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This seems like blatant linkbaiting from 37signals, and frankly I think it's childish. They know quite well (or at least they should) that the reason some comp
by mixmax 18y ago
This seems like blatant linkbaiting from 37signals, and frankly I think it's childish.
They know quite well (or at least they should) that the reason some companies get a huge cash injection from investors is to grow fast and grab marketshare. This costs a lot of money. It's a risky strategy but if it works it pays off bigtime. The get fast big strategy is obviously not for 37signals, but I'm sure they are aware that there are people in the world that have had success with it. Amazon comes to mind as a classic example.
What Sequoia is saying now is that the get big fast strategy will have to be postponed if you want to survive. And they're right.
- mtw 18y agoi've followed the SvN blog for years, and i've never seen linkbaiting (contrary to TechCrunch or other TC-style blogs)
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoThen you haven't followed very closely.
- smakz 18y agoJust curious, can you think of another company besides Amazon where 'get big fast' actually worked? "Get big fast" was actually a rather symbolic phrase for the excesses of bubble spending. It worked for amazon and few others.
- mixmax 18y agoI'm not on firm ground here, but I would think that ebay, Cisco and paypal are all in that category.
- nostrademons 18y agoEBay got big slowly...they went almost 2 years between initial launch and VC funding. Also, they're one of the few companies that was profitable before the founder quit his day job.
- skmurphy 18y agoCisco grew profitably from before they took Sequoia's money. Some years they grew rapidly, but always profitably until the dotcom crash.
- pg 18y agoIt was used fairly successfully by both of the two most famous early Web cos, Netscape and Yahoo. In fact it was their example that made the idea popular.
- dhouston 18y agofacebook, youtube
- hello_moto 18y agoTechnically, Amazon made money but opted to grow faster. Youtube on the other hand didn't make money at all. They were losing money fast. They got lucky Google bought them.
- run4yourlives 18y agoNeither of which have turned much of a profit yet, AFAIK.