Evan Williams, co-founder and CEO of Pyra, the company that created Blogger, posted a note on his personal web site yesterday announcing that he lost his whole staff he ran out of money. He does plan to keep the company and the service afloat till he figures out how to make it sustainable.
I met Evan at high tech retreat a couple years ago and have kept in contact with him on and off since. It must be hard to have a hot product yet lose your whole team. One thing he wrote really caught my attention:
Yes, things would have been very, very different if the Internet Bubble wouldn’t have burst and we were still in that…that, Other World in which we started. In that world, things that seem dumb now (such as launching a product and letting it grow for so long without making revenue from it a priority) made sense. And if it would have continued just a little longer, there’s little doubt we’d be telling a different story now (then again, it could be a sadder story).
It’s that last phrase, “…. then again, it could be a sadder story.” It reminded me of this Joe to Go quote by Larry Brilliant that I posted back on Nov 15th, “You’re entitled to the joy of work, you’re just not entitled to the results.”
Ev seems to get this. He enjoyed the ride, learned a lot, is determined to continue, and is optimistic while acknowledging his part in the problems. I wonder if he realizes that there’s no way to know whether this is good news or bad news.
I have somewhat the same problem with Real Joe as Ev does with his company–economic sustainability–and although I don’t have a hit product or a staff (yet!), I’ve had to hang out my consulting/contractor shingle to earn some income while I keep working on the content and reworking the business plan.
I’m now ramping up to get the word out, get people subscribing to the various lists, working on getting funding for a radio show pilot, and doing some PR to get other sites to link to us. I’m packaging up the articles/essays into a downloadable quarterly that can be printed out and read at leisure. After a test run, I’ll ask people to subscribe to it using PayPal. After that, I’ll start adding a few books to an online JoeMart store.
I’m determined to make this work, but I know I’m not entitled to the results.
An item in yesterday’s NewsScan Daily is titled Men Give Guy Sites the Cold Shoulder, and it summarizes an article in the Feb 1 Investor’s Business Daily (article available in print only).
A great quote from Playboy.com’s president: “I wouldn’t want to start a business aimed at getting men to share their innermost thoughts online.” I guess I better think twice about my expectations for the Real Joe discussion boards. 😉