
How Guy Kawasaki Launched Truemors for $12,107.09 - divia
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/06/by_the_numbers_.html
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fraXis
I don't understand why everyone is so critical of what Guy has done and the
steps he has taken to accomplish it.

I am not a big fan of Truemors, but I really enjoyed reading about what he
spent and the things he did to get it off of the ground.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
_I don't understand why everyone is so critical of what Guy has done_

He seems patronizing: his entire post reads like a satire, i.e., " _Look, ma,
I made a social networking site, too, just like the ones all the cool kids are
visiting these days_ ".

Also, he seems to enjoy mocking the lower costs inherent in Web 2.0 by
_exaggerating how cheaply_ he built the whole thing.

That may not be his intention, but that's certainly how it comes across.

~~~
lindsayrgwatt
Do you think he's being insincere or just a showman? My feeling is that Guy
likes to exaggerate everything to make a point: in this case, it's getting
really cheap to fail, so take more risks.

Thoughts?

~~~
dpapathanasiou
It smacks of insincerity, especially because he seems to enjoy the part about
"no business plan".

Any responsible investor, either angel or VC, will want to have some sense
about that, even if revenues and profits "come later".

YC gets a lot of criticism in that regard, but to their credit, they _do_ ask
applicants how they intend to make money with their project.

~~~
lindsayrgwatt
I totally agree that you need a business "model" - but do you really need a
"plan" for a site that costs $12,000?

If he can get 260K page views, even a 0.5% clickthru @ only $0.10 an ad is
$130. Not great, but if you can do it every day you've got a site that's
pulling in $50K in revenue a year. Not bad, but could be something to explore.

I totally agree with you that you need to know where your business is going to
go and if you want to get real funding you'd better have a business plan, but
if you're running a $12K test, why not just make sure you think there's a
model and then test it?

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npk
Random question, when does one need to incorporate? I'm building an app slowly
and only have a few $10s to spend every month. Clearly, I can not afford extra
expenditures.

My friends will see a private beta, and then I'd like to start looking for
some funding. Will I need to be incorporated before that point?

~~~
sabat
From what I understand, you don't necessarily have to be incorporated to seek
funding. That would happen as a matter of course if you got a deal.

The main reason to incorporate or LLC is to protect yourself from legal
liability. If someone sues you, you want to protect your personal assets from
being part of that lawsuit. If you're not even going to be live, then you may
not have anything to worry about.

~~~
pg
Another reason to incorporate is so that, when you have multiple people
working on something, there is an entity for the code to belong to.

~~~
nostrademons
I'm curious - if individual founders write a significant amount of code before
incorporation, do they then have to legally sign over rights to the code to
the corporation once it's been formed? Are there persistent legal problems
that might arise from working first and incorporating later, or can everything
be solved by a good lawyer? (Assuming a good working relationship between
cofounders...if there's no legal framework and then things get sour, I'd
imagine there're lots of problems that might arise...)

~~~
pg
It's not so much legal problems you have to worry about. When the code belongs
to a company the founders collectively own, they have more incentive to
cooperate. Till you have such an agreement, any founder could bail and take
his code with him, as supposedly happened with Facebook. Arguably any startup
whose founders would do such a thing would be doomed anyway, but even in
startups where the founders can trust one another, having the company own the
code tends to make them cooperate more, as I've heard marriage does vs. just
going out.

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donna
Seems Guy played that hand perfectly. He bet that 'inquiry minds want to
know.' named it Truemors, or as I usually mistaken and slur Tumors. I'm unable
to hold on to 'true rumors'. However, I disagree with Guy, he did create a
business plan ... not one that requires 20 slides, but one that suits his own
5 second elevator pitch evangelist style.

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andre
Tips for outsourcing like Guy did:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=26310>

~~~
andre
I'd love to see a follow up in 90 days to this story, maybe with how much
money the site made, etc.

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kyro
400 dollars, for that logo?!

If anything, he could've saved an extra $1000 at least, giving me a bit more
hope as I start my venture.

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vlad
I'm surprised he's proud of any one of those points, let alone all of them.
But I think the true reason behind writing the article is to convince his
readers, as well as himself, that he's doing this just to see what happens.

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ivan
I have nothing against GK but also can't understand this amount

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sabat
_$1,115.05. I spent $1,115.05 registering domains. I could have used GoDaddy
and done it a lot cheaper, but I was too stupid and lazy._

I don't understand this part (either). First of all, 55 domains is way
overkill. Maybe some of the country-coded TLDs are worth it if you're really
going to do, say, a German-language Truemors.

Ok, so even then, 55 x $6.95 =~ $385. (GoDaddy does $6.95 domains with
discount codes. There are scores of discount codes out there. Use CHILL3, for
instance.) I can understand being a little lazy, but $700 lazy? Even if you're
rich, 700 bucks is 700 bucks.

If it was me: F the country codes. Register .com, .org, .net, .us, .info,
.biz. And you're done -- in fact, you're beyond done. You don't really need
that crap at all. You need some SEO instead, perhaps.

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mynameishere
$4,824.14. The total cost of the legal fees was $4,824.14.

(???)

The only reason Truemors is getting so much coverage is that its Guys
site.

Too bad it's worthless. If he actually made something new and/or innovative,
his celebrity would actually be put to good use.

~~~
iamwil
Perhaps it's worthless in its current implementation or intended domain. I
wouldn't write off the idea so quickly though. A lot of how humans get their
news is through gossip from their trusted network of informants. Truemors did
away with the trusted network to rely on global voting. I'm not sure this is
the way to go.

Well, just because you're a celebrity doesn't mean you can't fail. You just
fail bigger.

~~~
NickDouglas
You hit my biggest problem with the idea: Gossip already spreads better among
networks of people who care. It's not some concept I can just go to a page
for. So the topic of the content is not a value add.

As for the technology, we've seen how cheap and reproducible that is. News.yc,
Reddit, Digg, Netscape, and dozens of other sites have technology that
probably beats that of Truemors. So the company isn't worth buying for that.

Some companies get bought for their employees. Well, Guy's "1.5" employees, if
he's talking about a full-timer and part-timer other than himself, aren't
visionaries, they're just people who can turn around one of Guy's ideas. Come
to think of it, that makes them better potential hires for a big company than
most headstrong, visionary startuppers.

So Guy just spent $12k making himself feel good. By doing so, he demonstrated
how detached he is from the real world -- which, psychologically speaking, is
a fine way to live. If you're like Guy and you can afford to blow $12,000
doing it.

