

The Untold Millions - dcurtis
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1495-the-untold-millions

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luckystrike
From the comments:

    
    
      DHH: The whole point and problem with this is that 
      these private successes prefer to be private. 
      So I’m certainly not going to out and name the people 
      who confined in me personally about how well they are doing.
    

Well if some business really wants to remain private about their success, then
why blame the media or anyone else for not talking about them. I would have
well understood the complaint if media was not giving them enough attention
even if they were looking for it and deserved it.

Little what i understand about publicity, if you have a reasonable story (of
an online success) and are willing to push it, you have a fair chance of
getting it covered a fair bit. Obviously, to reach Google & Facebook news
levels, you have to become as big as them.

p.s. This could be an opportunity for some 'website' (not a startup) to cover
successful online businesses and their stories. Or may be there already is a
one ..

~~~
Raphael
Media coverage might blow their cover. If business people perceive a market,
then they will enter into competition and lower profit margins.

------
davidw
The cynic in me says "37 signals surprised that people can make a lot of money
without raising as much of a ruckus about it as they do themselves", but
that's a bit uncharitable, as it works well for them, and they produce lots of
good stuff, including Rails, which I use myself. And in any case, his point is
a good one (I keep thinking of patio11's _bingo cards_... sheesh:-). I just
wish I could find my own niche:-/

~~~
ahoyhere
Whatever the buzz factor & whatever the love/hate relationship people have
with 37S' pointed and sometimes downright obnoxious blog, it's nothing
compared to Facebook or Digg, while 37s has real products that generate actual
money.

They are closer to being a "no ruckus" businesses than the others.

~~~
axod
It depends what you're after. Some people would rather a guaranteed lower
income, rather than the chance of the big time. 37s have gone for the former,
Digg+Facebook have gone for the latter.

Both are valid strategies, but the latter has far more potential upside (With
way more risk). That's probably why it gets more press.

Who wants to read about _another_ software company that sells products and
makes a few million?

~~~
netcan
I'm not sure I buy the equivalence of no revenues = higher upside. There are
plenty of companies that got big & famous by making products & selling them.
These include software companies.

Sure there is something you might call a 'type' that can be built on your
latter. But it's not the only type.

~~~
axod
Digg and Facebook both have pretty good revenue. They just have stupidly high
costs.

~~~
netcan
Well I suppose the _goodness_ of the revenues needs to be weighed against the
stupidity of the costs.

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replicatorblog
I agree with the point that it would be interesting to hear about more
companies that are enjoying more "modest" success . It seems like most of
those folks are too busy running their businesses to leave much time for PR
though.

I think a bigger problem is not hearing about massive successes that fall
outside the tech elite's interest. For instance WebKinz the virtual
world/stuffed animal hybrid probably generates 9 figures of revenue per year,
given Club Penguin was doing ~$75MM when it got acquired. How many TechCrunch
stories have they had? A quick search yields 0 dedicated results. Thats huge
revenue for what amounts to a startup within a toy company and no coverage in
the publication of record. However we hear about every stupid ad based
socialgraphwidgetfacebookappgcasualgame startup that raises $500K.

Also, it seems a little silly to say "We want to stay small!" and then to say
"Why doesn't the press want to write about us!" Rails is awesome, but the rest
of their offering has been eclipsed by Google Docs. They have done a great job
attracting press compared to the value their products create. Same goes for
other small companies where there isn't a lot of "there" there.

~~~
ahoyhere
IMO, the reason that successful businesses like Club Penguin don't get
TechCrunch coverage is this:

TechCrunch isn't aimed at successful, profitable businesses.

TechCrunch is essentially a brothel; Arrington fancies himself a pimp. So it
is populated by whores, and patronized mainly by people who want to pay for
sex.

TechCrunch is about VC, it's about the dream of the big cashout, it's about
perpetuating the startup mythos.

Those other businesses simply don't fit that agenda.

