[tom]

Have you launched something yet? Paid service? Free? Freemium? Without launching and looking at real, initial numbers just assume you'll be like 99% of the startups out there and get none. That's what your potential jnvestors will do until they see some real numbers.

Seriously, get something real, prove you're on to something, and THEN talk numbers with investors. You've got a bigtime uphill battle without at least one solid proof point. Get that, and then hockeystick that sucker up!

[smanek]

Completely free.

I agree with you - we won't be raising money till after we launch and (hopefully) gain some traction. But one of our founders is handling the business side of things and really wants to get at least some rough numbers now. Given his considerable business experience (and the lack of downside to letting him create his model), it sounds like a reasonable request. Rather than have him pull the numbers out of his head, I thought it would be better to do some research.

Don't worry, all our technical people (myself included) are completely focused on making the product as great as possible for launch! And, for what it's worth, we are following a very quick schedule - just two or three months of part time development before we launch and start iterating on user feedback.

[petervandijck]

"Given his considerable business experience (and the lack of downside to letting him create his model)"

Warning signs! Translation: "He doesn't know what he's doing" (or he wouldn't be making predictions on made-up numbers), "and I'm letting him waste some time" (ie, "the lack of downside").

Not sounding good :)

[idlewords]

Not having a model is better than using a model based on imaginary data, which is what you'll have until you launch your site. As other people here have pointed out, traffic for new sites is very bursty and depends in large part on who links to you when.

[lowkey]

I call bullshit. The purpose of making a forecast is not to predict the future, it is to identify errors in the logic of your assumptions. The experienced business guy is simply putting together a model based on obviously fictional data to help understand the financial dynamics of the business - probably to see if there even IS a real business.

It's nice rhetoric to proclaim that since user adoption figures cannot be predicted with accuracy, they should not be predicted at all. Even without accurate forecasts, it is trivial to calculate the required breakeven users and examine scenarios where that breakeven is achieved in a short,medium, or long ramp period. Other valuable metrics are also more easily discerned from a model than by pure guess.

It sounds like me that that business guy is simply doing his job - and it sounds like he knows his job better than many readers here.

[idlewords]

You don't need to badger your devs for anticipated traffic figures in order to calculate those kinds of scenarios. It's one thing to calculate various thresholds and set up hypotheses that you'll test later, once you've collected real data. It's another thing to make numbers up out of whole cloth so you can fool yourself into thinking you understand more than you do about your business.

[bilbo0s]

I agree with @tom's sentiment here. Though I would like to add something, just as a note to you. If you have 'investors' that are interested in those estimates, you should probably rethink the wisdom of doing business with them.

The portion of your post that indicated that potential investors were interested in the numbers threw a red flag up for me.

[smanek]

I think it's just informal interest. One of our founders has a lot of VC friends/ex-colleagues and he just wants to be ready for our launch in a few weeks. We won't be raising money that early, but it seems like he can talk to some people and get us on their radar earlier than normal (so they know us (and we know them) for when we are ready).

I'm willing to defer to the business-founder with experience on this matter.

[petervandijck]

If he wants to make up numbers now instead of waiting a few weeks and getting real (ie. dissapointing) numbers, that's bullshit radar material.

[JeremyChase]

I have to echo this as well. Most products have a flat line, with perhaps a spike from publicity.