Linked by Matt on April 10 2009:
Time Magazine: "Get Rich Slow"
“At no other time in recent history has it been easier or cheaper to start a new kind of company. Possibly a very profitable company. Let’s call these start-ups LILOs, for ‘a little in, a lot out.’ These are Web-based businesses that cost almost nothing to get off the ground yet can turn into great moneymakers (if you work hard and are patient).” 37signals.com and Ruby on Rails get brief shoutouts in the article. These success stories are going to flood the press over the next few years. This is where it’s at. Thin is in. Our new book, coming along nicely by the way, will be a great guide to starting and running these kinds of businesses.
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8 comments so far
Ryan Weaver 10 Apr 09
That’s me in a nut shell (still in the “be patient” stage) – can’t wait to get a hold of the new book!
What did people like me do before the internet?
Ben 10 Apr 09
Looking forward to the book. Any word on what the title will be?
I think you can do a lot better than “Unconform”.
Michael Diamond 10 Apr 09
Lean and Mean is our way of life.
No office, no secretary, no huge amounts of overhead.
I see us as the 21st century military of the web world.
MotorMouths 10 Apr 09
I’m the founder of MotorMouths, from the Time article linked above. As I hope is made clear from the piece, Getting Real was an amazing resource for us.
Also, we continue to rely on Basecamp to virtually manage the company. And RoR to power the thing. And don’t get me started on how much inspiration I stole from the tales tucked away in the SvN archives. Thanks guys!
Paul 10 Apr 09
@Ryan
Likewise, I’m in the (very) “patient” stage with Graphomatic. It’s written in RoR (free), and hosted on Heroku (free, until it gets pretty big).
All it has cost me is a few pounds for the domain, and my time to develop it. It won’t cost me anything to host it until I have a lot of users, and even then should be pretty cheap.
It really couldn’t be easier or cheaper to start a new business at the moment.
I also like the comment – “you’ll learn to survive on fumes until the economy improves”, I think starting a business now will teach many people much more discipline than all the flash-in-the-pan startups from the last decade or so.
Paul
Stephan 13 Apr 09
I think more and more folks are into building sustainable businesses and not just building a business strictly for the IPO anymore (although of course there is still a lot of that still going on). So the “patience” aspect makes sense.
Somebody 15 Apr 09
4 days without a new post. I bet traffic tripled.
Derek 15 Apr 09
I bet a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to this article right now. I know I sure can! I really appreciate you 37S raising awareness to this kind of thing. It’s nice to not feel alone in the universe.
Comments are closed