4 ms·

Ask YC: What is the average growth, in terms of traffic, for a startup?

2 points by maurycy 19y ago

We all know success stories of startups that became big overnight. But how it goes in regular cases?

noodle 19y ago
for your average "good idea" startup targeting an average niche market, one to two years with a two founder team until you're in the black (i.e. you're making more than business expenses + a reasonable living). edit: even the popular websites take that long. for example, it really took digg.com 1-2 years to become substantially popular. reddit came in about a year after digg started and caught the same wave, so it took less time for them to become substantially popular.
- maurycy 19y ago
  What you mean "the black", in terms of traffic, page views, uniques etc.? The business expenses vary, as well as what you mean by "reasonable living" (depends on the state a lot).
  - noodle 19y ago
    yes, everything depends. being "in the black" depends on your business plan, operating costs, cost of living, etc.. the only real indicator of a "past this point, you're successful" is when you start making more money than you're spending on expenses and paying yourself and your other employees/founders as a reasonable salary. and even then, it is not necessarily the case that after you pass that point, you'll be successful forever. things can change.
    - maurycy 19y ago
      But this is obvious and is not what I'm asking for. What I'm asking for is your experience with traffic. When you launched the site, how many users you had initially, what is the average monthly growth and such stuff.
      - sanswork 19y ago
        I think stating an average grown is a very difficult thing to do but probably slightly above 1%. Thats taking into account the few sites that blow up huge quickly, the other sites that gradually grow and the vast vast majority that never grow.
      - noodle 19y ago
        and what i'm saying is how much traffic and growth matters is almost totally dependent upon your own business model. my latest startup only gets about 100 unique visitors a month. its an expensive, private, pay-for-use application directed towards a very niche market. i'm doing well. will your business be doing well at 100 uniques? probably not. i've had almost consistent 0% monthly growth. thats partly because we're still in beta and am not advertising it at all, but i'm still "successful" already. success is defined by your business plan and how you monetize, not by traffic alone.
- ojbyrne 19y ago
  Digg had 5 million plus monthly uniques 4 months after launch. And probably double by the Series A, 9 months in. As I recall anyway.
brk 19y ago
"startups that became big overnight" most overnight successes I've seen have been a 3+ year timeline. Your question is too vague without knowing things like the application target/purpose, number of users and pricing model, and what a page is made up of (in terms of bytes and server load (ie: database driven, are db queries heavy as reads, writes or both? Are any objects cachable?). Also, how are you looking to measure the growth? CPU ticks consumed per page load over time? Server costs per month? Bandwidth? DB storage growth? User registrations? Unique page views? Maybe it's just me, but the more I read your question, the more vague it seems :)

2 points by maurycy 19y ago

We all know success stories of startups that became big overnight. But how it goes in regular cases?

for your average "good idea" startup targeting an average niche market, one to two years with a two founder team until you're in the black (i.e. you're making more than business expenses + a reasonable living). edit: even the popular websites take that long. for example, it really took digg.com 1-2 years to become substantially popular. reddit came in about a year after digg started and caught the same wave, so it took less time for them to become substantially popular.

maurycy 19y ago
What you mean "the black", in terms of traffic, page views, uniques etc.? The business expenses vary, as well as what you mean by "reasonable living" (depends on the state a lot).
- noodle 19y ago
  yes, everything depends. being "in the black" depends on your business plan, operating costs, cost of living, etc.. the only real indicator of a "past this point, you're successful" is when you start making more money than you're spending on expenses and paying yourself and your other employees/founders as a reasonable salary. and even then, it is not necessarily the case that after you pass that point, you'll be successful forever. things can change.
  - maurycy 19y ago
    But this is obvious and is not what I'm asking for. What I'm asking for is your experience with traffic. When you launched the site, how many users you had initially, what is the average monthly growth and such stuff.
    - sanswork 19y ago
      I think stating an average grown is a very difficult thing to do but probably slightly above 1%. Thats taking into account the few sites that blow up huge quickly, the other sites that gradually grow and the vast vast majority that never grow.
    - noodle 19y ago
      and what i'm saying is how much traffic and growth matters is almost totally dependent upon your own business model. my latest startup only gets about 100 unique visitors a month. its an expensive, private, pay-for-use application directed towards a very niche market. i'm doing well. will your business be doing well at 100 uniques? probably not. i've had almost consistent 0% monthly growth. thats partly because we're still in beta and am not advertising it at all, but i'm still "successful" already. success is defined by your business plan and how you monetize, not by traffic alone.
ojbyrne 19y ago
Digg had 5 million plus monthly uniques 4 months after launch. And probably double by the Series A, 9 months in. As I recall anyway.

brk 19y ago

"startups that became big overnight" most overnight successes I've seen have been a 3+ year timeline. Your question is too vague without knowing things like the application target/purpose, number of users and pricing model, and what a page is made up of (in terms of bytes and server load (ie: database driven, are db queries heavy as reads, writes or both? Are any objects cachable?). Also, how are you looking to measure the growth? CPU ticks consumed per page load over time? Server costs per month? Bandwidth? DB storage growth? User registrations? Unique page views? Maybe it's just me, but the more I read your question, the more vague it seems :)