txt The Economics of Giving It Away – the wall street journal
What about those companies trying to build a business on the Web? In the old days (that would be until September of last year) the model was pretty simple. 1. Have a great idea. 2. Raise money to bring it to market, ideally free to reach the largest possible market. 3. If it proves popular, raise more money to scale it up. 4. Repeat until you’re bought by a bigger company.
Now steps 2 through 4 are no longer available. So Web startups are having to do the unthinkable: come up with a business model that brings in real money while they’re still young.
