6 ms·
Lessons from a failed startup
- vivekamn 18y agoOne of the best startup retrospectives I have read. Especially the points about marketing and user acquisition are very relevant to what I what I am doing currently.
- zackattack 18y agoAnyone else think he was valuing his time too highly?
- jacobscott 18y agoIf you think you can add 1mm to the value of your startup by working 12 hours a day 7 days a week for a year, then your time is "worth" $230/hour. Also, considering what someone with a similar background could earn working full time for an established company (especially factoring in benefits), $50/hr is fairly conservative in terms of opportunity cost.
- zackattack 18y agoOpportunity cost != time valuation
- Tichy 18y agoWhy not?
- zackattack 18y agoBecause the VC is not paying you at a market rate for what your time could be. They are funding you because they think you will be successful. If you are successful, your ultimate outcome will be a multiple of your "market rate" over three years. Therefore, your hourly rate should be reduced.
- Tichy 18y agoI can not follow your logic. I never had VC investment, but I did not even think the VCs pay you. Even if they did, wouldn't you access your value by the expected outcome P(failure)0+P(success)10 billions? It also doesn't matter, because I still think the opportunity cost equation holds. If you decide now to become a waiter instead of an IT consultant, it costs you 70$ an hour to be a waiter (assuming waiters earn 10$/h and consultants 80$/h). I don't think there is a way around that.
- Tichy 18y agoIt seemed rather low to me. If a "startup worker" is x times more productive than a normal employee, wouldn't it also make sense to value his time x times higher?
- JesseAldridge 18y ago"2. Content businesses suck..." This seems like a pretty strong argument in favor of some form of DRM. If content creators can't make money, we're not going to have good content.
- zackattack 18y agoYou don't need DRM to sell content.
- JesseAldridge 18y agoYou do if you want to make a lot of money at it. File sharing is easy and getting easier. Why pay for anything when you can easily get it for free?
- eru 18y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#The_free_rider_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#The_free_rider_prob... lists possible solutions for the free rider problem.
- rsheridan6 18y agoNothing that's helpful for content providers in general, if you assume that it's impossible to enforce copyright. "Intrinsic value" would work for some content providers (an indy band composed of guys with day jobs), but it's not going to work to make an expensive blockbuster.
- eru 18y agoIf its impossible to enforce copyrigt, content becomes a public good. Why should dominant assurance contracts not work?
- rsheridan6 18y ago
- wensing 18y ago"The main failure of PlayCafe was marketing." Sort of buried at #5, so felt it worth repeating (and conversation here).
- coglethorpe 18y agoWell worth repeating. Most of us here can code a site up, some are exceptional at it. But even getting that initial press to get those first customers can be daunting. That's one advantage I can see with something like YCombinator -- that initial traffic. It might not be much, but it's a few links from reputale blogs, some visitors and maybe even those first conversions. It's certainly no guarantee, but it is more than my first startup had.