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Are you managing a business or are you starting something? If you're managing a business, ring the cash register and we'll all thank you for getting a jump on t
by devindotcom 13y ago
Are you managing a business or are you starting something? If you're managing a business, ring the cash register and we'll all thank you for getting a jump on the inevitable. If you think you're starting something, roll the dice. The manager will cash out shortly.
From another comment: "Growth is important, but n times no revenue is still zero. Revenue should be our most important metric, and growth should be second to that."
If your goal is revenue, and you have no revenue, you've done something wrong. But not everyone's goal is revenue. If it were, the open source community would be a graveyard of used-up ideas and remixes.
Revenue is great for companies, but useless for tools. Tools don't need revenue, and if you're building tools, don't try to get paid. People buy hammers, but the inventor of the hammer isn't getting rich. Doesn't mean people don't want hammers.
Revenue should be the most important metric for people who want to make money. That's inarguable. Are you one of those people? There's nothing wrong with it, but that doesn't make it a meaningless question. Answer truthfully, and your path (lower-case p) is illuminated.
- josephlord 13y ago> Revenue should be the most important metric for people who want to make money. That's inarguable. Revenue is a good start but at some point you need to consider profit. And yes, I have been in a room where someone proposed making up the per-unit loss through greater volume (on physical goods).
- pestaa 13y agoDo I understand your comment that somebody thought multiplying per-unit loss will actually lead to profit?
- edanm 13y agoThis is surprisingly less common than you think. Most people don't have a very good grasp of business, and many many businessman have a "sales mentality" that insists that selling as much as possible is the best way to grow a business (while completely ignoring margins, which are what is actually important).
- josephlord 13y agoYep. (Although I think you mean "more common" or "less uncommon"). It is what can happen to sales people especially when bonuses/performance reviews are based on sales not profit.
- a-priori 13y agoI hope, for their sake, that they were banking on some sort of economy of scale where increasing volume would decrease per-unit costs and therefore negate the per-unit loss...
- josephlord 13y agoThey may have been hoping that the economies of scale could work but they were arguing with people who knew they wouldn't. There may have been a language gap though I don't think that was all of the problem.
- azernik 13y agoIf you're building an open-source tool that you never intend to make money off of, then you're not the target audience here - you're not building a business in which VCs are going to invest. This is for people who are giving up current revenue in the hopes of making lots of money in the future.