ThinkingNectar

Firstly, I really do not like to use the word entrepreneur. But that is besides the point.

The purpose of this post is in reponse to several items that I read over the past week and especially this email by Ridzuan (which I just happen to stumble upon). Personally I do not know Ridzuan but heard enough of him to give him the respect he deserve.

Also it could be the series of event that lead up to this. Just the day before I was at the Linux Meetup Group with a developer friend of mine and was greatly humbled by the content discussed and the very people who were there. Boy do I have a lot to learn. And he made a striking comment:

I like Linux Meetup more than PHP Meetup because there are no “suits” here.

Not to offend anyone here for the record. Looking back, PHP meetup have gotten a lot of mileage since its “tipping point” early this year and I was with the meetup since December 2006. With the different demographics that attend the those meetup, we have developers (who I love to meet), business owners and students.

Business owners I welcome, having them exposed to open source is surely good and I do believe that going open source is sound business decision. Do not believe me? Try out the latest OpenOffice and see for yourself how much cash you save. In addition, they offer working opportunities for developers.

Students are nice but there were one kind of audience whom I do not seem to appreciate. What me and my dear friend defined as “suits”. Typical profile: young (<25), still in university, majoring in none Computer Science related course, non-developer and looking for developer to developer their “idea”.

Young, brilliant and looking for developer? Why not spare the developer scouting and hit the keyboard and develop something yourself? It does not help that IDM funding allows up to $600 for founding team member. The risk any developer undertook in a startup is unmeasureable. And in a unforgiving society like Singapore, it takes hell lot of guts and luck. And, that is if the idea was sound in the first place.

Hell yeah will I like to see a suit been paid $600. Bitter I may sound, I am not bitter, just that the prideful developer in me speaking.

Back to Ridzuan’s email. I can relate much to the feeling that he have and what others may feel. As some closer people might know, Ablewise Online Classifieds was a startup that was developed by wonderful people like Adrian and gang and I am part of that. It was great learning experience and I will even term it addicitive. And the sad fact is that we “disband” in May this year after doing what we can over the year before. Our investors were happy that we can pay them back eariler and each of the sensational six went on to be 9 to 5 drones. It was a difficult decision and it felt that I lost a bit of my soul then.

We disband because the startup was viable, but not giving the big bucks that we dreamt of. The fact is painful and coupled with foresight that the (US) economy was not going to be too good, we “disband”. Nothing to be ashame of, knowing that we did what was best for all parties. Opportunity cost is something every developer should know.

Our business then was to provide a free service to customers and from the free service, have a paid service that some customers can opt to engage.  We do not rely on advertisment and that was the business model. Ironic as it may sound, we are a free classified service.

Hence it is beyond me to comprehend how social network startups match with the big boys. Sexy and the new black, social network and their different niches and type of mutation seems to be the in thing, but being highly dependent and advertising dollar is not a sound business model. Unless of course you have a sales team that can really actively engage the advertiser B2B then it another ball game.

So in current market condition, be less dependent on advertiser dollar. Build something really useful and people will pay for it. Spin off an enterprise version and go for enterprise looking to cut cost.

To fight for passion and glory is a good thing, but do not short change yourself or your loved ones. Seek you market value for yourself and your idea. There is no better time to be more truthful.

I am not sure what the market forces will do to the talent pool. My view is that they will just stick to what they have instead of doing a startup. But these will be a good thing as only those who are really passionate about their ideas will surface in such times. I have respect for those who worked to keep that startup above the surface in such trying times.

Now, when to scratch that starting-up itch of mine again?