
The quickest path to $50m in revenue? Build fun. - babyshake
http://nabeelhyatt.com/post/172687318/the-quickest-path-to-50m-in-revenue-build-fun
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jdrock
Doesn't include data on % of companies in each category that fails.

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nod
Should it? Isn't that irrelevant to how fast the "best of the best" can get to
50 Mil?

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jpwagner
True, but if you want to calculate your own EV over x years, you need that
kind of data.

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callmeed
3 things I noticed (not sure if it affects the conclusions):

1\. Interesting that neither article (this or the WSJ post) seems to include
data on mobile carriers or handset providers. Not sure why that is.

2\. Entertainment seems to be the only category that's primarly B2C companies.
Almost seems like it doesn't fit. If you're going to include video game
makers, why can't you also include Netflix and other such companies.

3\. I wonder how much acquisitions have affected these numbers.

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nabeel
Yeah, the data was just software companies. So no Apple, Nokia. They also
didn't have Google or Yahoo, which was unfortunate. Still, in terms of top 100
software companies, it's a valuable sample.

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Tichy
Seems very unlikely to me that parallels can be drawn from the past to the
present in that way. Markets go through different phases.

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mishmax
Yep, and did he just draw a general rule from just one example (Activision)?

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ryanwaggoner
No:

 _At least three social gaming companies I know of will be, or already have,
hit $50m in revenue in their first three years of business._

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nabeel
Hi. Nabeel here. To be clear this should not be thought of as conclusive
academic analysis. These were just interesting indicators that I found.

I was using the data that was available from the article linked, which means
it's the largest 100 public software companies, then segmented by type. Which
meant, any individual category had roughly 5-8 companies with which to sample.

In the entertainment category it was Activision (4 years to $50m), Electronic
Arts (6), Take-Two (6), International Game Technology (10) and a few others.

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Tichy
Maybe gaming is timeless, it just seems to me that some fields have a time
when they boom, and other times when they don't boom so much. So looking at a
company founded during the boom could be misleading.

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mkull
No ecommerce on the list?

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rokhayakebe
Zynga, Facebook, Myspace.

