Guy Kawasaki on how he built Truemors for $12,107.09 | Hacker News Reader

Guy Kawasaki on how he built Truemors for $12,107.09

slideshare.net

14 pointswird24 comments

Not to be rude or anything, but what exactly is Truemors now? I guess it got acquired, because when you visit the URL you get redirected here.

http://truemors.nowpublic.com/

A cursory review of the content shows a moderate number of submissions, extremely light "interest" (e.g. the number one "greatest" truemor has 5 "interested" points -- maybe I don't understand what that means?) and almost zero participation in the way of comments.

So some company overpaid him for what appears to be an extremely lackluster product? Is there more to it than this? Because if not, this falls in the same category of Ethan Hawke giving a presentation called "How I Got My Novel Published and You Can Too" -- i.e. useless.

It never had many customers. You could pretty much upload a picture of your next bowel movement, create a login system, if you had the PR machine that is Guy Kawasaki behind it, get at least 80% as many users as Truemors.

The 2nd slide that dropped the line

"How I built a web 2.0, user generated content, citizen journalism, long-tail, social media site for $12k"

made me want to vomit, all I see is How I Buzzword, buzzword, buzzword..

Pretty sure he was lampooning that point.

needs more buzzwords or it won't sell

I've always like reading Guy's material. He often has very thoughtful pieces with plenty of actionable advice.

That being said I'm not impressed with either of his 2 most recent startups, truemors.com and alltop.com.

I'm not sure if its the idea or the implementation--but neither jump out at me as significant. I guess I expect more from Guy considering he's a world-known VC/author/blogger.

As much as I like Guy, I don't think Truemors or Alltop would have received as much attention as they have if they were built/marketed by anyone that didn't already have Guy's stature.

In other words, I wouldn't rely too heavily on these sites when considering "best practices" scenarios.

As much as you might not be keen on the guy, he proves that good implementation is more important than revolutionary ideas. Neither Truemors or Alltop are really ground breaking in what they're trying to do, but their implementations are pretty good.

If you connect the bad facts, you'll find that they had to go thru a bad patch too.

Site hacked in 3 hours of launch

Yahoo recommends not to use its hosting after 36 hours

Labeled 'the worst website ever' after 2 days

It happens. Remember Cuil?

Why so many haters? We're entrepreneurs. Let's study what Guy did well and learn from it. If he's willing to be open with his numbers, I want to learn as much as I can from it, don't you? And if the big lesson is that building a personal brand helps launch a site, let's do it.

Why? He increased noise.

Another meritless product wrapped in buzzwords competing for attention in the space that others have created.

He has acted as an entrepreneurial spammer.

IMHO every entrepreneur who takes a shot should be praised.

Does anyone know what he meant by "55 domains to 'surround' truemors.com" ?

I could have built it for "only" nothing.

software dev - $4500, legal fees - $4824.

Even on a shoestring budget, the lawyers get half.

Step 1: Be Guy Kawasaki

Step 2: Spend about $10,000 more than you need to because you're already independently wealthy through non-startup means (read: AAPL)

Step 3: Get much more attention for your startup than most people would because you're Guy Kawasaki

Step 4: Sell as soon as it's feasible

Step 5: Profit

What? That's not a legitimate PROFIT strategy. You missed a vital step.

You're right, I left out this:

Step 6: ???

Step 7: Profit! (Again)

yep. that's better.

I considered writing a counter-point to this on my blog, which is about actually starting a business on a shoestring. ($60 budget, ho!) However, I realized that I have users, revenues, and profits and thus my business bears about as much resemblance to Truemors as it does to fried jellyfish on a stick.

Has there been any indication of how much he sold it for.

Looking at the Alexa, Compete and Quantcast all seem to show that the Truemors never got much traffic and generates a tiny proportion of what Now Public traffic now. Why is it worth anything?

Even better, if he did get a decent price, can someone tell me how to get a buyer to value my site using the same metrics? I thought not.

Guy got robbed

Yaw, $399 for a logo is insane. I'd have made it another of those things that you skimp on to brag about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com