Some musings from a founder of a 2 year old web app….

Some musings from an entrepreneur running a startup for the past 2 years…

btw, youtube has big monetisation issues at the moment. They are tying really hard and from what I’ve heard, its going to be extremely difficult. Vimeo on the other hand, who have a more slow and steady approach seem to be doing ok and I expect big things (business wise) from them in the coming year.

Twitter, who wants to go it alone, had to remove features (international sms) in order to stay afloat, simply because they grew to fast. They then changed tactics and now are looking at a more frugal approach.

I think its the way to go – its not 2000-2003 anymore, investors don’t throw money at startups anymore (even if they want investors).

Btw. I came across your blog yesterday and had a lot of fun reading through the articles.

I’ve been reading a lot about being frugal right now and I think it’s the right mindset for entrepreneurs (and especially webapps) – but then I wonder, what about Youtube (which I know the sheer scale of it is an exception), or perhaps something similar – where when times are good and money (and credit) is easy, building a large audience is all that matters?

Do you think you’d still say be frugal if cash was easy to come by, and your investors were just throwing it at you to grow the userbase as fast as you could? Or totally disagree with that as a business model?

Personally I’ve always thought that model of “lets just grow the audience really, really big and fast and who cares about revenue” was unsustainable, and just betting that you get bought before you run out of money, but then I wonder how many other frugal, responsible startups end up getting shuttered because their larger competitors got bought out.

Keep going !

A very interesting read; thank you for sharing your thoughts honestly and openly. There are some very useful tips to take onboard in your musings. I’ll certainly be making anote of them.

Regards

Paul

I always love reading other peoples’ thoughts, especially when they shed light into personal things. Your first two thoughts were especially surprising to me.

I’ve had a notebook for a little while now, it’s nice to map out plans and cross of goals, etc.