[fidotron]

I'm very happy to see this at the top this morning.

HN has tended to prioritise product development at the expense of business development, when the reality is you need both. Many of us seem to come from that product dev background and like to stick to the "if you build it they will come" mentality, which isn't so hot in practice. A lot of modern business models (especially those like ARM's licensing or Google's sublimely evil auctions) deserve respect from the hacker community for being almost as innovative as the products being sold in them.

Finally, I kind of wonder if the promotion by 37 signals has introduced a sort of conservatism that doesn't really work. Their true success came from the then radical idea of software as a service, and while I admire the way they cut through a lot of start up bullshit their approach seems to destroy ambition in a way that, for example, YC doesn't seem to.

[beat]

Well, it depends on your ambition. As Jason Cohen put it, "Do you want to be rich, or do you want to be king?" They require (or at least benefit from) different approaches. If you want to be rich, maximize growth. This means accepting funding whenever it can increase your growth rate. If you want to be king, avoid investment if you possibly can, and focus on profitability.

"Rich" isn't just about making money, or maximizing money. You can get rich as king, too. Rich is about creating the largest, most powerful, most influential business you can, taking the idea to its max. But if you go this route, with lots of investment, you must pay off for your investors. You must have an exit strategy.

"King" is about control. It's about building the company you've always wanted to work at, and just working there forever. That's what 37signals did. They created an ideal company with a unique culture, and incidentally got rich in the process, but it's not nearly as big as it could be if they pushed. But that's okay... they love their product.

[mychaelangelo]

Agreed. Would be good to see some more biz dev stuff but i guess there's lots of other sites that specialise in that. Good to see all these tech business models though!