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This literally means that you can lose as much money as you want as long as you grow at a stupid-fast rate. It doesn't matter what you're building or whether an
by michaelochurch 12y ago
This literally means that you can lose as much money as you want as long as you grow at a stupid-fast rate. It doesn't matter what you're building or whether anyone wants to pay for it, as long as you get what the monkeys call a "hockey-stick curve".
You're OK even if you literally win at losing. Good to know.
This explains so much.
- mmastrac 12y agoIt's not user growth -- it is revenue growth. If you've got a hockey-stick curve for revenue and you're losing money, that's not necessarily a problem (within reason). At some point you can start spending less on user acquisition/marketing and you'll go from losing money/growing fast to profitable/growing slower.
- michaelochurch 12y agoThis explains even more. I've noticed that a lot of startups delay making any revenue, and that this might not be for bad reasons, because plenty of companies start to really suffer once they start making revenues (but fall short of what they "should" be seeing and how has they "should" be growing) not because there is anything wrong with them as businesses, but because their ADD investors lose faith and interest. So now it makes sense that companies would delay revenue until they have enough of a free-tier footprint that they can control revenue growth for a few years and ensure exponential growth (this may involve intentionally tamping down early-year revenue in order to have a sharp upward trend).
- ForHackernews 12y agoThat makes sense. If your company doesn't have revenue, it could be worth 200 billion dollars! Once your company has actual revenue, it's pretty obvious it's worth whatever it's worth. It's advantageous to remain in the mystery-land of hype and unrealistic expectations as long as you can keep drumming up easy investor money.