People’s Software Company

Greg Sterling’s got a good post today on how he appreciated entrepreneurs who want to build viable businesses, not just built to flip products; Some of what Greg says:

” Stepping back, it strikes me that there’s something quite “dysfunctional” going on in the way that many entrepreneurs and funders think about building online businesses. Historically people in the real world who start businesses have not gone in with the attitude: in three years someone will buy me and I’ll never work again or maybe I’ll go start another business that will be acquired in another three years.”

Greg also says: “Whenever I enounter an entrepreneur who is seeking to build a business or is passionate about an idea and trying to bring it to life — without regard for whether it will be bought — I’m impressed because a long-term view of the market is both rare and exactly what’s needed to make many of these ideas succeed.”

Lisa and I have been thinking about these issues as we build out our business plan, costs, and revenue plan–and model what the next 18 months might look like, on both the cost and revenue side. We’re too new to have an accurate sense of what will play out, but we’re working on building a realistic model, one that seems to suggest we can be sustainable if we release X product to Y user base and generate X page views.