

Bootstrapped with 1000 paying users OR viral app with 1M non-paying users?  - codegeek

What would you prefer: bootstrapped with 1000 paying customers but the company may not scale to million paying customers OR a possible funded social/viral etc. app that could scale to millions of users but non-paying?&#60;p&#62;I ask and wonder because I have 2 ideas that I am struggling to lock down and one of them falls in the former category while the second one falls in the latter.
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staunch
It's easier to know how you're doing when you charge money. If you have 10
paying customers you're not doing well. If you have 100k free users you
probably won't know how you're doing, you may need them to some specific
behavior or need larger numbers to make your thing work.

I wouldn't pick one because you think it will be easier than the other. It's
safer to assume they'll both be really hard, but probably in different ways.

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tstegart
I'd go with the first one. You can make it scale with other ideas later on or
with new products, and you'll have a solid base to work off of. The viral app
idea is a crapshoot these days.

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codegeek
Thanks. That is what I am leaning towards as well.

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pizza
Well, with the first one you'd make money and do less tech support.

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staunch
Paying customers are (rightly) far more demanding.

