281–290 of 372 posts
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And since FB ads are useless, that's saying something
I have no idea how useful/useless FB ads are for advertisers in general, but as a FB user I definitely click on more ads than I do on Google. Unsurprisingly, the stuff I read, "like" and respond to seems to result in better targeting than the stuff I search for and click away to.
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I run a bootstrapped SAAS business and I make far more than $20K a month profit and have done so for years. The key is choose a niche that is large enough to make the level of profit you want, but too small to attract VC funded competitors. The sort of market size you want is in the range of $5 to $20 million per year. Big enough to be worth the hassle, but too small to attract the big guys.
What's your point? Twitter isn't in that niche, obviously.
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Me too. Hi. If an entrepreneur is worried about "Work Life Balance", I think he/she is in the wrong business.
I see this meme repeated a lot here on HN. Personally I wildly disagree, as I believe sufficient time away from work makes you make the right decisions. Basically I believe that the "work smarter, not harder" meme, while cliché, automatically happens if you invest time in leisure and sleep. But I don't know! I truly wonder how many businesses have been run into the ground because of a kamikaze attitude to working hou…
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Then the investors will get tired of subsidising the other company, it will get more and more user-hostile and quite possibly run out of money altogether and shut down, and users will be worse off in the long run.
Oh yeah and eventually Diaspora will overtake Facebook. Oh wait... If the VC model did not work it would have simply gone out of business. The reality of business is that doing things at larger scale requires capital. Sure you might be able to pull-off your lifestyle, but its going to be hard to motivate employees when the VC funded competitor gives them michelin star chefs, 50% higher salaries and a shot at windfall…
It has, on a macro scale, three times now. On a micro scale, it does every day, but there is always some new money who is sure they can get it right this time.
I've always sort of had this question that continues to feel naive - but I'm not sure I know the answer: why do so many companies feel like they have to grow perpetually? Why can't Twitter just be happy being Twitter, knowing its limits and making a stable profit? Instead it's more users, more VC money, more staff... constantly burning as quickly as possible. There's a ceiling on every business; it's all bound to com…
Would you buy a stock that is guaranteed to stay flat for the discernible future? No? Then you have your answer. (let's not forget that, thanks to inflation, 'flat' is actually losing money over time.)
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Because your competitor can raise those million dollars, and eventually your 20k profit per month becomes 20k loss per month. You can build all your imaginary arguments about magical businesses that make 20k profit per month while being self-sustained with holocracy, cruelty free, authentic, organic etc. etc. But the reality is that doing big things at bigger scale requires huge capital. If you are willing to pass up…
I run a bootstrapped SAAS business and I make far more than $20K a month profit and have done so for years. The key is choose a niche that is large enough to make the level of profit you want, but too small to attract VC funded competitors. The sort of market size you want is in the range of $5 to $20 million per year. Big enough to be worth the hassle, but too small to attract the big guys.
I've always sort of had this question that continues to feel naive - but I'm not sure I know the answer: why do so many companies feel like they have to grow perpetually? Why can't Twitter just be happy being Twitter, knowing its limits and making a stable profit? Instead it's more users, more VC money, more staff... constantly burning as quickly as possible. There's a ceiling on every business; it's all bound to com…
Companies have to report earnings quarterly. Investors expect quarterly growth. If they don't get it they punish the company.
I've always sort of had this question that continues to feel naive - but I'm not sure I know the answer: why do so many companies feel like they have to grow perpetually? Why can't Twitter just be happy being Twitter, knowing its limits and making a stable profit? Instead it's more users, more VC money, more staff... constantly burning as quickly as possible. There's a ceiling on every business; it's all bound to com…
I joined Twitter very late, to get news when the Boston marathon bombing was happening, and while the feeling that twitter is a forum that covers the whole internet is still there, it's at late stages.
Most people are well and truly over the idea that twitter is worthwhile in and of itself, and most people are pretty much following as many people as they want to be. It's much more likely that long time users are cutting down on follows than adding new ones.
It still has a culture where you can talk to strangers on the internet, but a pretty big etiquette has grown up around that, and that can also be intimidating coming in late.