

Double Tap - dmor
http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/04/double-tap/

======
qeorge
I respect the honesty of this post, but I didn't like that dig at The Four
Hour Work Week!

4HWW is about putting systems in place that remove _you_ and thus allow your
company to scale. Until you remove yourself you don't have a real business. Of
course when you walk away it dies.

Ironically, that seems to be the existential problem Refer.ly had/has - its
only compelling content is the founder's blog.

~~~
callmeed
First of all, that's not at all how I interpret the 4HWW book. That's
subjective, of course, but I personally didn't like the book or find it
useful.

Second, I challenge you to find any founder/hacker of a fast-growing,
successful startup who lives out the philosophy in that book. They aren't
compatible. Look for blog posts about when Tim Ferriss spoke at RailsConf a
few years back (spoiler alert: it wasn't well received).

~~~
jmduke
_Second, I challenge you to find any founder/hacker of a fast-growing,
successful startup who lives out the philosophy in that book. They aren't
compatible. Look for blog posts about when Tim Ferriss spoke at RailsConf a
few years back (spoiler alert: it wasn't well received)._

You aren't really addressing his point though.

Dmor made a dig at the 'idea' of a four hour work week (that is, the idea that
you can just succeed as a founder without putting in massive hours.) The
comment to which you're replying is that, hey, Four Hour Work Week isn't
saying that its an obvious instant option -- it's a goal to which you can work
towards.

~~~
orofino
I think, that you're actually missing the point. 4HWW (at least to me) is
about finding a business you don't necessarily care about, that can be easily
automated, and provides an ongoing income stream. That's it.

I don't read it as a story about founding a successful company, I read it as a
story about finding a income delivery mechanism that lets you spend your time
on things you'd rather be doing.

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mkrecny
I really empathize with you Danielle, but this:

"If you stop working on your startup, it dies."

Is certainly not applicable to certain types of startups. If you provide a
valuable tool, such as one that positively impacts a businesses' bottom line,
they'll keep using it (and keep paying you) regardless of whether or not you
update your site or email them.

~~~
dmor
Maybe I should say it dies _eventually_?

~~~
obviouslygreen
Maybe you should avoid generalizations that need to be carefully qualified
just to become less wrong. This is such a broad statement about a type of
business that can be almost _any_ business that even before you try to make a
statement about it you've almost certainly made yourself incorrect.

You have an experience that's valuable and you're presenting it to people;
that's good and helpful. Stick with that. There's no need to try and apply it
to a much wider audience than is actually relevant.

~~~
GuiA
>Maybe you should avoid generalizations that need to be carefully qualified
just to become less wrong.

But that's what 90% of startup blogging is about! :)

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uptown
I'm curious - Why would a startup, that apparently was struggling, acquire
another company just two months ago?

"YC-Backed Referly Acquires LaunchGram, Eyes Ramen Profitability"

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5251196>

~~~
GuiA
Because a lot of decisions in Silicon Valley aren't rational, despite what
people would like you to think– it's mostly political based on who's buddy
with who.

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saumil07
I'll disagree with the top commenter - I enjoyed the four hour workweek dig.

Regardless, as a fellow founder with a startup of a roughly similar age and an
office literally across the street from Referly this post makes me profoundly
sad and more determined. I can't imagine what it's like to walk into an empty
office with cleaned-out desks. I walk through our office late at night
sometimes, so happy to see the standing desks filled with monitor mounts and
noise-canceling headphones and post-it notes and Mac power cords snaking over
cheap Ikea particle board. On my more morbid evenings, I wonder if I'll ever
have to walk down the aisle and stare at a pile of empty desks...and it makes
me double down and work harder than ever before.

Hats off to @dmor for sharing so candidly. I don't think I could do it if I
were in her position.

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birken
I don't mean to pile on, but just one point about the data representation: I
wouldn't add the cumulative lines to any of these graphs. It's almost never
the right way to visualize data concerning growth, and just makes the data
look better than it is.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thank you. It took me sometime to go beyond the initial "up, to the right,
better than linear" impression which the glance at a nice redline gives you

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mbesto
> _It’s all spam._

The scary thing is you could have easily continued Refer.ly, exited, sold it,
and it would then turn into someone else's zombie problem. As much as we all
hate spam, there is a simple reason that it exists - it works. Kudos to the
founders for "doing the right thing" instead of just another pump 'n dump.

@dmor - remember this convo a couple of months back :)
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4655905>

~~~
jonathanjaeger
Define exited/solid it? Selling to a medium-sized or big company or selling it
on a marketplace like Flippa? Depending on the value of your site and company,
selling it might be more troublesome or costly in time and money than it's
worth to the potential buyer.

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rattray
Gotta respect that kind of biting honesty. Thanks, dmor.

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ahoyhere
Not even close to universally true.

About 4 months after we launched our first SaaS, we fell off the face of the
planet for months (long annoying story). It didn't grow… much. But it also
didn't shrink. It was pulling in several grand a month on idle. We did it
again a couple years later when it was a 5-figure amount, although we (mostly)
kept answering support emails this time. No big deal. Now in the last 18 mos,
for 6-9 mos we had total coverage on customer support, but zero new features
and just one marketing push etc and again, it grew, but slowly.

Would I RECOMMEND it? No. I'm not telling you this story to encourage you to
make the same mistakes we did (and no longer do). But did it kill us? Hardly.
We still grew, except at the very end, and the "contraction" then was
miniscule… a few hundred dollars out of $20k+/mo. (Now >$30k.)

Social startups require more more more more more more more more more more,
always more. They're baby birds forever, mouths open, shrieking. Startups
delivering measurable value to even the tiniest of businesses are not, do not.
Business value is self-perpetuating. Your app is not less valuable next month
if there are no new features; it is just as valuable as it was last month.

You get to choose which path you take.

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ujsfdo
hi dmor, i know you catch flak from neckbeards on here, but one thing i
noticed two weeks ago was the revenue numbers you post in your header. i find
that so brave -- if it were to reopen as a communal blogging platform i would
be MORE likely to sign up, not less, due to that openness.

