I don't understand why everyone is so critical of what Guy has done and the steps he has taken to accomplish it.
I am not a big fan of Truemors, but I really enjoyed reading about what he spent and the things he did to get it off of the ground.
I am not a big fan of Truemors, but I really enjoyed reading about what he spent and the things he did to get it off of the ground.
He seems patronizing: his entire post reads like a satire, i.e., "Look, ma, I made a social networking site, too, just like the ones all the cool kids are visiting these days".
Also, he seems to enjoy mocking the lower costs inherent in Web 2.0 by exaggerating how cheaply he built the whole thing.
That may not be his intention, but that's certainly how it comes across.
Thoughts?
Any responsible investor, either angel or VC, will want to have some sense about that, even if revenues and profits "come later".
YC gets a lot of criticism in that regard, but to their credit, they do ask applicants how they intend to make money with their project.
If he can get 260K page views, even a 0.5% clickthru @ only $0.10 an ad is $130. Not great, but if you can do it every day you've got a site that's pulling in $50K in revenue a year. Not bad, but could be something to explore.
I totally agree with you that you need to know where your business is going to go and if you want to get real funding you'd better have a business plan, but if you're running a $12K test, why not just make sure you think there's a model and then test it?
Guy's own blog proves that would have been his best course of action--as the publicity he got was free and would have been so regardless of what language he used or who created his logo.