Does this guy have any credibility? He sure doesn't speak as if his rant is mere conjecture, yet doesn't have any supporting data or even anecdotes. As far as I can tell from the about page, he's a guy with a flaming turd of a startup telling other people how to be successful.
This article seems to be mainly about how to not succeed.
Some perspective: I'm not a coder, yet I am starting a web business. I previously founded and grew a non-tech startup to 2 million in revenue in our first 18 months. I fucked it up and made a horrible exit with very little cash.
Currently, I'm on step 5 of the blog post, with a new raise working both a full-time job and a startup company.
I do worry about market risk, so I'm researching several customers for the technology besides the obvious B2C. My biggest concern is a roadblock with google also focusing on the concept for ShelfMade. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/19/google-magazine/
Not to start a fight, but I will be kicking your ass in fantasy football next year. And if ShelfMade has revenue or funding, we'll be doing it on Yahoo fantasy sports, agreed?
Don't you give people advice on your blog as well? Since when YC-accpetance counts as "creds"? None of us is Bill Gates here, chill out.
The blog post does indeed sound childish. It assumes that "beta" (what a stupid beaten up word that lost its original meaning) can be accomplished by just one person working "nights and weekends". Outside of web-based to-do lists, not a whole lot can be built into even a prototype this way.
Del.icio.us is exactly the kind I referred to when I said "web-based to-do lists". Those are companies that discovered a market need for something technically trivial and filled the niche. While this does sound attractive and "let's all get rich this way!", the reality is that the percentage of businesses that had been started this way is very very very small, while number of people who is trying is very very very big and growing because of the media coverage.
Media plays a big role here, as always, because it loves such incredible success stories. Publishing an article about boring and typical long way up isn't going to help selling your magazine. When I look at small-to-medium sized companies I personally know someone working for, I do not see a single "del.icio.us" - they all took lots of work to get going: coding hours, equipment, office space, etc.
One of the reasons young founders succed more often that has not been talked about, is that fact that they DO NOT HAVE full time jobs, mortgages, wives and kids with high medical bills and "family time" they need. Young guys have more time and since time == money, they kind of already have "funding" when they're starting.
Therefore I do not see an answer to the dilemma the author is talking about. If your job pays $7K/month (after taxes) plus about a thousand more in benefits, and your startup needs 12 man-months to develop a prototype, plus 3-6 months of fundraising after that, you're essentially looking at the need to find $110-130K somewhere just to let yourself work full time on your idea. If you have that kind of savings - great. If not, quitting your job won't help since you'll starve to death. Short and simple, not even enough for a good blog post.
so, you're saying that a "real small-to-medium sized" company cannot begin to be built while working a day job? get a beta out and see if it picks up steam?
the author faced that dilemma and gave us his take, and you gave us yours. why all the 'this is childish' hate? :)
Hate? Wooo, that's a strong word :) I appreciated author's post, if anything, I was pissed by Matt's suppressing comments, especially since he's not too shy giving advice himself, which I also find useful on a regular basis.
This article seems to be mainly about how to not succeed.