The Little Secret of Web Startups | Hacker News Reader

The Little Secret of Web Startups

techcrunch.com

21 pointsvaksel7 comments

This post offers some informative insights. I am reminded to at least consider proactively filtering content, etc.

I thank the author for his contributions toward helping other startups.

With that said, this tastes a little sour to me. He is saying "other businesses should be doing what we did". With all do respect, what you did got you to where you are. He is saying his business was honest by not skewing user numbers and engagement. Which is also implying that if they did, they might have secured more investment, or raised their ad rates.

The problem with Sampa is that their target market has fundamentally low market value. Share family photos online?

Aren't there about 44340902342034 services offering something of the sort?

Lastly, I'm surprised to read that Sampa had an advertising based model. I guess that shines some light on why they chose the market that they did. I mistakenly assumed any website creation system would be SAAS. Perhaps if Sampa would have stuck with saas, they would have switched to a new, more lucrative target market.

If I was a investor in this startup (1.31mm raised so far)I would be pissed that my failed investments's founder is airing out laundry for money..

The start-up is shutting down, so it isn't 1.31 million so far, it's 1.31 million. And it isn't as if he is saying anything about the investors, or any secret information being released. He's trying to explain why the start-up failed in order to help others.

At the same time, the title 'the little secret' seems very misleading, unless I'm missing something.

Is there one statement in particular that struck you as offensive or 'dirty laundry'ish?

Alternatively he didn't get paid for the post and it's good publicity for his next venture and might even find a buyer for the current one.

1.31mm? For what?

I really don't mean to pick, a legitimate question. What did this site have that an yc group couldn't do for under 100K? Any guesses?

According to http://www.statbrain.com/www.sampa.com/ they get 10,203 visits per day. This is an estimate, but it doesn't sound like a dead website to me.

The estimate isn't very good, my old site that gets about 300 visits a week is estimated to have about 3800 visits per day. Another one that gets about 100k visits daily is estimated to have about 50k visits. So I wouldn't trust their estimates that much.

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