Achieving a failure

http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/01/achieving-failure.html

by eries • 17 years ago

32 3 17 years ago

startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com

raphar• 17 years ago

Anyone has a clue of what's the company he's talking about?

chris11• 17 years ago

I think there.com. The business week article from 2007 lists three startups he was involved with. A recruiting firm he founded in college, There.com, and IMVU.com. IMVU is described on wikipedia as generating over 1 million a month in revenue, so it probably isn't that one. And the business week article has Eric describing There.com as having a focused strategy, but not having any idea what customers want.

Link to article:http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc200...

dasil003• 17 years ago

This strikes me as the type of thing that comes from people groomed in the corporate world. Companies with huge customer bases and revenues can't afford to do anything less than move mountains, because mountainous results are the only thing that matters.

Personally I've always worked on smaller things. I've never had an interest in being a cog in a giant machine. As a result I've always had the luxury of an agile team and rapid feedback cycles.

When it comes to startups, sure I want mine to be huge... but the way I see it, most huge companies were small companies once (maybe I'm wrong). Given the odds of creating a $500,000, $5,000,000 or $50,000,000 company, doesn't it make sense to aim for early success and use real revenues as a launchpad to the next level, and just sell the company if the potential ends up not being there?

I know some ideas are either huge or nothing (eg. electric cars), but I don't think most web startups fall into that category. Being the next Google is sure appealing, but can it be manufactured? Where does aiming high hit diminishing returns?

Achieving a failure

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