

Ask YC: What is the average growth, in terms of traffic, for a startup? - maurycy

We all know success stories of startups that became big overnight. But how it goes in regular cases?
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brk
"startups that became big overnight" most overnight successes I've seen have
been a 3+ year timeline.

Your question is too vague without knowing things like the application
target/purpose, number of users and pricing model, and what a page is made up
of (in terms of bytes and server load (ie: database driven, are db queries
heavy as reads, writes or both? Are any objects cachable?).

Also, how are you looking to measure the growth? CPU ticks consumed per page
load over time? Server costs per month? Bandwidth? DB storage growth? User
registrations? Unique page views?

Maybe it's just me, but the more I read your question, the more vague it seems
:)

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noodle
for your average "good idea" startup targeting an average niche market, one to
two years with a two founder team until you're in the black (i.e. you're
making more than business expenses + a reasonable living).

edit: even the popular websites take that long. for example, it really took
digg.com 1-2 years to become substantially popular. reddit came in about a
year after digg started and caught the same wave, so it took less time for
them to become substantially popular.

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maurycy
What you mean "the black", in terms of traffic, page views, uniques etc.? The
business expenses vary, as well as what you mean by "reasonable living"
(depends on the state a lot).

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noodle
yes, everything depends. being "in the black" depends on your business plan,
operating costs, cost of living, etc..

the only real indicator of a "past this point, you're successful" is when you
start making more money than you're spending on expenses and paying yourself
and your other employees/founders as a reasonable salary.

and even then, it is not necessarily the case that after you pass that point,
you'll be successful forever. things can change.

~~~
maurycy
But this is obvious and is not what I'm asking for.

What I'm asking for is your experience with traffic. When you launched the
site, how many users you had initially, what is the average monthly growth and
such stuff.

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sanswork
I think stating an average grown is a very difficult thing to do but probably
slightly above 1%.

Thats taking into account the few sites that blow up huge quickly, the other
sites that gradually grow and the vast vast majority that never grow.

