On: The bar for success in our industry is too low

[flooha]

Summary: If you don't make a profit, you're not successful.

Enlightening. Hey, guess what? A lot of businesses have run in the negative until they got traction and make a metric ton of money. Congratulations on being profitable from day one. TMTOWTDI

That said, I despise the twitter business model...

[run4yourlives → flooha]

>Hey, guess what? A lot of businesses have run in the negative until they got traction and make a metric ton of money.

I think the key point here is that while they are in the negative phase, they aren't "successful businesses"; they're struggling to survive. Jason's problem it seems is not so much that people aren't profitable, its that they are credited with being successful prematurely.

[flooha → run4yourlives]

I get his point, and agree with it. In hindsight, I think I was responding more to the underlying theme of nearly every 37signal blog post.

[tptacek → flooha]

What, that successful technology entrepreneurship isn't a potion doled out in little bottles by the gatekeepers in Waltham and Sand Hill Road? That you can apply the same common sense that bike shop owners and building contractors do, reach Internet-scale success, and not live in a sleeping bag on your friend's floor while you do it?

[flooha → tptacek]

No, that it's easy and obvious and a certain amount of luck has nothing to do with it.

EDIT: Or maybe it's just the "We know the best way to do everything" attitude.

I admire their success, but not the condescension. I might be the only one here, but not the only one.

[tptacek → flooha]

If you don't make a profit, you're not successful. That does about sum it up.

You're the one that's extrapolating here.

Fried is indirectly criticical of the Evernote model, but he isn't writing it off. What he's saying --- straightforwardly --- is that Evernote isn't a business success, yet.

What he's very directly critical of is the lazy journalism that valorizes the Evernotes of the industry. Evernote may be successful one day. It may even be very likely that Evernote will be successful. Maybe very successful. But it hasn't happened yet.

[wouterinho → flooha]

The argument is that proper credits should be given to companies once they make that switch from getting traction to actually make money. Currently, media and blogs more and more name a company successful when they have traction, but not yet make money.

I tend to agree with the statements made in the blogpost.