Truemors: No Business Model, Eh?
We bashed Truemors earlier last month, but I was surprised to learn this from Guy Kawasaki himself: Truemors doesn’t even have a business model.
0. I wrote 0 business plans for it. The plan is simple: Get a site launched in a few months, see if people like it, and sell ads and sponsorships (or not).
0. I pitched 0 venture capitalists to fund it. Life is simple when you can launch a company with a credit-card level debt.
Sure, it’s okay for startups and Web 2.0 companies to run just because of raw passion for the medium and for the technology. But coming from a venture capitalist himself, it sounds like Truemors was one big (or small?) experiment. I would agree that if an entrepreneur presented a plan without a business model, then most likely Guy the VC would boot that guy out of his office.
And Guy even admitted that it was a stupid idea.
In total, I spent $12,107.09 to launch Truemors. During the dotcom days, entrepreneurs had to raise $5 million to try stupid ideas. Now I’ve proven that you can do it for $12,107.09.
Hey Guy, you can even do it for less!
But then it got me thinking, Guy’s an entrepreneur, and also a capitalist. He’s one of those people who can afford to lose money. As long as he learns from the experience, then he ends up richer in the long term (money and experience wise).
Here’s the bottom line: Whether Truemors succeeds or not, I learned a helluva lot. One thing is for sure: no entrepreneur can tell me that he needs $1 million, four programmers, and six months to launch this kind of company. With products like WordPress, MySQL, and Salesforce platform, things are a whole lot cheaper and easier these days.
Suddenly, Truemors doesn’t sound so silly to me.
[via Wired]
More even, Guy already bought himself valuable attention if he were to launch another platform. First start with a failure, then impress.
Sounds smart to me.
Not that I expect him to impress tho.
Franky said this on June 5, 2007 4:12 pm
Question for me is, which begets which. Is this stunt a good learning experience because Guy is Guy? Or can it be valuable in itself without the VC/entrepreneur attached?
Like if I (or any other unknown person) spent 12 grand on a project doomed to fail (but from where I would learn much), would I be able to apply lessons learned in future undertakings? I guess that would be difficult to say.
jangelo said this on June 5, 2007 5:31 pm
Angelo, I think this stunt surely IS worth the 12k. The argument lesson is worth null, nada, zilch, noppes. Everyone knows that.
Truemors is not really comparable with the average startup. Also in the price no wages for the 1.5 position are calculated. If you get VC of course you have your wage. And you need marketing of course.
Even if Truemors never takes off, the quite sure PR6 in some weeks could sell well at Sitepoint.
But I think Guy first will need to learn another lesson : know when to drop a project (and sell when it’s worth something).
franky said this on June 7, 2007 5:38 pm
I think that means quitting while you’re ahead. Or perhaps having great timing.
jangelo said this on June 7, 2007 6:21 pm