How much time should be given to a start up to succeed?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101550

by Fuca • 19 years ago

20 30 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

If after 2 years your site does grow just a little, but stays around 1,000 daily users, would you call it quits?

nextmoveone• 19 years ago

Good question, what does everyone think?

davidw• 19 years ago

Depends on the growth trend, and the money it's bringing in, and the founders' needs.

edw519• 19 years ago

Depends on how important it is to you.

If after 2 years, your kid still isn't walking, would you quit trying to teach him?

pius2• 19 years ago

Profound stuff, man. :D

ivankirigin2• 19 years ago

The Romans allowed abortion until a child started speaking. Before then, they weren't really considered human, I suppose.

SwellJoe4• 19 years ago

That's not abortion, that's infanticide. But, still relevant, I suppose.

rms• 19 years ago

If I kid can't say "I think, therefore I am" and mean it, then...

icky• 19 years ago

Not only that, but they had to speak Latin!

daniel-cussen3• 19 years ago

If you think a reality show sucks after watching most of an episode, would you watch the ending?

The child analogy isn't perfect. You can't just dump a child like you can dump a bad startup. I agree that many people underestimate how much you have to commit to your startup, but you there probably is a scenario in which it would be wise to give up. It's a lot easier to think of a scenario like this for a startup (pets.com) than it is for a kid (...?...).

The timeframes are different. 2 years is not that much time compared to the time it takes to raise a kid. But 2 years is a long time for a startup.

pius2• 19 years ago

I think the implicit question is, do you care about your startup like it's your child or like it's an amusing reality show? Two years is a long time to watch a crappy reality show, but not a long time to nurture your child.

bfioca• 19 years ago

Easy - as long as you can stomach. Longer if you or people you trust still think there's any way at all to succeed.

With stagnation - don't call it quits, find out what your users want and give it to them. Completely redesign your product if you need to.

pchristensen• 19 years ago

1) What do you (and anyone else involved with the site) want out of life? (could be enough money to camp on a beach in Thailand or your own private jet, bringing satisfaction to people, starting a media empire, having money taken care of so you have time for family and friends, etc)

2) Does this site provide that for you?

3) If it provides some but not all of your needs/wants, could you continue running it on the side while you start a new project?

fleaflicker• 19 years ago

It varies.

From "why not to start a startup":

"If you start a startup that succeeds, it's going to consume at least three or four years. (If it fails, you'll be done a lot quicker.)"

I'd say that's accurate. If you're not going to make it you'll know within a year or two. But don't expect instant success.

axod• 19 years ago

1,000 daily users isn't too shabby, not able to make an income off that?

daniel-cussen3• 19 years ago

It varies from case to case, but you should keep doing it as long as it's the best option. Though it's hard to gauge, if the expected outcome is better than what you'd get for starting a new startup or working a desk job, then you should keep going at it.

1000 users is pretty good, in my opinion. They could help you morph your startup into something better. But don't give up on the startup, just change it around a little.

bayareaguy• 19 years ago

If the startup's original market assumptions haven't changed and it can stay in business then I'd say it's ok. Unfortunately startups often don't notice what's happening to their expected market until it's too late.

If after 2 years your site does grow just a little, but stays around 1,000 daily users, would you call it quits?

What were you expecting 2 years ago? Are your expected users still out there for you or did they all go to Facebook in the meantime?

Mistone• 19 years ago

wouldn't call it quits but would do a serious review of your goals, product, and current user acquisition methods. It sounds like you are looking for more growth and more users (duh). After 2 years you have a solid baseline to draw conclusions from and now need to review usage stats - talk to users (pick up the phone)- find out what they love and what they don't love. Make a plan for updates - relaunch- and set a time line for this second stage - if your at the same spot in terms of users then that is a good signal for moving on.

sonink• 19 years ago

Assuming that you are going after a big hill - I think you need to figure out the following things:

1. Is it a big hill after all - your customers might want something else. If it is not a big hill then figure out what a big hill is and reorient-realign-refactor.

