At 01:32 15/07/2002 +0300, you wrote:
> > I wonder, is the days of doing a startup in your garage with a couple of
> > unemployed friends all gone?
>
>Unfortunately yes. Unless your friend got some other way to get some money
>while your new venture gets some money from investors - then you'll be in
>trouble..
>
>We have a very interesting situation today: Investors have money (well, whats
>left from it after they didn't learn that, contrary to some shit head
>analysts, there is no "new economy") and they are looking to invest money,
>but they are affraid, very very affraid, and they're so much affraid that
>they miss quite a lot of potential opportunities to make some money in the
>middle/long-term range.
>
> > 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). 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 and 50 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...
>
>Ahha, but you do forget it's Israel here, where payments are "shotef + 60"
>minimum and most companies won't talk to you if it's not "shotef + 90" as a
>way of payment, and even then - you'll get the checks later, so your
>employees need, again - to either open their saving or do a part time job for
>you.
>
>As for a place - you don't really need one. You can rent "secretary service"
>where a girl will answer with your company name, and you can hire a meeting
>room. That way you can signal to your investors that you're serious about
>tight budget ;)
Or just have one of your employees answer the phone. As a full time job
it's not the brightest idea, but if for example you've got 4 people, each
working a part time job at another place and spends X hours at the "office"
on certain days, then you can cover most working hours.
Also, the place for an office can be a small apartment in Rishon, instead
of a flashy office building in TA, and the customers needn't be only
medium-bin companies, even small businesses or private customers need good
support, I remember my days on various tech support lines try to extract a
sensible answer from the guy only to have him tell me to reinstall the system.
So basically, a startup company that provides both phone and onsite support
is still possible, if the people who run it are sensible enough.
> > 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 young guys 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's impossible to do the same thing nowadays.
>
>Well, I remember being interviewed by couple of companies when the dot shit
>bubble was happening. I was talking to some other interviewers who were
>waiting as me to get into the interview and we chatted a bit. I was shocked
>to find the sallery that they request (NIS 35K!) to work as a Linux developer
>while they didn't know even what is GCC! and you know what? they were hired
>and those companies paid those prices!
>
>There are 2 good example of the dot com area - allow me to show you:
>
>* bad example: eazel. They didn't know anything about making money, they
>had a
>shitty managment and when I talked to them about revenue, they told me that
>their 3rd generation Nautilus will make revenues (by no less then ads! -
>someone did forget that nautilus was/is open source) - so they burned 15
>million dollars on a ... bad file manager.
>
>* good examples: TheKompany, and CodeWeavers: both companies didn't get any
>investments money and went the old way. Both companies still alive,
>thekompany has lots of products and CodeWeavers which started to see some
>money when they started selling CrossOver office.
>
>So, back to your question: if you want to create a company - then I would
>suggest for you to seek clients first, and then, after you've negotiated some
>draft deals, then start the companies. I'm sure you can find some people once
>you got some assured way to generate revenues for salleries..
>
>Hetz
>
> >
> > Allons enfant de la Patrie
> > Le jour de gloire est arrive!
>
>
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Just my $0.02
Peleg.
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