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Comment by middlegeek | Hacker News Reader

"As corny as it may sound, we were particularly impressed with Guy Kawasaki’s ‘Create value and money will follow’ advice when we started up...Had we known then that he was going to create AllTop in future, we would have probably introspected a little more before buying his line of advice."

I don't understand this statement, specifically the reference to AllTop. Can someone offer me some insight?

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Guy, bless his heart, often preaches voodoo. His quote essentially means that you don't need to worry about where the revenue will come from -- just create something cool and the money will get to you somehow.

They're saying: BS. Start a business. Think about a business model. Charge users.

(AllTop is an RSS aggregator for a variety of interest areas like Museums, Cigars, and BBQ. There is absolutely no revenue model except for publishing advertisements. Guy, being Net-famous, was able to sell it after about a year's work. Your mileage will definitely vary from that.)

Thanks. Okay, maybe I just slightly disagree with them. I mostly agree with the "create value, money will come" philosophy. However I would say create value and if the value is very substantial, the money will come. However depending on how substantial the value is, you may have to work to make the money come along.

I am not saying they are wrong, I would just put a little more confidence behind Guy's statement.

I feel that almost all "...and money will come" statements are missing some words.

"Create value, CHARGE FOR IT, and money will come" or "Do what you love, AND A LOT OF CRAPPY BUSINESS STUFF, and money will come"

It's very uncommon for revenue to come to you without some work and thought on your part. It's like the lottery. Sure, some people win, but you won't!

Yeah -- something along the lines of "create something of value, and then never stop working on ways to make money from it until you hit on something that works well."

Not just "create value and the money will come."

Value is the difference between cost and gain. If your users are getting a gain, and their cost is 0, then there's value being created.

The trick is to determine what gain is, and how close you can raise cost before value becomes too low.

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