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Startups making things overly-complicated

It seems like today a startup is not a startup unless it burns through at least 200k a month with no revenue.

Why do twitter or facebook need more than a 20 man team?

I built a few sites myself. Put Adsense on them and make a good living off it.

I read articles, though, of startups raising 7 figures who have not a dime of profit or even revenue. Why do they need 7 figures? To hire a CEO and human resources????

There are numerous examples of what once were startups, and today being successfully run out of a small office or even an apartment and making the founder 100k/year.

Today, however, it seems you need legal work, an accelerator, VC’s, Seed Money, etc. Even then it will usually fizzle out.

I wish more people would stop calling themselves entrepreneurs and just make your idea happen. For example, read the pof.com story. He was a one man team until his earnings hit 6 figures a month.

“Keep it simple”

 

  • “I built a few sites myself. Put Adsense on them and make a good living off it.” That is most definitely an oversimplified version of how you succeeded. How’d you drive enough traffic to make meaningful AdSense dollars? How did you test your idea to start?

    Reply

    • I didn’t need to test it. I had interests and those interests were not being met by any site currently online. Not to my satisfaction at least.

      Chances are if you want something that nobody is offering, others want it too.

      I drove traffic, very slowly at first, by joining forums around the same topic then went from there.

      Reply

  • “Why do twitter or facebook need more than a 20 man team?”

    Are you seriously comparing 2 companies with over a billion users between them (FB: 1BN+ monthly, Tw:270M+ monthly) to new startups? And asking why they need more than 20 staff when they each have multiple products/services (aside from core) that millions use and need support for, plus new features being built, plus multilingual outreach in different countries, etc? OhhKAY.

    Reply

    • Yes, well this is what happens when you go public. You sell your soul to the devil, and that’s fine if that suits you (whoever). The fact is FB and TWTR could earn 100’s of millions per month and rest on their laurels. That’s when greed sets in, they need more. More of everything until there is nothing more to take.

      You might be right. They do in fact need 7000 employees each with the head of engineering making 10m a year.

      Specifically, you mention multiple products/services. Important to understand that they didn’t need these things they just wanted them.

      “Millions use and need support” – servers do this, one man can maintain the servers.

      “New features being built” – pay a company to build a feature you need.

      OHHH but multilingual outreach in different countries. Okay you got me there.

      Reply

    • Google spent 60 million dollars creating Google plus.

      Then when nobody joins they ‘requests’ people to link their Youtube account to it. When nobody opted in, they forced you to.

      Obviously they were scared to death of Facebook. The only reason they were scared was they had to report to their shareholders. Which they would never have if the 2 boys were just satisfied with earning 10 million a month from PPC.

      Reply

      • It was their VC’s that weren’t satisfied with the earning 10m a month (those 2 boys were at Stanford where I don’t think they had much of a choice to NOT take VC).

        The guys who own/run the VCs have LPs that want big returns to justify the risks. The LPs are in turn managed by Wharton MBA’s and Wall St. types that are incented to “beat the S&P” each year to justify their high pay.

        All the Accelerators and such are just jumping on the bandwagon to skim a little as it goes by. It’s one big investing game/loop. Always has been (Ford, Edison, etc)

        But yes, it’s also great if you can start and grow a business without investors, but then on the flip side there is Craigslist with no innovation (but a huge “lifestyle’ business).

        I would be happy with either or anywhere in between.

        Reply
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