hah, yeah, no shit. in fact, the week after the 1st round of financing, i believe that one was ~$10m or so, all the owners were driving new cars- corvette convertible, porsche boxster, etc.

then when the big round came through, they leased several floors of prime office space in downtown san diego, redoing the interior. our burn rate at that point was over $1m every 2 days, we were set for a nice ipo when the internet bubble burst. then it was all over and my stock options were kaput.

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline

2004 1mil in the first year with no funding... pure organic/word of mouth...
2005 5.5mil $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners
2006 12mil $27.5 million from Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and others THIS IS THE YEAR THEY OPENED UP REGS
2007 They explode the same time MySpace becomes a pile of shit further feeding the flames

The rest is history, tons of press, tons of capital...

You can't be an early adopter if you don't gain traction I guess I should have said that in my previous post... but here you have the first popular (at all) college site... explodes almost off the bat based on word of mouth... there was a DEFINITE need there.

From there they picked up capital and I'm sure whatever investor was dumping cash in put someone in charge that knew what they were doing ;)

Hhahaha man the .COM boom days... Actually now that I think about it... the Porn boom is over, it's time for the porn crash (here we are)... We're currently in the "relearning and smartening up stage"... Next we'll see a few big players and some brand new guys come in and start playing the new game well. They will be the new giants.

that's a pretty good comparison eh.

In ten years, it will all repeat again. Both booms, and busts.
:2 cents:

I don't necessarily think it's being first especially with examples like myspace=>facebook.

Part of the other mentioned sites appeal (dating, classifieds) is going to be timewasting nosy browsing making people return up to the point where they decide to join up themselves.
Even if you initially fill up with fake profiles or fake items for sale you are giving people something that they will continue to daydream about after they have left the site.
Free membership covered by adverts takes away the biggest hurdle for signing up which was previously there with dating - can't remember match.com fee but it isn't silly cheap.

And I still think 'the next big thing' will come about as a viral accident rather than someone's pre-planned success.

Of this there is no doubt. :thumbsup

great read so far :thumbsup

Actually, waiting won't cut it. Too many competitors willing to step in when a need arises.
You'd have to predict a need, or find a way to create a need.

Predicting a need is possible but requires that you be able to produce any kind of product because it is unlikely even a correct prediction will be in a field you are already most comfortable with... the leader in predicting needs is Nathan Myrvold thanks to a huge amount of money poured into R&D so he can patent pretty much everything before the need arises. http://www.intellectualventures.com/Home.aspx

Creating a need is more along the lines of what Microsoft is doing, and at this point in the evolution of online business, that's really where marketing comes into play. They spent 100M marketing Bing to create a need for an alternate search engine where no actual need existed.

The same tactics work on a smaller scale and can be done with a lot of effort and very little cash. Webmasterchecks.com, websitesecure.org, linkspun.com, webmasterscore.com, whopaidme.com, industryincentives.com are all good recent examples.

Predict a need or create one (or a bit of both)... and then fill it with an elegant solution.:2 cents:

Hei man hit me up i have idea for you )

I agree with Dave. This is a great thread and like him, I do not believe in "Luck" either. I do believe that in today's market many of us are not willing to put in the time , effort, strategy and energy required to make something a success or better.. a brand worth following.

Will76 raised a question that honestly has me at loss when he stated / asked:

" The biggest hurdle I face with start ups that are similar to a classified site or dating site is how do you start it off with no users? Ok so you can fake it and make some bogus classified ads or dating profiles but still, who wants to use a site that is new and has very little to no one else is using yet ??? Is it because there were no other free dating / classified sites except for theirs back then so people gave it a shot?

That is an excellent question and one I wrestle with every day.... And I don't have the answer.

But to the other question about launching on a budget with little or no traffic, here is my contribution the the thread.. right , wrong or just tell me I'm crazy... I'd welcome the feedback and further discussion. I think this is a valuable thread.


1. Press

a. Press Releases: Press releases in adult tend to fall on deaf ears but they are still a "free" way to get information about your product or service. Mainstream press releases for adult offerings can be tricky but there are companies who will allow you to submit a press release if the release is "news worthy" and it does not contain overtly adult language or links directly to the adult site. Over the years these have proven to be a great way to achieve some mainstream exposure and has lead to mainstream opportunities.

b. Publications: There are plenty of publications out there in Tech as well as "Tabloid" who are willing to write about adult .. as long as there is something that is worthy of coverage. The key is cultivating the relationships at these publications and providing them something valuable. If you can make the "reporter" look good .. you may just find that they seek you out for quotes and information.


c. Mainstream Media: Same logic as the publications. Find an In. Dave mentioned that they sponsored Howard stern ... that's brilliant, strategic and I'll bet it took some time and effort to figure out who , what, where , when and why. Dave, I'd love to hear more about what you actually did there. But Howard, Opie & Anthony aside there are plenty of mainstream morning radio shows, TV Talk Shows and Documentaries who cover interesting aspects of adult. G4 TV, HBO, Tyra, Oprah, hell even Bill O'Riley has had Jenna on .. twice. Getting on is not easy but if you have a legitimate "hook" .. something news worthy or something timely to offer, especially during sweeps then a ton of tenacity might just pay off.

d. A Shocking Headline: Internally, we may all scoff at things like Ashley Madison offering $25M to buy naming rights... but all scoffing aside .. it made USA today as well as 295 other mainstream news outlets.


All of the above are relatively low cost / potentially high exposure opportunities. They do however require a lot of work , tenacity and the willingness to actually converse with people voice to voice. Rarely, will an email get you "mainstream" exposure.

Being first is always a huge thing

Of course you have to be the first super huge, not just first first and no one knowing about you, and you have to be able to make the correct first and second impression, then you have to keep up with technology and changing trends.

But get them to use your service first, get them used to it use it repeatedly and chances are that they'll stick, think about the power of reference too.

Of course the attention span is different on the internet and it's not like selling something like cars that lasts for years before it gets replaced, this is the case with FB and how they kicked any other social site's ass offering all kinds of bullshit, that makes people look interesting even if they're not.

But let's take for example a local server that runs all kinds of classifieds, basically everything, cars, real estate, jobs, I don't know what.

- it's a total piece of crap, totally useless 90's interface, but they still keep the major market share and not even many more advanced services with major marketing push were able to majorly grab their audience, it's still the first place most locals go looking for info (apart from FB, that of course kicked their lame social networking site's ass )

But you're right that exception always confirms the rule and especially on the internet if you find a backdoor to your audience's mind anything is possible

Same thing Youtube had major venture capital behind them once they launched their unprofitable service to keep it alive before selling it to Google

Thanks for posting this. Sometimes we have a tendency to think these successes happen immediately... most often.. they take some time.

Care to elaborate on what specifically "playing the new game well " means? I've enjoyed your posts and this old dog is willing to listen & learn :thumbsup

Great thread for once :thumbsup been reading for an hour lol :D

that's the million dollar question :winkwink:

Heh, I would like to some of that "utopian dreamer bullshit" while making millions.

Timing. :2 cents:

Just been reading some of this again and another thing i've thought of is: once you have something that is simple and going right, don't fuck it up by deciding it needs to look fancy and become overcomplicated.

no problem thank you guys, I learned something from this.

So fucking TRUE DAT!
:thumbsup

A - fucking - MEN!! In fact, I've had models with sites who are making sales then go "improve it" and we try and sales fell. A/B testing is helping out that situation but basically:

If it ain't broke do NOT "fix it".