

A VC: This Time will be Different - bfioca
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/01/this-time-will.html

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gscott
"None of us can predict the markets or future valuations, we all, however, can
understand fundamentals. Businesses that solve real pain points with
disruptive technology, a huge value/price advantage, and a scalable business
model will work ".

Since when has this not been true. The only people who benefit from little
gadgets that get widely used for fun are the people that get bought out early
on. The only time people (as in customers) will really pay you (monthly,
yearly, and so on) is when you are making them money. How do you make the
customer money? Increasing the customers ability to sell or by radically
streamlining there business processes.

Salesforce is a good example of this, myself I can't reach Salesforce type
heights but am working on targeting a few very specific verticals with
officezilla.com in a similar way to salesforce but at a much lower price
point.

~~~
bayareaguy
From the article: _If there's a lesson to be learned from the $55mm round in
Slide at $500mm pre, it's that money right now wants to be with the winners._

So "right now" judging solely by users, Slide seems to be a "winner" but time
will tell if it remains one.

Very few companies can easily abandon the data they put into Salesforce, but I
can easily imagine Slide's users taking down their party pictures once they
start worrying about their more permanent online persona.

~~~
gscott
> Slide raising $55m

Popularity and number of users are great certainly money can be made from ads.

Not sure if they can make $55 million worth of dollars from ads, probably not
though. Those investors will be looking for there money (x10) and when they
don't get it will force the company to close.

~~~
bayareaguy
_when they don't get it will force the company to close_

That's one theory for what happened to FilmLoop (one of Slide's early
competitors).

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/12/filmloop-betrayed-by-
in...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/12/filmloop-betrayed-by-investors)

Actually it looks like FilmLoop is still around here:
<http://filmloop.myfabrik.com>

~~~
gscott
The whole reason I started my own "startup" because I was just incredulous at
the companies that would fail when they really could have ran forver with a
nice server setup and 2 or 3 people.

Going to the twiistup event not too long ago, I realized that there is some
benefit to having a lot of "hands" in a company in that the more people who
have a stake in it, the more they want it to survive. Which is probably how
Slide even raised 55 million. There has to be a way to do that without taking
so much money that it just hangs you.

