Recently, I reviewed an amp named Stamped, which is a social network based around the concept of liking specific items and giving them a stamp accordingly. This app has made a wave across the Internet, mostly because it’s well designed and a new startup, like everything seems to be nowadays (not that I’m complaining). But with Stamped, one of the key complaints is that the company doesn’t have a business model. From Shawn Blanc under the “Cons” column:
NO BUSINESS MODEL, YET: Build a big and happy user base now, figure out how to sustain the business later. That seems to be the business model of choice for many new startups. It was Twitter’s business model, it is Instagram’s, and it is Stamped’s as well.
A few years back, right around the time that Square was starting up, I interviewed Jack Dorsey, the founder of both Square and Twitter, for a magazine I was freelancing for at the time. I remember researching the project, thinking a lot about how and why someone would start a service like Twitter, when there is no way to monetize it. It just didn’t make sense. So I asked him just that: How do you start a company with no idea how you’re going to make money? His response struck me as very profound, and I wish I could find it right now to quote him verbatim, but here’s a paraphrased version:
“You do what you love and then you find a way to make it work.”
Simple, right? That answer really made me think, particularly at that moment as I was just a few months into my new business, my son was not yet born and I was very scared about the future. Would I make it? Was it possible to make that kind of money? Could I support my family on this work?
What Dorsey said made sense to me, and I’ve held that in high regard for the past few years, just keeping it in the back of my mind on those days when the money doesn’t seem to be moving right and the writing seems to be up and down. I think about that and remind myself that I love what I do, and that’s the important part. I’ll find a way to make it work.
I don’t know anything about the guys at Stamped. Hell, I don’t even know if they’re guys, and all I do know is that they’re another startup with an iPhone app. Maybe they’re a bunch of hippies with a dream, or corporate robots with ideas of striking it rich in the App market, I don’t know. But is it my place — or anyone else’s — to question their business plan? To judge them based on an idea that they came up with?
Maybe what they’re just doing what they love. I’m sure they’ll figure out what to do next.
Business Model
Recently, I reviewed an amp named Stamped, which is a social network based around the concept of liking specific items and giving them a stamp accordingly. This app has made a wave across the Internet, mostly because it’s well designed and a new startup, like everything seems to be nowadays (not that I’m complaining). But with Stamped, one of the key complaints is that the company doesn’t have a business model. From Shawn Blanc under the “Cons” column:
A few years back, right around the time that Square was starting up, I interviewed Jack Dorsey, the founder of both Square and Twitter, for a magazine I was freelancing for at the time. I remember researching the project, thinking a lot about how and why someone would start a service like Twitter, when there is no way to monetize it. It just didn’t make sense. So I asked him just that: How do you start a company with no idea how you’re going to make money? His response struck me as very profound, and I wish I could find it right now to quote him verbatim, but here’s a paraphrased version:
Simple, right? That answer really made me think, particularly at that moment as I was just a few months into my new business, my son was not yet born and I was very scared about the future. Would I make it? Was it possible to make that kind of money? Could I support my family on this work?
What Dorsey said made sense to me, and I’ve held that in high regard for the past few years, just keeping it in the back of my mind on those days when the money doesn’t seem to be moving right and the writing seems to be up and down. I think about that and remind myself that I love what I do, and that’s the important part. I’ll find a way to make it work.
I don’t know anything about the guys at Stamped. Hell, I don’t even know if they’re guys, and all I do know is that they’re another startup with an iPhone app. Maybe they’re a bunch of hippies with a dream, or corporate robots with ideas of striking it rich in the App market, I don’t know. But is it my place — or anyone else’s — to question their business plan? To judge them based on an idea that they came up with?
Maybe what they’re just doing what they love. I’m sure they’ll figure out what to do next.