I agree with the point that it would be interesting to hear about more companies that are enjoying more "modest" success . It seems like most of those folks are too busy running their businesses to leave much time for PR though.
I think a bigger problem is not hearing about massive successes that fall outside the tech elite's interest. For instance WebKinz the virtual world/stuffed animal hybrid probably generates 9 figures of revenue per year, given Club Penguin was doing ~$75MM when it got acquired. How many TechCrunch stories have they had? A quick search yields 0 dedicated results. Thats huge revenue for what amounts to a startup within a toy company and no coverage in the publication of record. However we hear about every stupid ad based socialgraphwidgetfacebookappgcasualgame startup that raises $500K.
Also, it seems a little silly to say "We want to stay small!" and then to say "Why doesn't the press want to write about us!" Rails is awesome, but the rest of their offering has been eclipsed by Google Docs. They have done a great job attracting press compared to the value their products create. Same goes for other small companies where there isn't a lot of "there" there.
I think 37S is only able to generate revenue because of their huge time investment in PR. Really profitable, small web companies are based on niche markets. 37S has no niche market, other than innovators that love rails and similar stuff. As you say, their offer has been mostly eclipsed by Google, Zoho, and other web outfits. So, they need to keep the PR strategy to continue making decent money.
Companies that have a well defined niche, on the other hand, don't need to spend much time or money on PR. And many of them are more successful than 37S.
And they go to conferences, and give speeches, and create user experience commercials, and (probably) hustle the media for articles. Hell they might even pay a PR firm! Or advertise!
"We’ve advertised here and there, but all things considered the number would round down to zero. We’re currently advertising Highrise on The Deck, for example.
I don’t have anything against advertising, but we’ve found better ways to get our message out than spending money on advertisements.
I like what Amazon.com does: Instead of advertising they give their ad budget back to their customers in the form of free shipping."
Where facts are concerned (as opposed to speculation, which I'm not interested in), I'm still not seeing how any of that is an inordinate expense of time or money. Attending a conference is now a sign that your company is built on PR? Wha?
IMO, the reason that successful businesses like Club Penguin don't get TechCrunch coverage is this:
TechCrunch isn't aimed at successful, profitable businesses.
TechCrunch is essentially a brothel; Arrington fancies himself a pimp. So it is populated by whores, and patronized mainly by people who want to pay for sex.
TechCrunch is about VC, it's about the dream of the big cashout, it's about perpetuating the startup mythos.
Those other businesses simply don't fit that agenda.
How does Club Penguin not fit the startup mythos? Started by a couple of guys to solve a problem they had and figured other people must have (not enough for small children to do online). Made the product themselves based on some Flash stuff one of them had been building. Huge viral growth, big acquisition. Sounds like a classic startup success to me.
The startup mythos as interpreted by Arrington (and, to a lesser extent, HN) does not involve non-whiz-bang stuff. Social bookmarking? Yes, that's great, it's got an API or something right? Flash video games for kids not old enough to ride the bus alone? Not cool enough. Not hackery.
You may be right about Arrington, but that's not how I see HN. I haven't noticed any prejudice here against things like Flash video games for kids. On the contrary, patio11 and his bingo cards (surely a lower bound for whatever definition of 'cool' you're talking about) are kind of local heroes.
OK, that's not how you see HN. I wasn't writing about HN originally. Every sentence fragment began with "TechCrunch." :)
On HN, you have a slew of TC-style masturbatory stories about funding and then you've got a handful of less exciting "hard luck" cases that touch people because they're like orphans who sing and dance.
Like that post about the plumber -- it's Puritan Work Ethic pr0n.
Most HN readers seem to think they're going to end up with the funding (the former), but at the same time they want to hear from those heartwarming orphans (the latter).
"In fact Yunus' story is actually actively counter-productive to the interests of systems like the venture capital system, since that is a system which maintains class division around concentrations of wealth, and this story demonstrates that eroding or circumventing those systems can be more profitable than co-operating with them.
The real reason you won't find this stuff on TechCrunch is because TechCrunch is about power, not money; because this story is too capitalist for the world of venture capital; and because TechCrunch embodies extremely unpleasant class politics." -- http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/never-hate-only-eve...
I think a bigger problem is not hearing about massive successes that fall outside the tech elite's interest. For instance WebKinz the virtual world/stuffed animal hybrid probably generates 9 figures of revenue per year, given Club Penguin was doing ~$75MM when it got acquired. How many TechCrunch stories have they had? A quick search yields 0 dedicated results. Thats huge revenue for what amounts to a startup within a toy company and no coverage in the publication of record. However we hear about every stupid ad based socialgraphwidgetfacebookappgcasualgame startup that raises $500K.
Also, it seems a little silly to say "We want to stay small!" and then to say "Why doesn't the press want to write about us!" Rails is awesome, but the rest of their offering has been eclipsed by Google Docs. They have done a great job attracting press compared to the value their products create. Same goes for other small companies where there isn't a lot of "there" there.