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that's the "build it and they will come" approach. sorry, the real world doesn't work like that for 99% of companies. you will get further with an average pro

that's the "build it and they will come" approach. sorry, the real world doesn't work like that for 99% of companies. you will get further with an average product and a shit-ton of money to spend on marketing, than having a great product and zero money to spend on marketing. we like to hear stories about the latter, and it does happen, but those companies are outliers. you can't bank on it happening. bottom line is, it costs money to acquire customers. if you want more customers than your competition, a safe starting point is having tons more cash than them.

btilly 16y ago
Not at all. That's the conclusion that was drawn by researchers at Harvard from many postmortems of companies who tried (occasionally successfully) to create spinoffs to address disruptive innovation. Their strongest finding was how over-funding the spinoff killed it. The key problem is that if you've been given $10 million by investors, you're going to be unable to go after a $5 million opportunity that you find. By contrast if you've bootstrapped up from $100,000, that same $5 million opportunity is very tempting. It is in the nature of disruptive innovation that those $5 million opportunities tend to grow over time. But by the time they do that, it is too late for the over-funded startup. Back in the startup world, when you start you have no idea what your potential market is. At the beginning you're generally wrong about what the market is. You generally can't even judge to within an order of magnitude. However if, along the way, you find it clearly enough defined that success becomes about acquiring large numbers of customers on a fairly well defined value proposition, then you're in a great position to go look for funding. And if, along the way, you find a comfortable business that makes you happy, you have the freedom to go after it without having to justify to anyone why you're not going to generate decent returns on a large investment.

btilly 16y ago

Not at all. That's the conclusion that was drawn by researchers at Harvard from many postmortems of companies who tried (occasionally successfully) to create spinoffs to address disruptive innovation. Their strongest finding was how over-funding the spinoff killed it. The key problem is that if you've been given $10 million by investors, you're going to be unable to go after a $5 million opportunity that you find. By contrast if you've bootstrapped up from $100,000, that same $5 million opportunity is very tempting. It is in the nature of disruptive innovation that those $5 million opportunities tend to grow over time. But by the time they do that, it is too late for the over-funded startup. Back in the startup world, when you start you have no idea what your potential market is. At the beginning you're generally wrong about what the market is. You generally can't even judge to within an order of magnitude. However if, along the way, you find it clearly enough defined that success becomes about acquiring large numbers of customers on a fairly well defined value proposition, then you're in a great position to go look for funding. And if, along the way, you find a comfortable business that makes you happy, you have the freedom to go after it without having to justify to anyone why you're not going to generate decent returns on a large investment.