Creative solutions (and high drama)
January 5, 2009
Ryan Carson over at Carsonified opens up about some of his recent successes, and failures - which offer some interesting insights:
DropSend was built on a budget, grown to a profitable monthly revenue and sold for a healthy sum of money.
...
But we’ve also failed pretty badly with another web app called Amigo. We launched it in late 2006 and received some great press. The idea was solid (pay-per-click advertising in email newsletters) but the problem is that we were naive and we thought we could run it in our free time.
Then it gets good. He talks about a creative approach he's taking on his next venture, a new web application. In summary: he's contracting to have the developer (Elliot) build the application and be compensated with a revenue split of 10-25% of net, depending on a few factors.
First - the idea presents an interesting and thought-provoking (if not entirely original) approach, but as you might imagine, a wide range of vociferous comments in response ranging from claims that Ryan is exploiting Elliot, to accolades for the brilliant approach.
Ryan's various responses - including a rather touching chiming-in by Ryan's dad (!) make the entire post - and most of the 153 comments (so far) a very educational mental exercise for those considering alternative ways of moving forward during challenging economic times.