"Lifestyle" CEO bootstraps business to 30 MM unique visitors: The wikiHow story | Hacker News Reader

"Lifestyle" CEO bootstraps business to 30 MM unique visitors: The wikiHow story

xconomy.com

58 pointsKrystle10 comments

Even many startuppers, who often work insane hours on the assumption that their options will turn to gold when their company is acquired or goes public, seem to reserve special pity for lifestyle entrepreneurs who haven’t won Sand Hill Road money and aren’t perpetually “killing it” or “crushing it” in the way Silicon Valley culture demands.

Pity for people who make a good living doing what they love? I don't know who the author thinks he is speaking for, but I highly doubt it's "many" people in the startup community. Replace pity with admiration and then you have an accurate statement.

Maybe I overdramatized. My point in the opening of the piece was that in the dominant Silicon Valley mythology, building a "lifestyle" company is seen as a less macho and ambitious path than building a VC-backed company that has a shot at making its founders and investors mega-rich.

> in the dominant Silicon Valley mythology, building a "lifestyle" company is seen as a less macho and ambitious path than building a VC-backed company

To be fair, I think this is not so much about the common mythology in the valley. It's more about how the valley PR sites most commonly talk about.

There's so many bad companies in the tech scene, that we often look at the VC/angel scene as the filter for whats worth looking at.

I'd argue (as a creator a lifestyle business) that there are even more uninteresting startups with that fall into the lifestyle label - by that I mean not very pressworthy - not that its a bad business. The companies that are trying to do big things, usually require capital and that often comes with getting press and attention.

It's also important to note that most "lifestyle" companies aren't really startups anyway.. more small businesses... and they aren't the type of companies that need VC in the first place.

But as soon as any lifestyle business becomes successful, they get a ton of praise. Especially on HN. Just like any acquisition or exit.

Agreed. I was confused when he started the article by claiming that in "Silicon Valley, there is no more pejorative term than “lifestyle business.”"

This is absolutely not a characteristic of the startup community.

Well, you'd be wrong. Speaking from personal experience, nobody cares about bootstrapped businesses. There is no glory, admiration, or external social validation of any kind to be had by bootstrapping a business. The money, the challenge, and the freedom of control makes the obscurity worthwhile, though.

WikiHow is a great story, but the word 'bootstrap' doesn't appear in the original article headline or text, because the origin story is a little more convoluted than a simple incremental bootstrap.

Essentially the wikiHow founders bought Web-1.0 also-ran eHow for cheap, turned it around with new content, SEO, and AdSense, and flipped it to Demand Media, keeping the wikiHow sideline as something unique and personally interesting.

There are some scrappy bootstrap elements there, but also, as Herrick is quoted saying in the article, "It was like a microcap turnaround." It's also clear that the "very nice deal" with Demand Media has allowed a patience with wikiHow that might not be available to every bootstrapping team.

Minor nit: Zynga has far more than 30mm MAU or uniques. They are somewhere in the range of 100mm - 300mm, depending on how you deduplicate.

not to nitpick, but what another poster here calls "Essentially the wikiHow founders bought Web-1.0 also-ran eHow for cheap,", the article specifies as $100,000.

Right, quite cheap, if you have that kind of money kicking around you can live a story that ends up with you bootstrapping to 30MM visitors. Sounds like this guy's story is very different from the kids who really need the $16k they first sell 7% of their company for.

I guess I'm more interested in 'bootstrapping' that happens with a laptop and skype, not already having 100k.

The article doesn't specify whether he got large material support from family background. But from the story of the point he was at in his education when he went off to do rock-climbing with a large 'off-budget' travel fund, all after working briefly as a 23-year-old mgt consultant, it's not hard to piece together.

If someone has links to similar stories that are more in line with not having these things, while bootstrapping/not seeking outside investment, would love links.

I was wikiHow's first (I think) intern. Back in 08 their entire company was two guys working in a side room in Jack's dad's office and only one tech guy who was based in Toronto. I don't think that wikiHow was bootstrapped in the traditional sense as I'm pretty sure his family has a decent amount of money (or whatever passes for that in the Bay Area these days). That being said, here's a guy who's passionate about what he's doing and is comfortable avoiding the start-up rat race. Given all that, the numbers he's pulling are pretty remarkable.

wikiHow is a really cool place to "hang out" on the web. There's ALWAYS something new to learn... something interesting / fun / odd to read. It's no wonder that it gets so many visitors! And frankly? Who cares if it's a "lifestyle" company? It's now MY lifestyle to check the site several times per day... which can only be a good thing as far as advertisers are concerned.

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