Some straight talk from Jason Fried of 37s

[marketer]

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=375

[axod]

This is useful if you just want to be a small software company, but it's really specifically for that audience.

For example "Give up on hard problems" "work less" "look for easy pickings at the low end of big companies" etc.

[jwilliams → axod]

I agreed with most of it, except when he dismissing scaling as an issue. If you get scaling wrong you're in for a world of pain if success hits.

Think he was saying, don't bother with the dozens of servers, etc, etc - which I agree with - but I'd say ignoring it completely is dangerous.

[axod → jwilliams]

Sure... Their strategy doesn't call for scaling though.

Campfire has handled 10 million messages since it started in 2006. That sort of traffic could be handled on a 386.

Their strategy is getting people to pay for simple stuff. That's a reasonably small market.

[jwilliams → axod]

May be the case - but in my experience, issues of scale don't creep up on you - one day hit a hard limit and your service is crashing all the time.

.. And if you haven't thought about it - this can happen at any volume. I've seen apps that test great with 5 users and then bomb when you get 3 more.

Just my experience. Not saying as an overall strategy it's not a good idea - as a business this might very well be an effective model - just saying that ignoring it technically is a bad one.

[jwilliams]

Interesting - he makes a point about not giving too much away for free (literally at the very end of the talk).

He mentions that after putting their book up for free that they didn't sell many books any more (although, arguably the pay-off was exposure, conferences, etc...).