After reading the article in Kevin Rose in Inc. I ran across an article in Wired Magazine on Rose’s recommendations for surviving the economic downturn. Take a look…
Digg founder Kevin Rose says this is the best time to launch a company, even if the economy is going to hell, venture capital for web startups is drying up, and consumer spending has stalled.
“I believe it’s going to be a great time to start something new,” said Rose, while speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit, in San Francisco. His argument: There is less competition and noise in the marketplace and it’s easier to get press. “Funding for consumer internet companies is going away and that means there’s going to be a lot of opporunity for everyone.”
And if you choose to take the plunge, he has a few tips, which mainly boil down to one theme: Be cheap.
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“When Digg launched, I had a day job. It was something I worked on at nights and during weekends,” says Rose.
And instead of dishing out tens of thousands of dollars for a fulltime developer, Rose outsourced it to a guy through Elance, and paid one-third of what he would have spent on somebody in the U.S.
“[Outsourcing] only works up to a certain point . . . When it comes time to add multiple servers you absolutely need to have talent that’s been there before,” says Rose.
And when it comes to PR, do it yourself. Aggressively communicate, he says, and Tweet your heart out.
“I really believe that email communication is dead,” said Rose. “Twitter is more of a real-time communication.”