4 ms·

Forget hiring. DDG is run by Gabriel solo for 3 years??? This changes everything I thought about starting up...

• staunch 16y ago
  You should also keep in mind that Gabriel is rich. That's why he can run DDG unprofitably for 3 years, without raising outside money, and it isn't totally insane.
  • axod 16y ago
    FWIW, I doubt it costs too much at all to run. All credit to him, he seems to put in a ton of effort, but this game isn't only for the rich. Any school kid can start something similar and run it 'unprofitably' for 3 years. 3 years hosting cost isn't a big deal unless you're doing something like video.
    • staunch 16y ago
      How about working on it full-time (with a family to support) like he does for 3 years?
      • axod 16y ago
        true, but there's always other options - having a fulltime job and running it as a sideline, doing contract/consulting work... Or just running toward 'profitable' earlier on.
      • epi0Bauqu 16y ago
        We live off of my wife's salary, including any costs to run DDG.
        • Uhhrrr 16y ago
          Aha - there is the secret: marry Gabe's wife!
• didip 16y ago
  There are a few more sterling examples: * Craig Newmark was running craigslist solo for a couple of years, when it was still a mailing list. * The imdb guy (Col Needham) runs it with only a handful of volunteers until it was sold to amazon. * Brad Fitzpatrick ran LiveJournal alone for a while when it was still headquartered in Oregon. During that time he wrote memcached. * Drew Curtis runs Fark.com alone, since 1999. * joshu was running del.icio.us alone while still having full time job. * Markus Frind is the poster boy of doing it alone with his plentyoffish site. * Marco was doing instapaper as side hobby while being CTO at Tumblr. Couple years later he went full time on it.
  • haploid 16y ago
    Somewhat related: Plentyoffish is also an excellent example of this principle as applied to hardware architecture. POF was doing insane levels of traffic for most of its life on 2-3 average-sized servers.
    • forensic 16y ago
      He did it by providing a shitty product though. Admittedly, a lot of people used it due to sheer network effects. So it provided utility. But personally I would be ashamed if I built POF.
      • dean 16y ago
        I should build something so shitty.
        • andrewvc 16y ago
          PoF built critical mass via marketing. OKC is a superior product in every way except sheer number of users.
  • iloveyouocean 16y ago
    Drew Curtis does not run Fark.com alone. He has had several employees for years now.