On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> I wonder, is the days of doing a startup in your garage with a couple of > unemployed friends all gone? > > With an investment of, say, 100,000 shekels, you can rent an appartment > for a year, buy a few crappy computers and even employ someone with minimum > wages (say, a secretary, to make the place appear to be a respectable > business). yes. thought the hard part is getting an idea. bwt, this kind of model for software companies got some competition from the 'open-source startup', which is a startup that was created due to the success of some open-source project (sendmail inc, scriptics, zend and a few others). > The "partners" in such a company would only get paid when some > business comes in - and hopefully enough business would come in to give the > partners minimum wages after a few months (if it doesn't, it's time close the > company) and maybe even hire employees. > I know that a new office in Herzelia and50 highly-paid employees with > company cars sound better, but only if you have someone throwing millions > at you, and at this point it isn't very easy... > > I remember, about 8 years ago, when I was invited for some business meeting > with one of the first Internet companies in Israel, called "Macom" if I > remember correctly (they were perhaps the first commercial company in Israel > to do sites for other companies; they went belly-up a few years later, if > I remember correctly). They were a bunch of youngguys operating from a > shoddy rented appartment in a residential area of Jerusalem. I came there > with a bus (they didn't offer to send a cab to get me), and the CEO of the > company cleaned a glass from the dirty sink and offered to make me a drink > (no coffee-making machine, no business meeting in the downstaires arcafe). > They expected their business to survive and grow (it didn't unfortunately), > not to make $10,000,000 in the first year and be valued at $1 billion after > the second. > I wonder if it'simpossible to do the same thing nowadays. oh, it is possible, and is being done. people just got spoiled recently, so it'll take them a while to get back to doing that. i'm aware of at least two companies that started this way (thought not necesasrily a rented apartment - but starting very modestly, with no investors, and trying to build something) btw, i'm sure most web-design businesses, and many consulting businesses, started this way exactly. its easier to finance such businesses then those that make a product, and its easier to start having income faster. and btw, you don't have to be very young to do things this way - you just need to be able to afford this economically (i.e. either not have family to support, or have famility to support you ;) ). -- guy "For world domination - press 1, or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
