good morning! i hear monkeys on the rooftop. Its going to be an interesting day for sure !
its good to make profit, but
1. be tasteful and have a goal. trying to desperately charge now when the product/concept is raw would yield a small amount of subscribers and miss the boat on the larger adopters
2. if one is funded for 1-2 years, now would be a good time to build loyal users. And that's all.
If you have a million loyal users using your social media app in a year from now, you will have higher conversion rate moving to a subscriber or other chargeable business model options. But ensure this is an additive model and not a deductive model. Nostr should still be open and free for everyone by fundamental principles.
3. And if you have a large amount of loyal users, you can also build on the "other stuff" which is an advantage for your loyal users. And you can also go full blown capitalist with that.
People though assume making profit is through VC's pump and dump funds. Don't do that. Build real businesses with or without VC funds. VC's fund will just speed things up.
4. Making profit is not just generating revenue, but also cutting cost. headcount is always the higher cost. At early stages you don't need a large team. You just need to focus on your product and user adoption. That's all.
Even if you have a large team, your early employees - as per all early employees - are gonna be paid shit, do crazy work from A to Z with a promise of some profit sharing if the business works in the future. Its not the same as normal employees.
5. Another high cost is marketing to reduce from PnL. You don't need fancy marketing. Marketing is just about who your target users are, where are they are what information fancies them. That's all. You may need fancy marketing in 2 years from now if you have a million loyal users and want to expand towards chargeable business model. But not now.
6. Also, innovation is a subset of entrepreneurs. You can be innovators, but if you want to run a business, you have to expand the skillset and mindset to be an entrepreneur. If you are funded for 1-2 years, leverage on this time and go all out to work on yourself while working on the business.
7. That and Nostr is this huge new digital canvas. You can build anything on it. Go crazy with imagination. If you are a dev, and you love to code, 50% of your problem is sorted. The remaining 50%, you probably just need a good smack.
If you are funded for 1-2 years, that's incredibly precious. Make the most out of it. And have a larger goal, bigger dream and work your arse out for it.
150,000 from opensats which I split with nostr:npub13v47pg9dxjq96an8jfev9znhm0k7ntwtlh9y335paj9kyjsjpznqzzl3l8 , so that comes to 75,000 a year, or about a 2.6x pay decrease, my expenses are up 2-2.5x to run servers and flying around doing nostr promotion at conferences which I won’t be able to do this year. Squeezing by… 😅
I think you just need a diff business strategy and financial planning WIll. It’s just a bump in the road.
I have done many stupid mistakes when I started off (likely still am) but there is 2 most important thing to remember :
1. Understand that the failure of the project is not a representation of the person. People might see the 20% of the failure, but you got 80% right and that counts for something
2. Do correct what you got wrong, learn what you don't know or at least identify what it is that you know and don’t know so that you can get the help needed for it.
On other things
1. In terms of money splitting, I don't know who is who, but if you split 50% money, then 50% of the job and responsibility goes along with it. If it's a 10% job, then it's 10% funds and so forth. I am guessing it's 50% here otherwise this needs to be renegotiated.
2. Your first year 2023 is your pre-seed year (building up)
- Your goal likely is to grow 10% - 20% MoM user engagement ?
- You will do minimum marketing to find users to test your product (chk out zero-cost marketing note)
- You will be fine tuning the business model and basic usability
- You don't want to charge users here - too soon, too raw
Say for example, for pre-seed your cost is
1 developer + CEO full time (~72k) + infrastructure (~20k) + marketing (5k)
External devs/design ($30k)
Buffer : $23k
Total ~$150k
3. Your second year (seed / market validation)
- Your marketing is going to be slightly heavier
- Your development is going to be heavier, faster turnaround time required with more users
- You will need better infrastructure
- You may need 2 devs and other backups
Perhaps total funding ~200k - $250k
In your second year is when you start figuring out a revenue plan (3rd year might be a good time to launch subscription etc as you have loyal users).
Given at this point you might have a substantial amount of users for Damus - you can also build any on “the other stuff” and separate as 2 companies, and raise VC funds for that application. Damus will remain untouchable.
Alternatively asides open sats, i don't know if there are other fundings but i am sure there are. As you grow users in millions on this freedom network, your tune will be different. At that point, Damus alone will be raising millions as well to sustain.
This is just a bump in the road. Now is a good time to reflect. If you need help with financial projection and business strategy I can help you with that. But this is just a bump on the road. When you are feeling better, put on your big boy pants on and rock this. You got this.
