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Hey! Hopefully this comment comes across as helpful rather than hurtful. I'm also the founder of a developer tool, and it's hard to raise money for! (I know you

Hey! Hopefully this comment comes across as helpful rather than hurtful. I'm also the founder of a developer tool, and it's hard to raise money for! (I know you said yours isn't strictly a developer tool, but you mentioned open source so I think it's fair to assume it falls in this category.) I think you're missing a step, which is where _you_ answer if web scraping can be a viable business model. You're attempting to convince VCs with logic (and a few assumptions), but there's an easier (or harder) way to do it... convince them by making money. Most VCs aren't ideologues, and don't have an opinion about business models. They will be convinced if you simply show them you're making money. It's not their job to decide if an idea can make money or not; that's your job as a founder. I applied to YC twice. The first time we spent the 10 minutes talking about if it could make money or not, and never got anywhere good. We got rejected. The second time we were making money, the conversation was smoother, and we got in. It's so much easier to be able to replace "I believe" with "our customers believe". It changes the conversation completely. You don't need to be making billions of dollars; just enough to show that people want what you're making! tl;dr You're trying to convince VCs when you need to be convincing customers! (For the record, a lot of what I said here is very money-driven and that's not how I build my company. However, in the context of VCs, which are purely financially driven, it's how you should be thinking about it.) Good luck, and let me know if I can help! My email is in my profile if you want to talk!

fforflo 5y ago
You're not being hurtful. :) I'll send you an email too, but because others are raising this: Good point and it's a potential trap of tools built from developers for developers. There's this fine line between finding it useful and being willing to pay for it. Being honest to my self: Do I find this useful ? Yes Makes my web scraping easier? Yes Would I pay for it? Maybe... but the problem is I've never paid for a scraping tool either. But other people may pay for it. To get to that point though I'll probably need a few more hands on deck, who need salaries and for that you need external funds.
- gkoberger 5y ago
  Great! Looking forward to talking :) If I were you, I'd do everything possible to answer your initial question (is web scraping a viable business) before bringing other people and their money into it. Everything gets much, much harder once other people's time and money is involved (both the process of convincing them, AND the potential process of realizing you were wrong). There's lots of ways to build a business, so take my advice with a grain of salt. But especially if you're worried about it, I'd highly recommend focusing on getting to a few paying customers before involving VCs or employees. If you're here asking that question, you can be sure they will be too (minus the initial conviction you have). (The one exception is a co-founder! It's lonely starting a company, so you should definitely consider trying to find a co-founder that you love working with.)

fforflo 5y ago

You're not being hurtful. :) I'll send you an email too, but because others are raising this: Good point and it's a potential trap of tools built from developers for developers. There's this fine line between finding it useful and being willing to pay for it. Being honest to my self: Do I find this useful ? Yes Makes my web scraping easier? Yes Would I pay for it? Maybe... but the problem is I've never paid for a scraping tool either. But other people may pay for it. To get to that point though I'll probably need a few more hands on deck, who need salaries and for that you need external funds.

gkoberger 5y ago
Great! Looking forward to talking :) If I were you, I'd do everything possible to answer your initial question (is web scraping a viable business) before bringing other people and their money into it. Everything gets much, much harder once other people's time and money is involved (both the process of convincing them, AND the potential process of realizing you were wrong). There's lots of ways to build a business, so take my advice with a grain of salt. But especially if you're worried about it, I'd highly recommend focusing on getting to a few paying customers before involving VCs or employees. If you're here asking that question, you can be sure they will be too (minus the initial conviction you have). (The one exception is a co-founder! It's lonely starting a company, so you should definitely consider trying to find a co-founder that you love working with.)