A startup is a company meant to grow quickly. They grew, quickly. From 2011 to 70 employees and turning down 8 digit figures? I consider them a startup, they scaled very fast.
Hmm... I wonder if there'd be people in the US willing to relocate to the middle of nowhere for a job that promised some good perks plus an extremely comfortable wage relative to cost of living (but not necessarily any larger than in San Fran or something).
I do kinda think that having a tech company set in the middle of some rustic mountains or something has a sort of crazy "code from an adirondack chair" appeal.
I'm not sure I would, personally though. I enjoy living in urban areas a little too much.
Joey Hess, Rob Savoye, and Chuck Moore have done this as famous individuals. Vipul Ved Prakash used to go to "the middle of nowhere" to spend much of the year working on personal projects. So there are certainly those of us who find appeal in such a life.
It's something I daydream about, but I think the reality would not be that great. For instance, it'd be difficult to get the kind of bandwidth you need out somewhere remote.
What might make for an interesting experiment is some sort of facility that group(s) could rotate through: say spend a month out in the wild hacking away. I don't think being that isolated would be good, long term, but for a month or something it might make a wonderful change of scenery and let you really concentrate.
It's a bit of a bitter pill for me (I prefer towns of about 100K-200K people), but a lot of evidence points to big cities being the best places for a lot of things: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008035HQQ/?tag=dedasys-20 for instance, talks about the returns to scale in terms of being around a lot of other bright, creative people.
Incidentally, if anyone has zillions of dollars, I think the Big Muddy Ranch in Oregon (currently a christian youth camp, and formerly the site of Rashneeshpuram!) would be a beautiful place to do that kind of thing. I accidentally drove through there a few years ago (long story), and it's a beautiful, and very remote area: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Muddy+Road,+Antelope,+OR,+Uni...
I did it for awhile, with some part time remote work to keep up a cashflow, while bootstrapping a startup.
In the end, the startup trumped the third-party work, and I focused on it exclusively. Still later, I moved to a city to continue. The city gave me better network infrastructure (not such an issue in Europe or parts of the US, but still a big issue in many places), plus - far more critically - access to a serious HR market and decisionmakers in partner organisations (telecommunications providers, government taxation bureaus, etc.).
Also, the clear "leave work and there is nobody who would have the foggiest about what it is you do all day" thing can promote a healthier work/life balance than inner-city cash-burning type startup environments, IMHO.
There are advantages and disadvantages. (I live and work in the Sierra foothills, I've organized a local group of fellow hackers, I've been working on building a startup community here.)
For me, the foremost advantage has to be lack of traffic. Nearly all of the essentials here are a 5 minute drive or less. The traffic flows well. The locals complain about a "traffic jam" somewhere if they have to wait in line at an intersection for more than thirty seconds. It seems like a silly, minor thing, until you've lived here for a while and then go back to southern California or the Bay Area for a bit.
It's fairly peaceful here. You can get a beautiful home, with no neighbors in sight, surrounded by trees and tranquility, for a fraction of the cost of such a thing elsewhere. This has a huge effect on stress. I live "downtown" -- literally a stone's throw from main street -- and I can still sit in my backyard and code in the sunshine and have it be fairly quiet and distraction-free.
There are farmers' markets and lots of other great community events. There's a sense of community, overall, that isn't really present in metropolitan areas.
It's 45 minutes from one of the Pacific Crest trailheads, if you need to get away. Or, drive for 20 minutes to one of the local rivers and relax in the water for a bit.
There are downsides though. There's a perception that there just isn't any talent here, and that makes some things difficult. There is talent, but not in the quantity you'd find in Palo Alto or Chicago or New York. We recently had an incubator / funding group meeting, where a member related that an investor told them directly that he'd never fund anything from our area code.
Some of the residents are a little ... odd. That's the case everywhere, but they're a little more noticeable here. They write lots of letters to the local newspaper. Our regional Craigslist is embarrassing.
