Disqus - Latest Comments for betterlabs

Re: Slow Capital

betterlabs — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:42:34 -0000

Its also important to be ready to "practice slow" wherever you are and with whatever you are doing and it would inevitably involve compromises. A lot of startups that take the slow route can be called "lifestyle businesses" which is simply a wrong way to look at their approach. 37Signals can be defined as a "slow startup" that is making a lot of money and am sure has people who are a lot happier than other startups who are running as fast as they can.

Re: Slow Capital

betterlabs — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:33:40 -0000

Slow capital supporting slow startup could really be immensely valuable for a number of reasons. Without the extreme pressure for revenue, startups will make better decisions and entrepreneurs will also not burn out and loose all their work-life balance to realize 4 years later that it was not worth it. I am just not sure if all VCs have the liberty to do that with the pressure to ensure returns for their own investors. But it has to start somewhere and its awesome that USV adopts this philosophy.

Re: Building lifestyle companies versus VC-backable startups: Is it walk before you run?

betterlabs — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:01:15 -0000

Andrew: Great article and definitely an important point that comes up within my circle of friends doing/wanting to do startups. I have been part of a hugely funded startup as a cofounder as well as a bootstrapped one that is focused on making money. I made/make more from the latter, which I believe, may be statistically always the winner, not in terms of the amount of money made but the number of times it is made. And yes, this is definitely an important thing to consider for every entrepreneur before starting on something.

Most of my objections with this article were clarified in James' and your comments. I believe what matters is that you start a company that solves a problem and can generate a profit by selling its product to its customers and continue to do that in a sustainable fashion, VC-backed or not. Greg of RightNow took his company public with the bootstrapped approach and I think James explains the reason why most bootstrapped profitable startups don't go big really well.

I think if you changed the VC-backed to VC-backable in the article, all of us (fans of your posts) will clearly agree with it. And I DO THINK that its a good thing to try to build something that is VC-backable, but be sure to not always think that that will make you money. Most likely, it won't based on the stats. But it will make you VC-fundable :-) (which I think is another interesting topic!)

Re: The most important question to ask before taking seed money

betterlabs — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:13:28 -0000

Chris, couldn't agree more. But with VC requirements of a startup shrinking, its also becoming important that you raise seed money from the "right" set of angels/incubators, who I believe are increasing serving as "screeners" for larger VCs, who don't/can't spend time looking at all early stage deals. So a bootstrapped startup that is ramen profitable on its own, suffers from a disadvantage of not being able to potentially get in front of large VCs because they are not "screened" by the prominent angels/incubators.

Re: Tracked.com

betterlabs — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:43:42 -0000

Fred:

Played around with Tracked.com and I totally agree that its an awesome product. I felt the same about ZoomInfo when I first saw it but I think it didn't evolve to fulfill its real potential. Having said that, I really believe that the success of such data services lie in how their data can be leveraged by other applications via an API. I was surprised to see no information of API on the tracked.com website. I hope it is coming soon because developers would truly be able to make the most use of the Tracked.com data by pulling and putting it in context for users across a wide range of applications. ZoomInfo, Hoovers, LinkedIn all are really limiting their potential by not opening up their data and I hope Tracked.com doesn't do the same.

Re: Most Startups Should be Deer Hunters

betterlabs — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:47:13 -0000

Apt.

Do you think DailyBooth is a feature or a company?

Re: Why low-fidelity prototyping kicks butt for customer-driven design

betterlabs — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:48:39 -0000

Just sent it to you via email. Let me know what you think :)

Re: Most Startups Should be Deer Hunters

betterlabs — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:16:19 -0000

I couldn't agree more and I think this is the best articulation of a common problem that every smart entrepreneurial salesperson realizes.

I'd like to add one more point for going after elephants. My first startup ended up selling mainly to elephants (large mobile carriers). As we sold to carriers in Europe and Asia and Africa, and listened "a little too closely" to our customers who had varying requirements as their markets were very different, we turned from a product to a solutions company. And its tough to turn back with all the revenue pressure and promises sales has to make to close accounts.

You warning about going after rabbits is perfect as well. The success of Basecamp has spawned way too many features-being-launched-as-SaaS-products companies (think of how many online invoicing apps are out there) and its impossible for them to build meaningful businesses in the long run. I think building meatier products that you can charge upwards of $100/month and ideally $500/month is much better.

Thanks for spurring such a valuable discussion.

Re: Why low-fidelity prototyping kicks butt for customer-driven design

betterlabs — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:08:10 -0000

I agree but I like to use Mircosoft Excel as it allows me to make the mockups very detailed and granular so it almost feels like HTML. Most people I work with and show the XLS UIs think I am crazy but love the UIs anyway :) I would have loved to paste a screen capture of that in the comments but can't do that!

Great post!

