The credit crunch has probably changed that a bit, but not too much. IMHO anyway.

1) I think you should ALWAYS try to get to the point of generating meaningful revenue as quickly as you can, however,
2) If you are an advertising-based company, then generating meaningful revenue might not be possible until you reach a certain point. In which case 'as early as you can' simply means somewhat later. So, obviously you should focus as much as you can on getting to that point as quickly as you can. That means focusing on traffic.

The current environment doesn't change this one bit.

What has changed though is that 'meaningful' is suddenly somewhat less than it was before, so people are trying to bring money in earlier than a few years ago.

Does that make sense?

Thanks

C

The credit crunch has probably changed that a bit, but not too much. IMHO anyway.

1) I think you should ALWAYS try to get to the point of generating meaningful revenue as quickly as you can, however,
2) If you are an advertising-based company, then generating meaningful revenue might not be possible until you reach a certain point. In which case 'as early as you can' simply means somewhat later. So, obviously you should focus as much as you can on getting to that point as quickly as you can. That means focusing on traffic.

The current environment doesn't change this one bit.

What has changed though is that 'meaningful' is suddenly somewhat less than it was before, so people are trying to bring money in earlier than a few years ago.

Does that make sense?

Thanks

C

We were executing a strategy of actively looking for VC funding until the current crisis rendered that a vastly less certain proposition. We scaled back expenses (including markteting), focused the 40-50% of our (my) time we were spending on ‘fund raising’ into monetization.

With the results from that (better monetization and lower costs), we’re in a sustainable position now and can look again at raising funds to fuel growth as and when the ‘sun comes up’.

In the meantime we’re comfortable to take slower or even static user number growth, and (following your valued suggestion) would look to kick that into higher gear again before we started the fund raising process again.

We were executing a strategy of actively looking for VC funding until the current crisis rendered that a vastly less certain proposition. We scaled back expenses (including markteting), focused the 40-50% of our (my) time we were spending on ‘fund raising’ into monetization.

With the results from that (better monetization and lower costs), we’re in a sustainable position now and can look again at raising funds to fuel growth as and when the ‘sun comes up’.

In the meantime we’re comfortable to take slower or even static user number growth, and (following your valued suggestion) would look to kick that into higher gear again before we started the fund raising process again.