

Big Websites Start Small - rosshill
http://www.rosshill.com.au/article/big-websites-start-small/

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ojbyrne
The $200 figure was created by digg PR. Later on they decided that $1000 was
more believable (also not true). And elance wasn't involved. The site was
pretty ugly for the first 6 months. But that was in 2004, the barriers to
entry are higher now.

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vaksel
agreed...if you could get away with putting up a crappy design in this day and
age, pg would have made that a point for the YC startups.

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rokhayakebe
Frankly design (as in look) does not matter as much as design (as in
usability). You can get away with a very basic design as long as you are
providing a valuable service. In other words what you can do with great
programming and basic HTML skills will always be superior to what you can do
with great Photoshop/CSS skills and little programming experience. This is the
same reason why small restaurants with great food, but crappy look can easily
outscore a million dollar establishment with poor food quality.

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swombat
Focusing on making everything look slick upfront is an easy mistake to make.
The first step is to get the essential "process" working. In some cases, the
graphical design of the site is a part of that task, but in most cases, the
core of the site's success is in whether the user workflows work well and
people are using the site. So it's certainly wise to focus on that first.

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dpeq
It really depends on your target demographic. Look at HN, where the most
fascinating feature is it's simplicity and that's an ideal of beauty for
hackers. But there's tons of people who would turn away because the layout is
not shiny enough.

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Jebdm
Definitely. I can't wait until gradients go out of style again.

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azharcs
_Have you got the next million-dollar idea? Head over to RentACoder or eLance
and make it happen._

I am totally against this kind of advice, i always believe people should not
get into businesses which they don't understand; be it Internet, Stock
markets, Space Tourism or selling Coffee. At the end of the day, you have to
understand what you are doing and why you are doing it. With this kind of
advice, you will have innocent(dumb) people thinking that, all they have to do
is find a developer on RentaCoder and pitch him their million-dollar idea and
they are rich. There are many more subtleties in starting a startup and like
any other businesses, you have to be knowledgeable about it to make it a
success.

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medianama
"i always believe people should not get into businesses which they don't
understand"

I don't think internet businesses are all about writing code... There isn't
any strong correlation between web development skills and ability to build a
successful web business...

If a person can conceptualize a service that he can take to market and spend
some money from his pocket to get it developed... I'd say his chances of
success would be higher than average web developer who develops something that
might not have a market