We have some fantastic people that work hard on bringing culture to our area. We've had some big names performing at the hall across the street from my house. Bill Cosby, this week. A couple of really good theater companies. A local top-notch juggling club. Ultimate frisbee. We're one of the top downhill mountain bike destinations in the world (supposedly). We've got a great concert group that brings in talent from around the world. (I got to see violinist Stefan Jackiw play, it was indescribably beautiful.) Still, we're a bit short on "culture" -- art museums, ballet, clubs, that sort of thing.
Overall, I much prefer it to urban living. But, it lacks the image and style associated with the hubs of activity in metropolitan areas, so I expect it's difficult to convince people to move.
If anyone's interested in re-locating to about an hour from Sacramento, please feel free to contact me. I'm close to a number of local business groups, and I've just started building a partnership with a nearby capital network. I've been here for long enough now to know where a lot of great stuff is. I'd be happy to give you a tour and some introductions.
I guess the european definition of a startup is different that the american one.
European startup : able to buy back shares, carefully select employees, refuse 8 digits funding because it doesn't want to go public, rent a country house so that the funders can keep working in this ambiance.
American east-cost startup : cries for funding, hires like crazy wishes to sell and go public ASAP so that the funders can no longer work.
I don't know, maybe it's partial, but these remark aside, I'd guess the european startup might be able to do this because it's profitable, which is the #1 thing. Everything else is eye candy.
There are actually several other casual gaming startups in Hamburg e.g. Bigpoint GmbH which followed a more American model of growing as fast as possible and selling out early, so I don't think it's a German/European thing necessarily. Given one of Jimdo's competitors Wix is IPOing this year after an enormous marketing spend, it doesn't seem industry niche-specific either. (Disclosure: I work at Jimdo, feel free to ask me anything)
This sounds like a great company, but I think that in the VC-funded US startup ecosystem, this would be negatively described as a "lifestyle business".
Which is sad, because I would love to build a business like this. However I think it has become exceedingly difficult to build such businesses and compete effectively in any industry with VC-funded competitors.
I've seen this come up before and I wonder, why do lifestyle businesses have such a negative connotation? It seems like building these sort of sustainable businesses would be a lot more appealing to most people (or at least to me) rather than the VC-funded/start-up lottery approach you refer to in the US.
For some people, working at a startup is synonymous to working crazy hours for a few years and getting a big payout in the end. This is the compressed schedule that PG talks about in his essay. In such startups, there are multiple people (including non-founders) who take part in reaping the benefits of the startup's exit. Because everyone gets some benefit, you have the ability to attract better quality talent.
In a lifestyle business, there is the viewpoint where a non-founder is effectively working to support a founder's lifestyle. There is no promise of a good payout and at best, only a steady income with a predictable workload. For some individuals, this feels undesirable since you may end up with a less passionate, lower talent workforce due to the incentives you are offering. Also if the market opportunity grows at any point, you aren't well equipped to take advantage and you can easily get overtaken by a more mobilized, funded competitor.
17 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 55.7 ms ] threadSo are these guys really still a startup? Once you hit profit and pay off your debts it's a little strange to continue calling yourself a startup.
I do kinda think that having a tech company set in the middle of some rustic mountains or something has a sort of crazy "code from an adirondack chair" appeal.
I'm not sure I would, personally though. I enjoy living in urban areas a little too much.
What might make for an interesting experiment is some sort of facility that group(s) could rotate through: say spend a month out in the wild hacking away. I don't think being that isolated would be good, long term, but for a month or something it might make a wonderful change of scenery and let you really concentrate.
It's a bit of a bitter pill for me (I prefer towns of about 100K-200K people), but a lot of evidence points to big cities being the best places for a lot of things: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008035HQQ/?tag=dedasys-20 for instance, talks about the returns to scale in terms of being around a lot of other bright, creative people.
Incidentally, if anyone has zillions of dollars, I think the Big Muddy Ranch in Oregon (currently a christian youth camp, and formerly the site of Rashneeshpuram!) would be a beautiful place to do that kind of thing. I accidentally drove through there a few years ago (long story), and it's a beautiful, and very remote area: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Muddy+Road,+Antelope,+OR,+Uni...