~~~
gruseom
How does Club Penguin not fit the startup mythos? Started by a couple of guys
to solve a problem they had and figured other people must have (not enough for
small children to do online). Made the product themselves based on some Flash
stuff one of them had been building. Huge viral growth, big acquisition.
Sounds like a classic startup success to me.

~~~
ahoyhere
The startup mythos as interpreted by Arrington (and, to a lesser extent, HN)
does not involve non-whiz-bang stuff. Social bookmarking? Yes, that's great,
it's got an API or something right? Flash video games for kids not old enough
to ride the bus alone? Not cool enough. Not hackery.

~~~
gruseom
You may be right about Arrington, but that's not how I see HN. I haven't
noticed any prejudice here against things like Flash video games for kids. On
the contrary, patio11 and his bingo cards (surely a lower bound for whatever
definition of 'cool' you're talking about) are kind of local heroes.

~~~
ahoyhere
OK, that's not how you see HN. I wasn't writing about HN originally. Every
sentence fragment began with "TechCrunch." :)

On HN, you have a slew of TC-style masturbatory stories about funding and then
you've got a handful of less exciting "hard luck" cases that touch people
because they're like orphans who sing and dance.

Like that post about the plumber -- it's Puritan Work Ethic pr0n.

Most HN readers seem to think they're going to end up with the funding (the
former), but at the same time they want to hear from those heartwarming
orphans (the latter).

------
pg
Untold when applied to large sums of money actually means uncounted, not
untalked-about. It's a variant of untallied. But it would have been a clever
pun if they'd done it intentionally.

~~~
daniel-cussen
Oh, I see, as in the teller at a bank.

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cool-RR
This is the first sentence: "The media is biased against stories that want to
be told."

While the point of the article seems to be this: "In the mean time, many of
the real stories are never told. The quiet successes by small teams who stand
little if anything to gain by sharing their numbers and telling about their
success."

Did I miss something?

~~~
ahoyhere
He's a non-native English speaker (writer) and I think this is just your basic
editing mistake.

I think the first sentence is supposed to be "The media is biased in favor of
stories that want to be told." As in, somebody intends that calling Kevin Rose
a boy billionaire becomes a media coup. It's intentional.

The rest of the essay supports that point.

~~~
henning
DHH uses so many sentence fragments that their frequent preaching about
"hiring wordsmiths" really rings hollow. I realize he speaks English
infinitely better than I speak Danish.

------
1gor
Most often, people talk non-stop about their success when they want to __exit
__the business. If you have a profitable niche you better remain quiet and get
as much growth as you can before the party stalls.

In the investment industry the most bullish articles on a sector/asset class
appear exactly near the top of the market. Often these articles are pushed by
fund managers who have taken positions earlier and now need enthusiastic
public to 'buy them out'.

------
axod
Reading about solid businesses that make a few million isn't that interesting.

High growth high risk high potential upside is exciting... Disruptive
technologies tearing away the old industires. That's news worthy. That's why
it gets the coverage.

~~~
sah
When I first realized that various small businesses and websites I was
familiar with were quietly making millions, it changed the direction of my
ambitions and got me interested in starting a business. So, I found that
pretty interesting.

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callmeed
I've said this before–I think a blog/podcast/print magazine spotlighting these
"untold millions" would be (a) extremely beneficial to entrepreneurs and (b)
possibly a viable publishing endeavor.

I know it's not their core competency, but why couldn't 37s write about them
once a month? Or perhaps sponsor such an endeavor ...

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lacker
Ironic, coming from a company whose success is driven by their own fame.

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eli_s
I couldn't care less whether the small fish get media coverage or not. What
buoyed my spirits is that there are market players that make a comfortable
living from web app development - which means there's a chance for the rest of
us too ;)

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cosmo7
Did anyone else parse this story as "Why hasn't anyone offered us $500 billion
yet?"

~~~
anirbas
No.