Re: RSS Is Alive And Well

betterlabs — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:12:54 -0000

True, but I admire your ability to come up with as many interesting topics on a daily basis. Its one thing to think about them and another to get a thoughtful articulation of it written up EVERYday. Very cool.

Re: RSS Is Alive And Well

betterlabs — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:10:09 -0000

I believe Readers may still be too techie for most users of the web on this planet. Most users use email comfortably and what is needed is something as simple as email to help identify and consumer content you like.

Re: RSS Is Alive And Well

betterlabs — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:06:14 -0000

Exactly.

Re: RSS Is Alive And Well

betterlabs — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:03:05 -0000

I am so late on this thread but nevertheless just wanted to say I agree whole heartedly with both the points. One that RSS is not dead, will not die and is/will be a big part of the way data is accessed/pushed around for building valuable consumer services of the future. As a matter of fact, I am part of a stealth startup that is doing one such service. Second, that the tech blogosphere really should not make such bold statements without research/facts/supporting arguments. The analysis is flawed is one thing, but the fact that its read by million of users and then also found by others over a period of time is a huge problem associated with the way data is published without rating/policing over the web (thats a problem/opportunity in itself). A little bit of responsible writing will help all of us.

Re: What We Can Learn From Mess

betterlabs — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:39:41 -0000

Am I the first person to use the 'Like' feature today? :-)

Re: What We Can Learn From Mess

betterlabs — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:39:04 -0000

I didn't read this comment before I posted mine, which makes a similar point but your articulation of it if way better. I think its really important to build "wildly profitable" businesses FIRST, and large businesses SECOND. I have been in a situation, where we tried to build a large business first and 9 years later, profitability is still not predictable quarter over quarter. A lot depends on the nature of the team, their purpose and the objectives of the investors, which I agree are tough to come together to create a CL like business. I believe a lot of CL like business will be built by bootstrapped startup founders than VC-funded ones. I may be wrong, but it seems more likely.

Re: What We Can Learn From Mess

betterlabs — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:33:57 -0000

Precisely.

Re: What We Can Learn From Mess

betterlabs — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:33:14 -0000

Can't agree more. CL is a model that most of us, if not all, crave for. While it can tough to re-create a CL like company, I think its important to make sure that a startup is built, from the ground up, to try to be like CL. Money has a lot to do with it as well. When you raise a few million dollars, it tough to keep the discipline to remain small. Having said that, I agree that most USV companies are diff than many other VC funded startups in terms of being small and trying to create a CL like model.

I also think that every startup can be CL like and it doesn't have to be a $100m business. If you make $2m and your costs are <$200K, I think that is good as well as every segment may not be as big as CL's.

Re: Techstars

betterlabs — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:28:42 -0000

Hi Fred:

I was a little surprised you didn't mention SendGrid which is in an unglamorous space but solving a real problem with a huge market. What do you think about them?

Re: Monetize The Audience, Not The Content

betterlabs — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:43:27 -0000

I agree, however, like your title says, I think this sort of a model might work best for niche audiences rather than mainstream news sites like NYT which definitely need to have a lot, if not all, content freely available. The FT kind of model can work for a lot of content sites, not necessarily just news sites. For example, I am pretty sure MarketingSherpa might find this model more lucrative than their subscription-only model, especially since their content is very valuable and their audience is well defined. Their audience won't mind paying every month if they exceed a certain number of visits. I am not sure it could work generally for all sorts of news sites though.

Re: 7 Reasons Why TechCrunch’s New Tablet Can Crush The Kindle

betterlabs — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:51:41 -0000

Totally agree. I am looking forward to the CrunchPad as well.

Re: Biographies That Will Rev Up Your Entrepreneurial Drive

betterlabs — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:47:12 -0000

Great list, Andrew.

Btw, are the mixergy podcasts/videos now available on iTunes? I couldn't find them the last time I checked.

Cheers!

Re: Conferences

betterlabs — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:28:54 -0000

Well said, Fred. This is a great post and while I agree with the points made in the comments about TED, I also agree with you that if the content is available on the web, then there might be only an incremental value in traveling and attending it live. Being in the Valley, it almost seems un-cool to not be at every possible conference or event (there are several every week) and yet I have not been able to convince myself of the value in attending. I think there are better/faster/more productive ways of achieving the objectives of sales, business development, recruiting or whatever else people go to conferences for. Its personal though, I think, so to each his own like @angus says.

Re: 10 Small Business Lead Nurturing Tools

betterlabs — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:14:30 -0000

Great post. You might also want to take a look at Nurture http://www.nurturehq.com which is probably the simplest one and yet very powerful.

Re: Geocities

betterlabs — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:14:27 -0000

Joe, I wonder what the cost of running Geocities was and why it could not have been put on a backburner - didn't look like they were developing it anyway. There's so much they could have done with that property. A MySpace for businesses perhaps.

Re: Geocities

betterlabs — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:12:32 -0000

Great post, Fred and one of the best and most inspiring ones on this blog.