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There'll be a significant drop in price when a strong competitor emerges...

I don't get it....looks like an enterprise product that I don't need...

This is Price Skimming - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_skimming

Done so well by Apple and others in consumer electronics space.

That's the power of branding..

virtualbox is good.. +1

Its a bad deal for him... What if his company takes off and you don't transfer the domain at the end of the year.. huge risk for him..

I am sure difference will be significant.

It might be a good idea to decide based on your target market..

As a matter of principle - I don't pay to advertise my start-up.

I wasn't this lucky. My slice was once down for 12 hours or so and nobody told me...

Good question. I wish more people responded to this.

you are not taking "opportunity cost" into account....

very good point. I am surprised by the emphasis people (VCs/YC) put on multiple co-founders. I think it increases the risk of company failing because co-founders didn't get along well at a later stage.

Its working for me.

PV(monthly)/UV(monthly) is my favorite ratio to track engagement

I am doing this - working 2 days/week for my previous employer and it works really well... eases out the initial cashflow problem.

You have to use press to your advantage. If its important to your customers, make sure you are covered.

My point was - Don't enter a market because press thinks its a good place to be in. There are two reasons for that

1. Most press stories are mostly driven by PR. There is a PG essay that also talks about it.

2. Press is late at identifying trends. If press says its a great thing to get into, it means you are already late to the party.

Gave up after Three and a half months!! There is no magic..it takes time to build a business..

In addition, Never a good idea to build a business based on what newspapers are saying or how the stock market is performing...

There isn't much you can do to stop others from copying your work. The only thing that you can do however is to execute better than them... Stay focused and execute better.

Good article. I am surprised very few people talk about engagement and quality of traffic on a website.

We've always tracked PV/UV ratio as a measure of quality of our product and audience vis-a-vis competitors.

Absolutely...

I run a small but growing web business (about 500k PVs/month) thats getting very popular in its target segment.

I take it as a challenge to grow it without spending money on anything other than web hosting ($40/month).

Product is built on open source solutions and there is no better way to promote it than getting some relevant press.

What do you need money for?

I've observed hosting costs to grow faster than revenue :-(

First mover advantage doesn't mean much unless there is a strong network effect at play...

I don't think you have any point to make here...

Just a preconceived notion that products businesses are better than services based businesses

The objective of a business is to create returns for shareholders... and they did that pretty well.

You have a very narrow definition of entrepreneurship if you think it has to be along the lines "startup founders on HN"

BTW - I am not a fan of Murthy/Infosys.

Thats a very immature point of view.

Consulting/Body shop sounds a very easy business on paper but, its a huge challenge to scale it up. Look at their financial statements - Its a very well managed business with high growth rates and very strong margin numbers...

Its easier said than done.

Join a start-up in Bangalore, India.

It'll be a good experience for you. Since everybody speaks/understands English, you'll not feel out of place.

At this stage - building the first version of the product is more important than writing a business plan. You don't want to change priorities because of some contest. Successful start up is more important than wining a beauty contest.

If you can build something that a few people find valuable then you can start thinking about business plan to scale it further... Without the basic product, there is no business and there is no need for a plan.

Of course, all this is based on the assumption that the first version can be built very fast without incurring any significant cost.

I don't think you should participate in a business plan contest if you are really serious about that start up.

The whole process is a distraction and doesn't bring any value. The downside is that you'll waste a lot of time filling templates and doing stuff that doesn't matter at this stage. You may also get demoralized if jury/public doesn't get it and thinks its trash. For all you know, they might not be the segment you plan to target..

If you are serious - Move forward and build the product and show it to real customers that you plan to target. That's probably the only way to know if it'll work or not.

Its the other way round in my case

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