch is the Dickens approach: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery. In a world with AWS and pay-as-you go services, it's more and more possible.
(Zero sarcasm) can you possibly explain, in different words, what this means?
Spend less than you make.
Re: The Fatal Pinch
#5One way to avoid the fatal pinch is the Dickens approach: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery. In a world with AWS and pay-as-you go services, it's more and more possible.
> AWS
Infrstructure expenses are not what sinks most companies.
Re: The Fatal Pinch
#6This is why I hate investing in startups raising $500k or less. You won't be able to raise again unless you have significant upwards progress.
Re: The Fatal Pinch
#7One way to avoid the fatal pinch is the Dickens approach: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery. In a world with AWS and pay-as-you go services, it's more and more possible.
> AWS Infrstructure expenses are not what sinks most companies.
And AWS always seems to grow. :-)
Re: The Fatal Pinch
#8"Although your product may not be very appealing yet, if you're a startup your programmers will often be way better than the ones your customers have or can hire."
Is this really true? I'm very sceptical.
Does anyone have any evidence to back this up?
Re: The Fatal Pinch
#9This is why I hate investing in startups raising $500k or less. You won't be able to raise again unless you have significant upwards progress.
Interesting...
What effect does this have on your criteria for investment? Or are you saying that raising less might in and of itself make the investment riskier by implying that they've under-estimated how much runway they might need?
I've often heard the advice that "it's not much harder to raise a million than it is to raise $250k, so you might as well raise a million" or some variation thereof. Is that true in your opinion?
Re: The Fatal Pinch
#10This is why I hate investing in startups raising $500k or less. You won't be able to raise again unless you have significant upwards progress.
Several of my best investments have been from startups raising less than $500k. Justin.tv/Twitch returned 97x my original investment, and Weebly will likely be even more.