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While I tend to roll my eyes a fair bit at how... set the 37 signals guys are in many of their opinions, the whole lottery idea I agree with completely. Even i

While I tend to roll my eyes a fair bit at how... set the 37 signals guys are in many of their opinions, the whole lottery idea I agree with completely. Even if FB has hit it big, what were the odds going in of them being the billion dollar winner, vs another failure that left them with unhappy VCs who they didn't make money for. To me at least, swinging for the fences seems to be something you should do after you've already made some sexy cash on other stuff or at least made a name for yourself, if you REALLY want to go that route.

kgrin 17y ago
> something you should do after you've already made some sexy cash on other stuff or at least made a name for yourself You mean like cofounding Netscape?
- startuprules 17y ago
  I'd like to think Andreessen as the guy who never made profits, only products
  - sriramk 17y ago
    You do know of OpsWare, right? :)
    - startuprules 17y ago
      Doesn't look like it did. http://www.tracked.com/company/opsware/financials/income/?t=annual http://www.tracked.com/company/opsware/financials/income/?t=...
      - nl 17y ago
        I'll take your url and raise it with: http://voices.allthingsd.com/20100317/the-case-for-the-fat-startup/ http://voices.allthingsd.com/20100317/the-case-for-the-fat-s... OpsWare was very deliberately spending money to make sure they were the market leader. Read the link I posted - it's a perfect example of why 37Signals is both wrong and right at the same time. OpsWare was a typical Silicon Valley start-up (per the Steve Blank definition: Total available market > 500M, Company can grow > 100M/year etc - see slides 10-12 in http://steveblank.com/2010/04/15/why-accountants-dont-run-startups/ http://steveblank.com/2010/04/15/why-accountants-dont-run-st...) OpsWare quite deliberately took a high risk strategy in order to aim for high rewards. 37Signals is a small business. Profitable, comfortable, but no prospects of explosive growth. To quote from the link above: What is start-up purgatory, you ask? Start-up purgatory occurs when you don’t go bankrupt, but you fail to build the No. 1 product in the space. You have enough money with your conservative burn rate to last for many years. You may even be cash-flow positive. However, you have zero chance of becoming a high-growth company. You have zero chance of being anything but a very small technology business (see Navisite). From the entrepreneur’s point of view, this can be worse than start-up hell since you are stuck with the small company. 37Signals seem to be quite fine with their business. However, they appear not to understand that many others are quite deliberate in choosing riskier strategies because the rewards can be higher.

kgrin 17y ago

> something you should do after you've already made some sexy cash on other stuff or at least made a name for yourself You mean like cofounding Netscape?

startuprules 17y ago
I'd like to think Andreessen as the guy who never made profits, only products
- sriramk 17y ago
  You do know of OpsWare, right? :)
  - startuprules 17y ago
    Doesn't look like it did. http://www.tracked.com/company/opsware/financials/income/?t=annual http://www.tracked.com/company/opsware/financials/income/?t=...
    - nl 17y ago
      I'll take your url and raise it with: http://voices.allthingsd.com/20100317/the-case-for-the-fat-startup/ http://voices.allthingsd.com/20100317/the-case-for-the-fat-s... OpsWare was very deliberately spending money to make sure they were the market leader. Read the link I posted - it's a perfect example of why 37Signals is both wrong and right at the same time. OpsWare was a typical Silicon Valley start-up (per the Steve Blank definition: Total available market > 500M, Company can grow > 100M/year etc - see slides 10-12 in http://steveblank.com/2010/04/15/why-accountants-dont-run-startups/ http://steveblank.com/2010/04/15/why-accountants-dont-run-st...) OpsWare quite deliberately took a high risk strategy in order to aim for high rewards. 37Signals is a small business. Profitable, comfortable, but no prospects of explosive growth. To quote from the link above: What is start-up purgatory, you ask? Start-up purgatory occurs when you don’t go bankrupt, but you fail to build the No. 1 product in the space. You have enough money with your conservative burn rate to last for many years. You may even be cash-flow positive. However, you have zero chance of becoming a high-growth company. You have zero chance of being anything but a very small technology business (see Navisite). From the entrepreneur’s point of view, this can be worse than start-up hell since you are stuck with the small company. 37Signals seem to be quite fine with their business. However, they appear not to understand that many others are quite deliberate in choosing riskier strategies because the rewards can be higher.