[tx]

PG's advice is good for YC but I blame myself for taking it seriously. Now, after nearly a year of work and tons of personal savings spent, we're seeing quite negative reaction from the first wave of investors we've approached: everyone wants to see 2 year projections of revenues and they want those numbers to be huge. That's discouraging.

We never thought about "revenues after 2 year run" because I preferred PG's approach of focusing on "building something people need". His take on having a business plan with "shiny revenue projections for next 2 years" is that a business plan does not matter much, since the business will change, and in the end writing it won't be that hard for a couple of smart hackers. Well... not really, especially if you're faced with questions like "how exactly you are going to get users"? And my honest reply (I haven't brave enough to give it out yet) has always been "well... you give me the money and I will hire someone with a good answer". Don't get me wrong: everybody agrees that we're solving a very real problem and there is money to be made, but the lack of clear understanding of where we're going to be in 2 years is our big problem right now.

My approach, influenced in part by PG's essays, is to focus on making people happy and "evolve" organically. This does not fly with investors at all. It's depressing: Facebook is losing money, nobody knows for how long, it is older than 2 years old and commonly considered "successful". Meanwhile, investors want us to make money, and tons of it just to get an A-round.