3 ms·

It's neither. Lifestyle companies are fine, if that's what you're aiming for. I know plenty of people who run or work at ≈1-30 person companies with no intenti

by blagie 2y ago

It's neither. Lifestyle companies are fine, if that's what you're aiming for. I know plenty of people who run or work at ≈1-30 person companies with no intention to grow. However, if you're going for high-growth, you need to plan for success. I've seen many potential unicorns stopped by simple lack of planning early on. Despite all the pivots which happen, if you haven't outlined a clear path from 1-3 people in a metaphorical garage to reaching $1B, it almost never happens, and sometimes for stupid reasons. If your goal is 5000 paying customers at $100 per year and $500k in annual revenues, that can lead to a very decent life. However, it's an entire different ballgame: (1) Don't take in investment (2) You probably can't hire more than one person (3) You need a plan for break-even revenue before you need to quit your job / run out of savings. (4) You need much greater than the 1-in-10 odds of success. And it's very possible (and probably not even hard) to start a sustainable 1-5 person business with >>50% odds of success, especially late career: - Find a niche you're aware of from your job - Do ballpark numbers on revenues. These should land in the $500k-$10M range. Less, and you won't sustain. More, and there will be too much competition. - Do it better than the (likely incompetent or non-existent) people doing it now - Use your network of industry contacts to sell it That's not a big enough market you need to worry about a lot of competition, competitors with VC funding, etc. Especially ones with tall moats do well -- pick some unique skillset, technology, or market access, for example. However, IF you've e.g. taken in VC funding, then you do need to plan for growth, and part of that is planning for the small odds your customer base (and ergo, your data) does grow.

IneffablePigeon 2y ago
If you’re in b2b 5000 customers can be a lot more revenue than that. 10-100x, depending hugely on industry and product.
pas 2y ago
> if you haven't outlined a clear path from 1-3 people in a metaphorical garage to reaching $1B, it almost never happens, and sometimes for stupid reasons most of the business plans are clear. acquire users and/or paying customers, build out the product, raise money and eventually raise prices too. engineering side is even simpler, keep the lights on, work with product designers to find incremental steps, iterate. as others have mentioned upthread if a startup finds a great niche (and manages to make it a whole new market for example) they simple cannot fail due to inadequate engineering. (because worst case you fire the whole engineering department and just acqui-hire a random startup and you'll be back to growth in no time.) of course this take might be too hot, so I'm happy to read some counterarguments (maybe there are even counterexamples?)
- blagie 2y ago
  > they simple cannot fail due to inadequate engineering. (because worst case you fire the whole engineering department and just acqui-hire a random startup and you'll be back to growth in no time.) > ... > of course this take might be too hot, so I'm happy to read some counterarguments (maybe there are even counterexamples?) Netscape. (Plenty of others too)
  - pas 2y ago
    Netscape's main revenue came from Navigator, right? A browser. Classic commodity. How did they fail due to engineering deficiencies? (Netscape was better than Mosaic, they invented JavaScript, there was plenty of chops there, and initially they had revenue, IPO went great ... at that point it's arguably not a startup anymore.) And even when it failed it was worth 4.2B to AOL. ... if we're talking about browsers, Netscape's reincarnation Mozilla is again in the same tough spot. They have zero business sense, absolutely no plan, nada. At that point it's completely irrelevant how long it takes them to fix bugs or implement Web APIs or make it faster on various platforms. And still, they funded Rust and Servo.

by blagie 2y ago

IneffablePigeon 2y ago

If you’re in b2b 5000 customers can be a lot more revenue than that. 10-100x, depending hugely on industry and product.

pas 2y ago

> if you haven't outlined a clear path from 1-3 people in a metaphorical garage to reaching $1B, it almost never happens, and sometimes for stupid reasons most of the business plans are clear. acquire users and/or paying customers, build out the product, raise money and eventually raise prices too. engineering side is even simpler, keep the lights on, work with product designers to find incremental steps, iterate. as others have mentioned upthread if a startup finds a great niche (and manages to make it a whole new market for example) they simple cannot fail due to inadequate engineering. (because worst case you fire the whole engineering department and just acqui-hire a random startup and you'll be back to growth in no time.) of course this take might be too hot, so I'm happy to read some counterarguments (maybe there are even counterexamples?)

blagie 2y ago
> they simple cannot fail due to inadequate engineering. (because worst case you fire the whole engineering department and just acqui-hire a random startup and you'll be back to growth in no time.) > ... > of course this take might be too hot, so I'm happy to read some counterarguments (maybe there are even counterexamples?) Netscape. (Plenty of others too)
- pas 2y ago
  Netscape's main revenue came from Navigator, right? A browser. Classic commodity. How did they fail due to engineering deficiencies? (Netscape was better than Mosaic, they invented JavaScript, there was plenty of chops there, and initially they had revenue, IPO went great ... at that point it's arguably not a startup anymore.) And even when it failed it was worth 4.2B to AOL. ... if we're talking about browsers, Netscape's reincarnation Mozilla is again in the same tough spot. They have zero business sense, absolutely no plan, nada. At that point it's completely irrelevant how long it takes them to fix bugs or implement Web APIs or make it faster on various platforms. And still, they funded Rust and Servo.