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It all comes down to how much risk you want to take. (In general:) Consumer orientated startups have the potential to become ridiculously valuable companies -
by dotBen 15y ago
It all comes down to how much risk you want to take.
(In general:) Consumer orientated startups have the potential to become ridiculously valuable companies - lets just define that as a valuation of $1bn+. Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare (soon), etc. But your chances of getting there are 0.001%.
Business orientated apps that real solve a genuine problem are more likely to be 'successful' (say, valued at $100m+) but unlikely to become $1Bn businesses (on it's own - you might get acquired, or you could become a software behemoth like Atlassian with 100's of products - but these are not really 'startups' anymore) .
As someone about to turn 30 and been in this business a few years, I see this as simply an example of someone with a matured aspiration for what they want to achieve.
If you are in your 20's, it fits your profile to probably work on something consumer oriented, taking a risk and also have a lot of run (consumer apps tend to be more fun that business apps, just saying).
If you are 30+ and not had that big win yet, it might be worth changing your expectation and working on something that has a higher chance of being moderately successful so that you are more likely to walk away from your career with something.
This may or may not be what is going on with the founders of MeetingBurner, but it's precisely where my head is at as I turn 30.
- aresant 15y agoYou may have missed your calling as a carnival age guesser :) MB founders ages : 31, 40, 37, 35, 31 Definitely truth in what you've outlined, but we've also had the experience building another couple of boring businesses that haven't made us billionaires, but left us free and able to cash flow this project with years of runway. It's hard as an entrepreneur not to jump into exciting, glad to see the response to the post today which was initially written as an email response to Noah ;)
- matwood 15y agoIf you are 30+ and not had that big win yet, it might be worth changing your expectation and working on something that has a higher chance of being moderately successful so that you are more likely to walk away from your career with something. This may or may not be what is going on with the founders of MeetingBurner, but it's precisely where my head is at as I turn 30. Completely agree. The other part is that someone who is in their 30s is likely to have seen the inside of a few large companies and have a ton of ideas about nagging niche problems that can be solved.
- abalashov 15y agoIt is. You're just not drinking the SV Kool-aid. :)
- nl 15y agobecome a software behemoth like Atlassian with 100's of products I think you misspelled Microsoft? Atlassian has less than 10 products (depending on how you count them).
- ido 15y agoBusiness orientated apps that real solve a genuine problem are more likely to be 'successful' (say, valued at $100m+) I thought $100m is still well within "crazy money swing-for-the-fences" territory? Maybe that's just me not being in SV.