2. If 1.is true then figure out that your value proposition solves that big problem or not. For this you can sit with a target customer and figure that out. If your value proposition is not good enough then figure out what could be a good value proposition.

3. If you are convinced that it is a good value proposition then it is just a question of how you deliver it to the customer. And the most important thing is that you have to be convinced whether it is a good value proposition or not - and if you are then hang in there for as long as it takes and figure out a delivery method.

Having said that, I think the only time you need to call it quits is when you want to - and if you not want then there should be a way to make it fly, you just need to figure out how.

..just my two cents

iamelgringo• 19 years ago

There's no reason that you can't keep your site going, and start another one. Monetize the site a bit, so it pays for it's own hosting, and give it another go. I say fail early, fail often.

If you're spending all your time nursing a site that just isn't gaining traction, there are other ideas that you could be pursuing that could gain traction and make you more money.

sharpshoot• 19 years ago

Are you working on this full-time or part-time? Either way a 1000 users a day in 2 years is not worth your time. You time is best spent on identifying an opportunity that has the potential to be huge.

It takes the same amount of effort to do something which is tiny than to do something big. Leave this behind, so something different and huge - you have valuable experience now. You have to decide is this worth the effort?

SwellJoe4• 19 years ago

This reminds me of something a couple of old oil prospectors told me a few years back. It went something like this:

"You're going to bust your ass, no matter what. You might as well bust your ass for $10 million, instead of $10,000."

That's stuck with me. If you aren't working on a huge opportunity, then you're probably selling yourself too cheap. The thing I've been surprised to find is that no matter how small a market is, you'll have competitors and you'll be dividing up the spoils. You might as well work in a field that is huge, so that the percentage of the market you can capitalize on equals millions rather than thousands in revenues.

ranparas• 19 years ago

Have you tried different avenues of reaching out to new users ? Have you tried to take and accommodate feedback from your users ? Have you tried different features ? If you think you've done your best and can't do anything more than it's time to quit. Is it worth putting in cruise control ?

sohail• 19 years ago

The real question is: how the heck are you not making money off of 1000 daily users? Don't tell me this is some social networking BS. If so, just quit now and get half a business plan before starting your next one!

SwellJoe4• 19 years ago

1,000 visitors daily to an ad-supported site is practically nothing. Maybe two or three bucks, tops. We get more than that to our documentation wiki site (which has no ads, and I wouldn't consider adding them because I believe it would cost us more in credibility to include them than it would make in revenue).

If the site is selling something, then 1000 a day can be a good start. A one man shop selling some sort of digital goods could do very well with that many visitors.

Fuca• 19 years ago

The thing that really amaze me is to see the site have no growth but still it seems a some people return, how is this possible? You have a site that manages to have users visit again and also get some users from search engines, but at the end of the day you still have the same total of users as the day before? it is not logical! (It is a site about cars).

SwellJoe4• 19 years ago

Investors look for milestones being reached. Perhaps you should make yourself some milestones, and begin doing what you have to do to reach them. Give yourself a time table, and if you fail to reach those milestones, and fail to see things you could change to reach those milestones, then your startup has failed and it's time to change direction (possibly including shutting this one down and doing something else).

One important thing to keep in mind: Don't repeat the same actions and expect different results. Two years is plenty of time to know that what you're doing isn't working.

Also...1,000 daily visitors is practically comatose for a site that isn't selling something. An ad-supported site needs hundreds of thousands or millions of visits per day to make you rich.

herdrick• 19 years ago

Yes. Doubly so if you're asking the question.

thorax• 19 years ago

Well, it depends on how much individual work the site takes. If you can get it to go on auto-pilot then keep it around. You might consider finding ways to put it closer to auto-pilot and work on something else.

How much time should be given to a start up to succeed?

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