Poll: funded or not funded?

[jmtame]

Since you guys seem to be in the mood to poll... What is the state of your startup?

[paraschopra]

I am curious to hear startup stories from the people who voted for "Bootstrap + very profitable". Anybody here who would want to tell us who you are and what is your startup? Thanks.

[jmtame → paraschopra]

Profitable start-ups anonymous?

[brlewis]

In two days my users will start getting real ads with the opportunity to pay to get rid of them. I can hardly wait to see what happens.

[mahmud]

Self funded. Sold a previous incarnation of the company, and went to reinvent it to something completely different. Previous buyer wants to buy it again, but I have bigger eye-balls now, and on them are bigger dollar signs :-P

[kaiserama → mahmud]

In Yahoo Messenger I believe that emoticon is performed as such: $-)

[tptacek]

Where's "bootstrap + straight-up profitable"?

I'm not ok with eating ramen.

[jamroom → tptacek]

+1 to this - we're not "very profitable", but we pay all salaries each month plus have extra money to work with. Completely self funded too..

[chops → jamroom]

Same. I'm profitable enough to pay my bills and maintain my lifestyle. I make more money doing this than I did as a programmer employee, and also more than when I was a consultant. "Very profitable" would be nice, but not quite there yet.

Put in my vote for..."Comfortably profitable?"

[patio11 → chops]

One more for "comfortable". I'm making in the general ballpark of my dayjob salary. Self-funded (for $60 back in the day, and a whole lot of reinvested earnings and sweat equity).

[amohr → tptacek]

Add an egg and cayenne. Or just become more profitable, I guess?

[octane → tptacek]

> I'm not ok with eating ramen.

Real ramen is really good. Like the kind you order in a restaurant.

[kiba]

Um.. my startup is not formal and I am working on games as a "hobby" with some vague business model ideas.

I planned to put up ads on my site to recoup cost and then make it break even into profitability.

My first game site(an encyclopedia) has already achevie "break even" status.

So...how should I vote?

[janitha]

Bootstrapped and in the valley of death

[patio11 → janitha]

And yay though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil because paying customers were at my side.

[amohr]

There needs to be an option for Bootstrapped + shot down by lawyer-types

[SapphireSun → amohr]

I'm curious. Is this something that we should generally watch out for? It's okay if you can't talk about it.

[jcl → SapphireSun]

I'm especially curious to hear if it was patents (someone claimed to own our process) or copyright (someone caught us making a "social music/video" site).

[amohr → jcl]

It was a social music site, it stretched fair use within reason, but we would have had to strike deals with the major labels to be fully functional. We ended up in a meeting with Hank Barry (CEO of Napster in 2000) and he straight told us that there was no way we could both do business with record labels and be profitable.

[sid]

I havnt launched yet but i know for a fact i will go bootstrapped. So after a few months i know whether i will be breakeven, ramen or in the red.

Like all im aiming for bootsrap + very profitable but dont know if that will happen within 6months - 1 year of launching, only time will tell :)

[audidude]

Quit my job, bootstrapping, starting today :-)

[pkaler]

"Bootstrap + very profitable".

But that's depending on your definition of "very profitable". I make more money than I did as an employee at my last job.

But it also happens to be a services company. The services company funds the product company. More info: http://smartfulstudios.com

[PStamatiou]

This would be more interesting if it was broken down by $'s instead of categories. Would love to know more about sub-$50k startups.

[ericb]

I'm surprised how high the angel number is. I wonder where people find these angels, and how they new them or were introduced?

[JoelSutherland]

Is anything beyond ramen profitable no longer considered a startup?

[omarchowdhury → JoelSutherland]

Yes.

[mahmud → omarchowdhury]

That's utter nonsense; you stop being a startup when you start paying dividends and living quarter to quarter. At the early stages all your "profits" are just put back into the company.

[omarchowdhury → mahmud]

I thought you stop being a startup after you finish starting up.

[csomar]

i didn't started!