Getting paid
I’m scheming with Monica on a site for freelance and other writers. The idea came about because 1) Monica needed a portfolio site for her writing and couldn’t find a good solution online and 2) Monica couldn’t find a good way to track her story pitches and submissions.
We did a bit of research and figured that there are probably enough people out there that need the same things as Monica does to make a nice little income stream.
Today while taking a break from coding on this product I watched an talk that DHH gave at Startup School a little while back. I thought the talk was good, he talks about the importance of charging money for your product and getting paid. Obvious. No? But the audience to which he was speaking was to a group of people chasing the billion dollar start-up dream.
Some takeaways:
- a $1mil company is way easier a $1bn company
- the jump from 0 to $1mil will make more of a difference to your life than the jump from $1mil to $1bn
“Tell me, Gordon–when does it all end? How many yachts can you waterski behind? How much is enough?”
- you’ve got to charge money
- stay free of external funding and you get to remain in charge and enjoy yourself a whole lot more
Anyway, DHH digs into the model 37signals uses a bit too, monthly fees for small businesses is where they’ll stick. They’re down to 4 days per week too.
Link to presentation. I really like they way the slides are presented next to the speaker video.