

How much time should be given to a start up to succeed? - Fuca

If after 2 years your site does grow just a little, but stays around 1,000 daily users, would you call it quits?
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bfioca
Easy - as long as you can stomach. Longer if you or people you trust still
think there's any way at all to succeed.

With stagnation - don't call it quits, find out what your users want and give
it to them. Completely redesign your product if you need to.

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pchristensen
1) What do you (and anyone else involved with the site) want out of life?
(could be enough money to camp on a beach in Thailand or your own private jet,
bringing satisfaction to people, starting a media empire, having money taken
care of so you have time for family and friends, etc)

2) Does this site provide that for you?

3) If it provides some but not all of your needs/wants, could you continue
running it on the side while you start a new project?

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daniel-cussen
It varies from case to case, but you should keep doing it as long as it's the
best option. Though it's hard to gauge, if the expected outcome is better than
what you'd get for starting a new startup or working a desk job, then you
should keep going at it.

1000 users is pretty good, in my opinion. They could help you morph your
startup into something better. But don't give up on the startup, just change
it around a little.

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iamelgringo
There's no reason that you can't keep your site going, and start another one.
Monetize the site a bit, so it pays for it's own hosting, and give it another
go. I say fail early, fail often.

If you're spending all your time nursing a site that just isn't gaining
traction, there are other ideas that you could be pursuing that could gain
traction and make you more money.

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Mistone
wouldn't call it quits but would do a serious review of your goals, product,
and current user acquisition methods. It sounds like you are looking for more
growth and more users (duh). After 2 years you have a solid baseline to draw
conclusions from and now need to review usage stats - talk to users (pick up
the phone)- find out what they love and what they don't love. Make a plan for
updates - relaunch- and set a time line for this second stage - if your at the
same spot in terms of users then that is a good signal for moving on.

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davidw
Depends on the growth trend, and the money it's bringing in, and the founders'
needs.

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fleaflicker
It varies.

From "why not to start a startup":

"If you start a startup that succeeds, it's going to consume at least three or
four years. (If it fails, you'll be done a lot quicker.)"

I'd say that's accurate. If you're not going to make it you'll know within a
year or two. But don't expect instant success.

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bayareaguy
If the startup's original market assumptions haven't changed and it can stay
in business then I'd say it's ok. Unfortunately startups often don't notice
what's happening to their expected market until it's too late.

 _If after 2 years your site does grow just a little, but stays around 1,000
daily users, would you call it quits?_

What were you expecting 2 years ago? Are your expected users still out there
for you or did they all go to Facebook in the meantime?

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sonink
Assuming that you are going after a big hill - I think you need to figure out
the following things:

1\. Is it a big hill after all - your customers might want something else. If
it is not a big hill then figure out what a big hill is and reorient-realign-
refactor.

2\. If 1.is true then figure out that your value proposition solves that big
problem or not. For this you can sit with a target customer and figure that
out. If your value proposition is not good enough then figure out what could
be a good value proposition.

3\. If you are convinced that it is a good value proposition then it is just a
question of how you deliver it to the customer. And the most important thing
is that you have to be convinced whether it is a good value proposition or not
- and if you are then hang in there for as long as it takes and figure out a
delivery method.

Having said that, I think the only time you need to call it quits is when you
want to - and if you not want then there should be a way to make it fly, you
just need to figure out how.

..just my two cents

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Fuca
The thing that really amaze me is to see the site have no growth but still it
seems a some people return, how is this possible? You have a site that manages
to have users visit again and also get some users from search engines, but at
the end of the day you still have the same total of users as the day before?
it is not logical! (It is a site about cars).

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SwellJoe
Investors look for milestones being reached. Perhaps you should make yourself
some milestones, and begin doing what you have to do to reach them. Give
yourself a time table, and if you fail to reach those milestones, and fail to
see things you could change to reach those milestones, then your startup has
failed and it's time to change direction (possibly including shutting this one
down and doing something else).

One important thing to keep in mind: Don't repeat the same actions and expect
different results. Two years is plenty of time to know that what you're doing
isn't working.

Also...1,000 daily visitors is practically comatose for a site that isn't
selling something. An ad-supported site needs hundreds of thousands or
millions of visits per day to make you rich.

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axod
1,000 daily users isn't too shabby, not able to make an income off that?

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sharpshoot
Are you working on this full-time or part-time? Either way a 1000 users a day
in 2 years is not worth your time. You time is best spent on identifying an
opportunity that has the potential to be huge.

It takes the same amount of effort to do something which is tiny than to do
something big. Leave this behind, so something different and huge - you have
valuable experience now. You have to decide is this worth the effort?

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SwellJoe
This reminds me of something a couple of old oil prospectors told me a few
years back. It went something like this:

"You're going to bust your ass, no matter what. You might as well bust your
ass for $10 million, instead of $10,000."

That's stuck with me. If you aren't working on a huge opportunity, then you're
probably selling yourself too cheap. The thing I've been surprised to find is
that no matter how small a market is, you'll have competitors and you'll be
dividing up the spoils. You might as well work in a field that is huge, so
that the percentage of the market you can capitalize on equals millions rather
than thousands in revenues.

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edw519
Depends on how important it is to you.

If after 2 years, your kid still isn't walking, would you quit trying to teach
him?

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ivankirigin
The Romans allowed abortion until a child started speaking. Before then, they
weren't really considered human, I suppose.

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SwellJoe
That's not abortion, that's infanticide. But, still relevant, I suppose.

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ivankirigin
Semantics... but yes you're right. I think the perceptions that allow for
abortion or infanticide are similar (though that might be something I'm "not
allowed to say"). If it doesn't seem real to you, you can control and/or
destroy it.

Zygotes killed by contraception are similar. Very few people consider a
single-celled zygote a human.

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ranparas
Have you tried different avenues of reaching out to new users ? Have you tried
to take and accommodate feedback from your users ? Have you tried different
features ? If you think you've done your best and can't do anything more than
it's time to quit. Is it worth putting in cruise control ?

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sohail
The real question is: how the heck are you not making money off of 1000 daily
users? Don't tell me this is some social networking BS. If so, just quit now
and get half a business plan before starting your next one!

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SwellJoe
1,000 visitors daily to an ad-supported site is practically nothing. Maybe two
or three bucks, tops. We get more than that to our documentation wiki site
(which has no ads, and I wouldn't consider adding them because I believe it
would cost us more in credibility to include them than it would make in
revenue).

If the site is selling something, then 1000 a day can be a good start. A one
man shop selling some sort of digital goods could do very well with that many
visitors.

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thorax
Well, it depends on how much individual work the site takes. If you can get it
to go on auto-pilot then keep it around. You might consider finding ways to
put it closer to auto-pilot and work on something else.

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herdrick
Yes. Doubly so if you're asking the question.

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nextmoveone
Good question, what does everyone think?

