Valleywag has made a bullet point list from Mark Cuban’s Rules for Startups. Given that I speak with a handful of people looking to start dating and social networking sites every week, I thought this was especially relevant.
- Don’t start a company unless its an obsession you love.
- If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.
- Hire people who will love working.
- Know how your company will make money.
- Know your core competencies and pay up for people.
- Outside core competencies, hire people cheap.
- Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine.
- No offices. There is nothing private in a start up.
- As far as technology, go with what you know.
- Keep the organization flat.
- Never buy swag.
- Never hire a PR firm.
- Make the job fun for employees. Reward them. My first company, I would walk around handing out 100 dollar bills to salespeople.
A great list, I’m going to add this to my startup bootcamp materials.
If you just want to start a dating site to make some extra money, you’re most likely going to fail. Hosted dating services make it easier to launch, but you still have to spend a lot of money to drive people to your site. If you don’t spend enough on marketing your site, it will limp along and never get the traction required to be successful.
You don’t need an exit strategy, you need goals. Almost everyone that I talk to has never thought about their goals for starting a dating site. They see short hours and easy money. I see people who are going to be broke and unhappy in nine months.
If and when to hire a Public Relations firm keeps coming up in conversations. My general rule of thumb is not to say anything until you have a story to tell. Until you have identified and hit a mileston, like 50,000 users, you don’t have a story to tell and you’re wasting your money.
I know lots of dating services that pay $3-$10k a month for PR. PR is useful, but dating sites don’t get popular because of PR alone. That’s for when you have a story, enough users so that there isn’t an echo on your site, and the exposure can be built upon.
There are plenty of companies that get a lot out of PR. Go read OnlinePersonalsWatch, to see what PR can do for you. Notice that most of the companies Mark represents have lots of money to throw around. If you have limited resources, you better focus on advertising before PR, otherwise you’re not got to have any visitors to talk about.
PR Exposure often results in a quick uptick in interest and visitors. Like when the New York Times links to this blog and my servers start to melt. A few days later, the traffic is gone.
Instead, why not consider putting together a marketing plan? I’m not surprised anymore when I hear that a startup dating site doesn’t have one.
Without a solid marketing plan you’re going to spend all your money on Google Adwords and press releases and your bank account is going to tank before you’ve gotten enough mindshare and visitors to fill your site with people. I see this happen all the time. It’s unfortunate, but most people jump into the dating game without a clear game plan or enough to support the company and sustain an effective marketing campaign.
Perspective is key. Match and eHarmony spend over $100 million a year in marketing costs. What are you willing/able to spend? Remember, you get what you pay for.
