3 ms·

I'd like to think Andreessen as the guy who never made profits, only products

by startuprules 16y ago

sriramk 16y ago
You do know of OpsWare, right? :)
- startuprules 16y 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 16y 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.

I'd like to think Andreessen as the guy who never made profits, only products

sriramk 16y ago

You do know of OpsWare, right? :)

startuprules 16y 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 16y 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.