[dm8]

Somewhat agree with Diego. But unfortunately, people are not used to pay on the web. I've built an extremely useful service but only 1 in 100 was willing to pay, which is ridiculous to say.

On a side note, what if you are building a startup to deliver ads? :) (Any thoughts on building a startup for ad-tech)

[guga31bb]

>I've built an extremely useful service but only 1 in 100 was willing to pay, which is ridiculous to say.

To play devil's advocate, if only 1 in 100 people are willing to pay for your service, how useful can it really be? I'd think those 100 people are more qualified to judge how useful it is for them than the person who built the service.

[dm8]

Well, we were competing against "free" service offered by big co. Average user doesn't want to pay. They would say us, "ohh we will go to free service by big co". And I learnt big lesson that you can't compete against big co's especially their free products directly.

[ktizo]

what if you are building a startup to deliver ads?

Then you are starting in an overcrowded space. The only reason that the first internet empires have been ad-based is because it is the easiest and most obvious business model to try, given the existence of a large and rich existing advertising industry that is already used to supporting a lot of old media. It is not a particularly innovative business model however and is also probably not the biggest pile of money on the table.