In the end, the startup trumped the third-party work, and I focused on it exclusively. Still later, I moved to a city to continue. The city gave me better network infrastructure (not such an issue in Europe or parts of the US, but still a big issue in many places), plus - far more critically - access to a serious HR market and decisionmakers in partner organisations (telecommunications providers, government taxation bureaus, etc.).
Also, the clear "leave work and there is nobody who would have the foggiest about what it is you do all day" thing can promote a healthier work/life balance than inner-city cash-burning type startup environments, IMHO.
For me, the foremost advantage has to be lack of traffic. Nearly all of the essentials here are a 5 minute drive or less. The traffic flows well. The locals complain about a "traffic jam" somewhere if they have to wait in line at an intersection for more than thirty seconds. It seems like a silly, minor thing, until you've lived here for a while and then go back to southern California or the Bay Area for a bit.
It's fairly peaceful here. You can get a beautiful home, with no neighbors in sight, surrounded by trees and tranquility, for a fraction of the cost of such a thing elsewhere. This has a huge effect on stress. I live "downtown" -- literally a stone's throw from main street -- and I can still sit in my backyard and code in the sunshine and have it be fairly quiet and distraction-free.
There are farmers' markets and lots of other great community events. There's a sense of community, overall, that isn't really present in metropolitan areas.
It's 45 minutes from one of the Pacific Crest trailheads, if you need to get away. Or, drive for 20 minutes to one of the local rivers and relax in the water for a bit.
There are downsides though. There's a perception that there just isn't any talent here, and that makes some things difficult. There is talent, but not in the quantity you'd find in Palo Alto or Chicago or New York. We recently had an incubator / funding group meeting, where a member related that an investor told them directly that he'd never fund anything from our area code.
Some of the residents are a little ... odd. That's the case everywhere, but they're a little more noticeable here. They write lots of letters to the local newspaper. Our regional Craigslist is embarrassing.
We have some fantastic people that work hard on bringing culture to our area. We've had some big names performing at the hall across the street from my house. Bill Cosby, this week. A couple of really good theater companies. A local top-notch juggling club. Ultimate frisbee. We're one of the top downhill mountain bike destinations in the world (supposedly). We've got a great concert group that brings in talent from around the world. (I got to see violinist Stefan Jackiw play, it was indescribably beautiful.) Still, we're a bit short on "culture" -- art museums, ballet, clubs, that sort of thing.
Overall, I much prefer it to urban living. But, it lacks the image and style associated with the hubs of activity in metropolitan areas, so I expect it's difficult to convince people to move.
If anyone's interested in re-locating to about an hour from Sacramento, please feel free to contact me. I'm close to a number of local business groups, and I've just started building a partnership with a nearby capital network. I've been here for long enough now to know where a lot of great stuff is. I'd be happy to give you a tour and some introductions.
edit: Sorry, misread that as Truckee for some reason. If Truckee's OK with you, offer still stands.
Afaik United Internet / 1&1 — the company they had a bad marriage with — still uses the original code and makes a lot of money with it.
Personally, I would not approach 1&1 with any idea after reading that story.
European startup : able to buy back shares, carefully select employees, refuse 8 digits funding because it doesn't want to go public, rent a country house so that the funders can keep working in this ambiance.
American east-cost startup : cries for funding, hires like crazy wishes to sell and go public ASAP so that the funders can no longer work.
I don't know, maybe it's partial, but these remark aside, I'd guess the european startup might be able to do this because it's profitable, which is the #1 thing. Everything else is eye candy.
Which is sad, because I would love to build a business like this. However I think it has become exceedingly difficult to build such businesses and compete effectively in any industry with VC-funded competitors.
In a lifestyle business, there is the viewpoint where a non-founder is effectively working to support a founder's lifestyle. There is no promise of a good payout and at best, only a steady income with a predictable workload. For some individuals, this feels undesirable since you may end up with a less passionate, lower talent workforce due to the incentives you are offering. Also if the market opportunity grows at any point, you aren't well equipped to take advantage and you can easily get overtaken by a more mobilized, funded competitor.