Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc. For eBay, this is caused by the incredible network effects of their business (so-called demand-side increasing returns and supply-side increasing returns).
Startup Lessons Learned
DECEMBER 7, 2008
And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers. Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. Worst of all, your teammates are constantly wanting to have meetings.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 15, 2008
For example, one angel investor reportedly invested in several hundred social networking ventures employing this philosophy. That being said, I do see problems with the conventional wisdom especially in the valley with your technical vision, which then creates economic problems. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 7, 2008
Customers found it confusing and it turned out to be at odds with our fundamental value proposition (which really requires an independant IM network). Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake. So we had to completely throw that code away, including all of its beatiful tests and specs. Talk about waste.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 5, 2008
Spray files across cheap disks on your network. For tips on how to integrate it into your database and application layers, you can see the tail-end of my JIT Scalability talk. MogileFS - "Distributed (meta) file system. Pay less for storage. No proprietary on-disk file formats." Take a look and let me know what you think.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 14, 2008
This was 2004, and we had never even heard of MySpace, let alone had any understanding of social networking. It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business. But the early customers all compared it to MySpace.
Startup Lessons Learned
JUNE 22, 2009
Ive spoken in some detail about a specific pivot that we went through at IMVU , when we decided to abandon the instant messaging add-on concept, and switch to a standalone instant messaging network. We went through another pivot when we switched again from instant messaging to social networking.
Expert insights. Personalized for you.
167 
Let's personalize your content