Doing payments first is the way to avoid the rapid growth problem entirely (and depending on your service, spam problems). I charged a tiny signup fee for Pinboard purely as an anti-spam measure, but it ended up getting me endless free publicity. 2009 was a different time.https://twitter.com/RoamResearch/status/1257849892434669571 …
-
Show this thread
-
Online is still such a different mindset. No one opens a pizza restaurant giving away slices for free hoping they'll grow quickly enough to become a large chain. But that's still the default business model in VC-saturated computerworld.
2 replies 9 retweets 41 likesShow this thread -
Here's a nice summary of how the process works. You create something with enough buzz to attract the magpie attention span of a VC, who then gives you a fortune. It's a peculiar high-touch luxury sales model, one even more specialized than enterprise https://medium.com/@jmj/investing-in-roam-research-d8038971e871 …pic.twitter.com/Vq5ZHL1rI8
2 replies 5 retweets 24 likesShow this thread -
This is the part people misunderstand about the tech economy. The Juicebro was laughable as a mechanism for extracting juice from chopped vegetables, but as a mechanism for extracting money from flattery-prone investors, it has rarely been excelled. The product was a side effectpic.twitter.com/v0wa7PruWe
2 replies 24 retweets 91 likesShow this thread -
To understand the startup economy, you need to look at it as a form of performance art, targeted at a very small market of idiosyncratic art collectors. Part of the culture of this art market is not breaking kayfabe, and pretending that everything has a real world growth story.
2 replies 36 retweets 120 likesShow this thread
Because you're targeting art collectors, the important thing is to tell them stories about the world that *they* find credible, whether or not they're real. And they want to live in an exciting sci-fi world of tomorrow, or at the very least, be admired for their mental daring
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.