Comments on: Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs: Make Cuts, Stay Stingy, But Never Forget The Dream

By: Good reading about the down-turn « Inside Sparkle*Shelf

Good reading about the down-turn « Inside Sparkle*Shelf — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:46:57 +0000

[...] There was also an interesting panel that included Jason – see below for a recording of it, or read the summary here. [...]

By: Raza

Raza — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:54:38 +0000

I wonder nobody mentioned offshroing as a viable option for cutting costs ?

http://www.confiz.com

By: neilc

neilc — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:58:17 +0000

Some points from someone on the ground with Start-ups in Seattle http://actureco...g.com/blog/?p=5

By: In bad times, lower the risk for your customers « a la 360 by Gadi Shamia

In bad times, lower the risk for your customers « a la 360 by Gadi Shamia — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:12:11 +0000

[...] is a lot of advice for entrepreneurs and much talk in the VC community but the talk is all focused on lowering costs and not on ways to [...]

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:42:27 +0000

Levchin’s urging for a lack of transparency speaks volumes. He has no clue where brands are made and lost. I bet only 10% of slide’s users even know they are slide’s users. At least he got the part where advice is relatively meaningless without being placed in the context of a specific business. One size doesn’t fit all? Nope.

By: mini micro

mini micro — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:58:03 +0000

I listened to their advice by not paying the $189 admission, staying at the office focusing on product development and customer acquisition, and getting the same depressing content free– at home.

Anyway its like asking a Wall Street Banker — what do I do now that my 401K is a 101K? DO you think he is going to be objective?>

Dont forget VC get management fees. They can wait for a better market — you can’t.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:24:07 +0000

What a surprise, “Web 2.0 Chick” has replied to the first comment SIX HOURS AFTER it was made.

But the real problem is that she misses Schneider’s point completely. FYI, he was saying companies should consider open-sourcing their products, not utilizing OSS within their companies

By: me

me — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:27:55 +0000

I agree…

Optimizing prematurely is obvious.

Over scaling is difficult for those afflicted with Entrepreneurial disease…

By: me

me — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:23:30 +0000

I was just skimming along reading when I read this and my head went back and my eyes opened as large as they could. As an entrepreneur with a stalled project, a huge dream, and lowered expectations open sourcing is a great idea!

People bag on TC, but we would not waste our time if it was not valuable…

By: humble pie

humble pie — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:06:31 +0000

w.t.f.?

By: DTG

DTG — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:57:48 +0000

I like Nirav Tolia’s advice of “over communicate.”

Over communicating shows transparency and high regard for the individuals under you.

By: Web2.0 Chick

Web2.0 Chick — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:20:10 +0000

True – while at the same time, valuable insights can be gained from the success & failure stories of other companies. I particularly like Schneider’s suggestion on ‘open source’ – for cost-effective & sustainable long-term growth. Startups can consider adopting Ruby on Rails and SugarCRM + other easily available open source tools

By: Venkat from India

Venkat from India — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:18:10 +0000

Super!! This is exactly how I feel! I mean totally useless!

By: VentureBeat's Downturn RoundTable

VentureBeat's Downturn RoundTable — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:15:55 +0000

VentureBeat’s Downturn RoundTable…

VentureBeat hosted a Downturn RoundTable this evening. Some good insights and information for you entrepreneurs out there….

By: ispy

ispy — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:41:41 +0000

So now your really not going to make shit working for start ups. In fact a waste of time and energy. Sure a few will hit it, but the silicon valley dream is dead for the vast majority. Sure the boss will get his, but they only gave you a 1% stake

By: Gebadia Smith

Gebadia Smith — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:59:41 +0000

Who cares…honestly…you have to be half mad to start a web company.

If you can find a decent engineer or two to build your dream, you still have to market it and lets face the fact most methods are statuated.

After that if you are remotely successful, your site gets replicated and duplicated over and over again by some company in India or China with 1/3rd the running cost.

