Ask YC: What does one do when one has explosive growth and no money?

[maxklein]

Let's go with a theoretical application, which is gaining thousands of users everyday, but is not producing income. The web server costs are mounting, the application can hardly handle the strain, what exactly does one do then?

One needs to throw more servers at the problem, but how would that be possible if the site is not producing income?

[MaysonL]

Post on the site, explaining the situation, asking for donations. If the users are enthusiastic about it, as it sounds, the money will come.

[wmf]

Get funding? This is the classic case for VC, assuming that you eventually plan to convert those users into revenue.

[maxklein → wmf]

Is that not too small for funding? And funding is a long process, is it not?

[gaius → maxklein]

Angel investors, then.

[dbrush]

I applied to Y Combinator.