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axod, you've built an awesome lifestyle company and you should be proud of that. but some people want to build billion dollar companies - it's a matter of tast

by pclark 16y ago

axod, you've built an awesome lifestyle company and you should be proud of that. but some people want to build billion dollar companies - it's a matter of taste - but if you want to do that, especially if you want to do that in the consumer space - you often need to defer revenues for user growth. and doing that in Europe is very hard. I'm really not sure this is even up for debate - who are the startups you're thinking of? again, different approaches to different companies with different aims. I don't think $10M for a social news reader app is insane, nor do I think Twitter raising $200M is insane. Some people thought Facebook raising so much was insane - that they'd never make money - and look at them now, almost $1Bn in revenues. You're not looking at bubbles, you're looking at investors placing very specific bets on industries or trends in the hope that in five years from now they'll have another Facebook.

axod 16y ago
You're right - I'd rather play a much longer term game - build a business that sustains itself rather than saddle myself with investment. >> "but some people want to build billion dollar companies" How many of the big SV startups actually make a profit though? Sure, maybe on paper they're 'worth' millions since people invested at a certain level, but I don't think that's healthy. Isn't it the least bit worrying when Reddit starts asking users to donate money? After it was sold for millions? You can't compare Facebook + Twitter. Facebook is a destination. Their website gets a massive amount of eyeballs and is a big gaming platform. It was always obvious that they'd make good money from that. Twitter however so far is a backend message passing system, which lots of apps use. I'm really skeptical twitter will ever pull off monetization. Twitter don't get the mindshare or eyeballs. Apps that use twitter do. At the end of the day though, I think it's a matter of taste, and what you're most comfortable. As you say, different aims. I'm very much more comfortable with the European way of building companies.

by pclark 16y ago

axod 16y ago

You're right - I'd rather play a much longer term game - build a business that sustains itself rather than saddle myself with investment. >> "but some people want to build billion dollar companies" How many of the big SV startups actually make a profit though? Sure, maybe on paper they're 'worth' millions since people invested at a certain level, but I don't think that's healthy. Isn't it the least bit worrying when Reddit starts asking users to donate money? After it was sold for millions? You can't compare Facebook + Twitter. Facebook is a destination. Their website gets a massive amount of eyeballs and is a big gaming platform. It was always obvious that they'd make good money from that. Twitter however so far is a backend message passing system, which lots of apps use. I'm really skeptical twitter will ever pull off monetization. Twitter don't get the mindshare or eyeballs. Apps that use twitter do. At the end of the day though, I think it's a matter of taste, and what you're most comfortable. As you say, different aims. I'm very much more comfortable with the European way of building companies.