

Web 2.0 Startup Lessons - What I did right / where I screwed up - varun
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/web-2.0-startup-lessons

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patio11
Quote: _We were selling 'cool' and riding on hope; never really figured out
how we will make money out of it._

Oof!

 _Can't run a start-up part time: have to give it everything you've got._

I think this is largely a result of, and I mean this in the nicest possible
way, a Silicon Valley cultural pathology that says that you're not really
working unless you're working until 4 AM in the morning.

I have never had an interpreter throw an
InsufficientlyDedicatedToTheProjectException. You are probably not in a
business which has radical changes on a week to week basis. Why assume that
pace is normative?

~~~
varun
I think you are right to some extent, but its fairly regular that when you are
excited about something you are doing - time, sleep, etc take a backseat.
You'll spend all your time thinking about it / building it. That is why it is
important to be clear in your head - what do you love - the product or the
business.

We loved the product we were building, so that kept us going. For
geeks/hackers, the primary motivation is to build something they like, instead
of $$. The money is incidental and its easy to get carried away with the
'product'. Some of us ended up working 7 days a week, 15 hrs a day on it. 4am
everyday (and partly because some team members were in India). I think the
frenetic pace, esp. is startups is natural and a good thing, but the key is to
work smart - not just hard.

The experience has made me ask to myself almost every time I see a cool web
app - 'ok, but how will it make money ?', and if it can't, then it would not
be more than a short-lived dream for its founders and backers.

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menloparkbum
Most post mortems like these totally miss the point. The reason you failed is
because not enough people want your product. It doesn't matter where you're
located, who's on the team, how AJAXy your product is and so forth if nobody
wants to use it. Your user database and server logs don't lie.

~~~
varun
"The reason you failed is because not enough people want your product."

Never got to test that theory out, because even if enough people wanted the
product, the business model around it is something which we haven't been able
to figure out. We have the product's version 2.0 sitting ready (substantial
updates from whats visible in ver1.0 demos) but we do not see a clear exit
yet, so are hesitant to launch it. Being blogged about major tech blogs (from
Lifehacker, Mashable, etc), some folks loving it around the world and writing
reviews in ~ dozen languages - we already got that love. If we stayed out in
the market more - we'd probably get more 'love'. But 'love' can only keep the
servers humming for so long :)

------
minalecs
unfortunately alertle is down, but good stuff.

~~~
varun
Thanks :)

Btw, Alertle is a completely single page application - can call it '100%
AJAX'. Demos still available at:
<http://varunmathur.net/post/83802002/alertle-current-status>