How much funding have you received so far ?
Happy birthday, Sophia! So happy to see your acting career taking off this year in Hollywood. That Barbra Streisand book is classic! Big hugs from Fido too! 🤍🐾
awwwww the cutest !!
There's some really great suggestions on this list by everyone else, and many I want to read! Thank you for sharing your best read for 2023.
nostr:note1gqdezhn5qnlghagu388z00mzqwedrnv6qjp725kmzxgwd76ja24s7ld596
I probably read about 60ish books this year - I don't think any one in particular book stood out from the rest, but they all took me on an interesting journey through them. Here are some memorable ones :
1. How Iceland changed the world by Egill Bjaanason
2. Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world by Jack Wetherford
3. Insanely Simple , the obsession that drives Apple’s success by Ken Segell
4. Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
5. Trillion Dollar Coach (Bill Campbell) by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle
6. The Tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell
7. What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
8. JFK and the Unspeakable by James W Douglass
9. The Pirates of Panama or the Bucaneers of America by Alexander Olivier
10. Prototype Nation, China and the Contested Promise of Innovation by Silvia M Lindtner
11. Contagious, why things catch on by Jonah Berger
12. Connecting the Dots, Lessons for Leadership in a Startup World (Cisco) by Chambers, John
13. Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing Is Still Key to America’s Future by Ro Khanna
14. Red Light Therapy by Ari Whitten
15. Nuclear Power explained by Dirk Eidemuller
16. A long way gone, Memoir of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
17. On Palestine by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe
18. Demokrasi : Indonesia in the 21st century by Hamish McDonald
19. Drugs as Weapons against us by John L Potash (re read)
20. Mukiwa, A white boy in Africa by Peter Godwin
21. It’s not only Rock and Roll by Jenny Boyd
22. Mindset - changing the way you think to fulfil your potential by Carol S Dweck
23. The idealist : Aaron Shwartz and the rise of the free culture of the internet by Justin Peters
24. Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein
25. Hillbilly Elegy, A memoir of a family and culture in crisis by JD Vance
26. Savage inequalities, children in America’s schools by Jonathan Kozol
27. The Wise Men by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas
28. Neuroscience of creativity by Oshnin Vartanian, Adam Bristol and James Kauffman
29. Some thoughts concerning education by John Locke
30. Emile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
31. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston
32. Zimbabwe under the British Empire by Charles River
33. IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black
this might be that time of the year where we read the best of 2023. What's your fav relay this year? for me :
Most dependable : nos.lol by nostr:npub1nlk894teh248w2heuu0x8z6jjg2hyxkwdc8cxgrjtm9lnamlskcsghjm9c . No drama there.
2nd most dependable : Primal amidst newer, also because no drama there.
Best backup relay : nostr.band. No drama there too.
I would pay for non-dramatic, reliable relay services.
Quickly forgotten : Mileu or something
Quite intense : Eden
Yet to try : Wine
Dependable but forgettable : the mom one by Someone too.
Most mercurial : Damus
Most ambiguous : Snort
I notice some clients auto add tonnes of relay - I gave up trying to clean up =) What's your fav relay this year ?
juicy takes always sparks interest =) also, repost is not visible on all clients
I've always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.
- Steve Jobs
+1. The complication of signing up can be made into something exclusive. But the ease of continual usage needs to be better.
I also think it is important to recruit more people, new people. I don't know what was Twitter's breakdown but i am guessing during the early stages it could have been something like a several cycles of 80% fresh blood and 20% retainer and eventually it balances out.
Nostr is a mystery. A puzzle waiting to be solved. Only for the curious minds.
I dont think it matters whether or not there is a nostr.com. If its there, it will helps boost things up but there is no need to be dependent on it. It should not be a central focul point. Nostr devs have bigger things to worry about like finding ways to revive nostr.
Merry Christmas nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn! hope you get some good rest and recover well. Brain def needs some shutdown time. I always believes that when you get a chance to rest, rest - because when it comes (the work load), it pours. See you next year!
There are some things that could be worse, like Nostr being filled with shitcoiners. All these are just excuses. If someone wants to build, they will build. Easier to complain, whine and be sympathy seekers, then to grind.
Its a good filter. At least you won't be banging a shitcoiner
#1 Stand
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#8 Stand - The End
Total # of falling down : 7
Total # of standing up : 8