

That's why I will never invest any money in your company - fossguy
http://fseek.me/2010/03/thats-why-i-will-not-invest-any-money-in-you/

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synnik
"Even if you have 100,000 users and 1,000 pay for your paid account. If you
charge $10 per month, you are still making only 10k per month, barely making
the salary of one person. No one will invest in a company like that."

If I have a side project pulling in 10K a month, I don't really care if nobody
wants to invest. I've already succeeded.

~~~
idlewords
Barely making the salary of a really, really highly-paid person.

~~~
dnsworks
"highly paid" is relative. $10k/month in San Francisco is an average
programmer's salary .. Once you deal with the realities of a business
(unemployment insurance, health insurance, payroll taxes, franchise taxes,
income taxes, cell phones, internet, hosting) it's not really a single FTE's
salary in say SF, Seattle, or NYC.

~~~
_delirium
It simply isn't true that $120k/year is the average programmer's salary in SF.
That's near the high end of programmer salaries, especially if you're young
(programmers in their 20s rarely get >$90k).

~~~
python123
There are plenty of programmers right out of college making low six figures.
Of course, there are plenty of programmers in SF and SV; these are just the
good ones.

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Asa-Nisse
While I agree that most of the "review my <whatever>" here are pretty Lame I
must say that this post entirely misses the point.

So what if the authors of these project chooses to call them startups. Nobody
has a right or the power to decide what is a startup or not.

Especially not some guy with a whiny attitude.

~~~
jasonkester
So if the little website that takes text you type in and gives you a URL that
has that text shown REALLY BIG is now defined as a Startup, what should the
rest of us with real businesses call ourselves?

~~~
dunhamda
I don't know, but I'd like to know how I can invest in your URL embiggener
startup

~~~
blhack
<http://newsyndicated.com/embiggen.cgi>

Do you think I could get a tech crunch article out of this?

edit: (I misread the joke, nevermind)

re-edit: (Added support for saving messages..I wonder if twitter would buy
this from me for a million dollars?)

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zaidf
The tone of your post smells of too much hate. You sound like someone who
could write a cool-headed post explaining when you think startups should try
to raise money and when they should just enjoy the passive income from a
weekend project.

Also, don't forget the biggest hit of this decade(facebook) was a college
kid's side project just some years ago. As was twitter. And many others.

~~~
jasonlotito
"Also, don't forget the biggest hit of this decade(facebook) was a college
kid's side project just some years ago. As was twitter. And many others."

Facebook was a weekend project long before it went to raise money. It wasn't
merely a weekend project trying to raise money.

Twitter wasn't a college kid's side project. It was developed by Odeo.

Indeed, the "biggest hits of this decade" seem more to be weekend projects
that evolve from that, and then seek funding, rather than weekend projects
that remain that, and seek funding.

And while his tone does come off somewhat harsh, I think the message is still
a good one.

~~~
zaidf
If he is arguing that many or most weekend projects are seeking funding, he is
setting up a strawman. I don't think most or many weekend projects seek
funding, especially ones posted here.

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krobertson
Are the people who are making "weekend startups" asking for investment money?
Post seems more against weekend projects as "startups" than investments.

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rmason
So you've got this little website you run from your dorm room at college.
Something to let all your little friends chat back and forth.

I not only don't want to invest in your little 'startup' but don't ever call
me again young mister Zuckerberg.

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abstractbill
That's ok, I probably don't want any money from you if you can't even keep
your own website online ;)

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ryanhuff
Facebook was a dorm room project, which you could argue originally fell into
the 'non-startup' category. There are many, many examples of how your vision
at start may be entirely different than where you end up, and its often
difficult to see how that path looks when you are standing at the starting
line. "Stuff happens" when you execute.

Also, the quality of a start-up should not be measured against scale
potential. How a VC sees the world is deeply influenced by their own goals of
10x returns. A cynic might say that VC's promoting this view do so to produce
more fuel for their business model.

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prog
This raises an interesting question actually. What works better, scratching
your own itch (hobby project) and then putting a business idea around it (e.g.
<http://www.couch.io/>) or putting business first? I think some VCs might
prefer putting business first.

I suspect the prior works better but may need some patience. I have a bunch of
projects in various stages of completion and now I am working on (enjoying!)
something new and hoping to make it useful.

IMO make-something-useful and then bother about business should work better,
but then I haven't made much using this approach yet.

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ssp
*A company to make money based on advertising has to be able to reach a very large audience. Do you think that your application that your geek friends like is going to be like that? If not, forget the “ads” model.8

Is this actually true? It would seem to me that ads could work for a small,
but focused web site, because the ads could be targeted really well.

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johnl
The weekend project is a good way to find out what it takes to work a project
from start to finish. Then when you get a group together you have already
been-there-done-that once before, just on a smaller scale.

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dalore
> Real startups (companies) are in business to make money!

What about twitter and youtube?

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jerguismi
mirror?

~~~
danskil
That's why i will never run my webpage on your server :)

In all seriousness, does anyone have a cache or mirror?