Then maybe if you are lucky some VC company will find you. Techcrunch will do an article on you and if your lucky your servers don’t crash. (Does anyone keep track of how many servers the TC has crashed?)

Them the VC company will make you into a money hungry, short term profit cash cow, causing you to lose your market as your users leave as quickly as you came.

Then TC will do another article saying welcome to the deadpool and you will tell everyone how wonderful your employees are.

So lets be honest here. People who go into business online love the rush. The thrill of trying to create the next best thing. To go from a nobody to a net superstar…

How does the bad economy effect people like that? It doesn’t because it just makes it a bigger rush…

By: PorkBarrel

PorkBarrel — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:13:43 +0000

Can’t we just ask the Government for a bailout? Banking, Insurance, Hedge Funds, Detroit, and Homeowners all are. Web 2.0 VC only needs about $1 billion a quarter to keep the Internet economy humming along nicely. Even a small bank wouldn’t accept that level of peanuts, so the government really gets a good value here!

By: Eric Ferraiuolo

Eric Ferraiuolo — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:00:51 +0000

Totally agree with this. Now really seems like the best time to create something new and useful for the world deployed on the web.

I feel the start-ups that will pop-up during or after the economic downturn will have a different perspective on costs, specifically employment and resources. Utilizing the newer technologies, start-ups will be ultra nimble, with low head-counts, and using cloud-based resources. This will significantly reduced the fixed costs that start-ups get investment for. These new-breed start-ups will have variable costs which sale with usage (and revenue for the successful ones).

By: Ron Conway Fruit Salad

Ron Conway Fruit Salad — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:44:54 +0000

I attended the conference. Here is what I saw:

Jason Calcanis: Actually was crying at one point. He said his mom is working at Taco Bell to support his hairpiece maintenance.

Kevin Rose: Was drinking on stage. At one point, he knifed a drifter. Kept saying Jesus told him to keep calling Sequoia.

Ron Conway: Threatened to take stable of teenage boys locked in his mom’s fruit cellar and harvest their skin for soap manufacturer. Said he will use proceeds to find lost food in beard.

Max Levchin: Confessed that he is woman trapped inside terrible executive’s body. Asked for forgiveness. Someone hit him in head with brick.

Paul Sieben: Showed the crowd scene of him dry- humping cattle, which he referred to as his backup plan.

Kara Swisher: Challenged Nirav Tollia to ass slapping contest. The loser: The crowd.

By: Web 2.0 Bubble

Web 2.0 Bubble — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:29:08 +0000

I would say the best advice would probably be to create startups with real business models, not “me-too” duplicates that are so prevalent in Web 2.0. Over the last year, I have seen so many similar “copy-cat” ideas, such as social networking, video streaming, mobile locations.

By: informednetworker.com

informednetworker.com — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:59:04 +0000

Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs: Make Cuts, Stay Stingy, But Never Forget The Dream…

This is part two of our coverage on today’s Downturn RoundTable hosted by VentureBeat. For Part One, which details the Venture Capitalist panel, click here.The EntrepreneursIn a panel moderated by Kara Swisher, Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic (the …

By: Korey Bachelder

Korey Bachelder — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:58:20 +0000

Max and Jason are spot on. I would add – KEEP your day job, but pimp it in the evening after work. As Kevin Rose said, now is the time to really go after it when other companies don’t have funding and scrappiness and hard work count for so muc.

By: besidethat

besidethat — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:56:57 +0000

Never forget the dream ! interesting…

By: Wei Yang

Wei Yang — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:56:01 +0000

Definitely great advice all around. We are finding ways to save in things like optimizing code and not over-scaling prematurely as well. Every little bit adds up.

Wei Yang
http://www.easy...com/sell-my-car

By: buzzup.com

buzzup.com — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:51:04 +0000

Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs: Make Cuts, Stay Stingy, But Never Forget The Dream…

In a panel moderated by Kara Swisher, Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic (the company behind WordPress), led off by saying that he wished this kind of “panicky” advice had been around for the last bubble, explaining that his startup at the time didn…