Slashdot Mirror
A Dotcom in a Basement?
garyebickford asks: "I recently learned that a company I co-founded a long time ago has degenerated to the point where the present principals have sold off most of the equipment and have moved 'operations' into their houses. Though the founding concept is almost two decades old, they still believe that they'll be able to pull something out of a hat. I'm pretty sure the two remaining true believers haven't been paid for several years, and have been working outside to support themselves. The company hasn't sold anything for years as far as I know, but they have kept it running through an amazing series of trials and tribulations including some of the most amazing legal shenanigans I've ever heard of. The stock was delisted a long time ago and is now valued at about $0.001. Of course, who knows? Maybe it will recover. It's happened before. I'm sure we all know of many others, like snakebit projects that have migrated from company to company, and 'entrepreneurs' who could raise money over and over but never quite get a company going, and of course, really cool technology that just never seemed to come out of development, or was almost done when the money ran out?So Slashdot, fess up - do you have a 'company in a box' downstairs? What kind of earth-shaking, irrelevant or worthless technology is sitting under your stairs? More interestingly, why are you, or they, still committed to the business?"
Who was it? You didn't even post a link for us to ignore!
I'm typing this a second time because the first time the 20-second rule bit me!
There are a lot of good ideas that just don't work out. Maybe the right time will come; maybe not. In the meantime, go do something else. Don't get so attached to something that didn't work out that you miss out on new opportunities.
As for your question, I had a design and partial implementation of a multiplayer game ... for BBSes. I started that project in 1993, and by 1996 I realized that there's little point in writing for BBSes anymore. So I moved on to a 3d simulation game ... for OS/2. By 1997 I realized that there's little point in writing for OS/2 anymore. So I moved on to grad school, working on theoretically sound statically typed programming languages. By 1999 I realized that there's little point in implementing theoretically sound statically typed programming languages. So I moved on. I now work at a "dot com". We'll see how that goes. :-)
> Or if you preview first
Hahahahahaha! Preview first. That's a good one. You crack me up. *snort* Preview first. Next you'll be talking about reading the linked articles before posting.
Gee -- shouldn't somebody moderate this guy *redundant*?
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
I knew a dude (his daughter was in my high school) who had a little start up with some kind of database software. I have no idea what the innovation was, but they were convinced that they would take the enterprise DB world by storm. (This is where I should note that I can't recall the name of the company.) He had several coders on staff, but when Oracle finished stringing him along and his tech didn't sell to any of the big players, he fired everyone and kept it on the back burner, working on it himself.
Eventually, Oracle bought him & his code (According to his daughter's non-technical understanding, they *needed* his code.) and he signed on as an Oracle VP. Another girl at my highschool had a dad who was a VP at Oracle, and I remembered him & many other VPs getting axed, so I knew that there was some serious churn in the upper ranks. Thus, I was unshocked when Oracle stiffed him for his code (dunno if they got away with it or he sued) and fired him.
Last I heard was before the bubble burst, and he was doing coding for some dot com, and enjoying it.
All this is filtered through several different types of bias (My own included. Had a crush on his daughter.) but I think it's close to the truth. He had some really lean years after he shrank his company, because despite saving up, he went a lot longer without selling his code than he ever expected.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
My wife and I purchased a townhouse from the founder of a local ISP. When he first started the ISP, he started it literally out of the basement of the townhouse. At one time, he had no less than FIFTY phone lines coming into the house to support the ISP. In the basement of the townhouse, there was an enormous switchbox to support all those lines. I believe the guy had his own T-1 line to handle the bandwidth, but I couldn't say for sure.
The real estate agent used this as a selling point, saying that if we ever had the need for 50 phone lines, the townhouse could handle it! We ended up buying the townhouse, but mainly because of the cathedral ceilings. The extra phone hardware was a nice little bonus.
We have since sold the townhouse, so if you are a dot-com wannabee, don't ask me ask me if it's for sale!
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www.moneybythenumbers.com
... I'm working on hover skateboards ... shhh!
Robert Anton Wilson
Can someone post the text? I can't get to the site! Looks like we slashdotted nothing!
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
I have one of these ideas every week! And so I work on it, get disillusioned, and put it on the back burner (which isn't turned on). Sometimes it's actually someone else's idea, and they're the one that gets disillusioned. Just last week I had a random guy contact me about prototyping something, and we discussed specs for a few days, but apparently he got cold feet.
Oh well. A lot of us have the ability to do practically anything. The real key is being able to stick to it once you start. Thomas Edision has that famous quote, which I won't bother quoting because you all know it already.
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Well, "serious post" as much as any endeavor of this type can be considered serious...
I've worked completely solo to build this website -- basically, it offers online interactive music exercises with a lot of support for teachers.
I brought it online just a week ago... now I'm waiting to work out a few more kinks before I open the doors to floods of subscribers.
Well, I think I'm guaranteed 2 or 3 subscribers... we'll have to see about the "floods". Anyway, I'm hosting it for $30/month, which I mostly paid for by reselling a bit of my bandwidth to an uncle for his website (he sells batteries and UPS systems).
So... thus far the only real cost are my time (and I built it all outside of my normal working hours).
In some ways, this nicest payoff from this sort of project is the emails from appreciative users... but yeah, I'm hoping it'll become a minor revenue stream. Ego boosts only go so far, in the end (as the work gets less fun).
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.