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Start charging money. If you're providing a valuable service people will pay for the 1 cent it costs to send a text message. If you're not then how does knockin

by fleitz 16y ago

Start charging money. If you're providing a valuable service people will pay for the 1 cent it costs to send a text message. If you're not then how does knocking 1 cent off the price of a text message make the business feasible? The primary thing holding your startup back is your lack of commitment, and the expectation that others take risks you are not willing to take. You're a student you have access to credit, get a VISA and put the text messaging bill on your VISA. The reason why you don't do this is because you know that more users will mean a bigger bill. Whereas if you had a business more users would mean more profit. Why not make it work with twitter and just have the users enable text messaging? What is so essential about texting that makes or breaks the business yet is unimportant enough to your customers that they won't pay for it?

naifwonder 16y ago
Please note that what I am about to say is not meant to be defensive. Rather, it is a list of facts. It's not about me WILLING to take the risk, its about me actually being ABLE to take the risk. The short codes themselves cost upwards of $1000 (I need multiple) per month. A high frequency of messages can surge that cost much higher. Being a student, my credit limit will not be very high. With more capital, it is possible to buy messages in bulk or go into unlimited messaging plans that are much more economically feasible when scaling; That way, more users are sustainable. A high cost is fine as long as the cost to user ratio makes sense. With more starting capital, the cost to user ratio is greatly reduced. If any company with an existing ability to send text messages at sustainable rates wants to work with Vepler, that is something that would be equally valuable to me as raw capital. I can come up with the funds for the servers and such on my own if necessary. Getting in touch with such companies is the tricky part. As for the matter of charging for the service: As I said, I am open to it. However, I want to explore all options before going there. Having the site work through twitter involves an added layer of complexity to the site that might simply be beyond the scope of many people. Texting is a core feature of the site. I can launch it without it and I'm sure some people will still find it very useful. I just want to find out if I can avoid doing that, especially since texting makes the site so much more useful. Also, the 2 job offers I have pay fairly well. Enough so that I can afford to pay for the site myself after a few months. However, I would not mind giving up an equity stake to an investor to accelerate the process and potentially have more resources available (investors often provide value through their connections and knowledge that exceeds that of their capital).

by fleitz 16y ago

naifwonder 16y ago

Please note that what I am about to say is not meant to be defensive. Rather, it is a list of facts. It's not about me WILLING to take the risk, its about me actually being ABLE to take the risk. The short codes themselves cost upwards of $1000 (I need multiple) per month. A high frequency of messages can surge that cost much higher. Being a student, my credit limit will not be very high. With more capital, it is possible to buy messages in bulk or go into unlimited messaging plans that are much more economically feasible when scaling; That way, more users are sustainable. A high cost is fine as long as the cost to user ratio makes sense. With more starting capital, the cost to user ratio is greatly reduced. If any company with an existing ability to send text messages at sustainable rates wants to work with Vepler, that is something that would be equally valuable to me as raw capital. I can come up with the funds for the servers and such on my own if necessary. Getting in touch with such companies is the tricky part. As for the matter of charging for the service: As I said, I am open to it. However, I want to explore all options before going there. Having the site work through twitter involves an added layer of complexity to the site that might simply be beyond the scope of many people. Texting is a core feature of the site. I can launch it without it and I'm sure some people will still find it very useful. I just want to find out if I can avoid doing that, especially since texting makes the site so much more useful. Also, the 2 job offers I have pay fairly well. Enough so that I can afford to pay for the site myself after a few months. However, I would not mind giving up an equity stake to an investor to accelerate the process and potentially have more resources available (investors often provide value through their connections and knowledge that exceeds that of their capital).