Don't Quit Your Day Job (opens in new tab)

(forbes.com)

17 pointsaceregen17y ago8 comments

8 comments

hugh17y ago

Lisa and Jeff R. Peri of Los Angeles depleted their $200,000 in savings, maxed out their credit cards and borrowed $300,000 from family and friends to develop and market their low-impact car-wash product. The concoction, Lucky Earth, comes in a quart-size spray bottle that retails for $17. It's a mixture of water, coconut by-products, sodium carbonate and water-soluble silicone, blended with the notion that eco-sensitive customers will gladly substitute some elbow grease for a garden hose.

Idealism-induced myopia combined with the current "green tech" fad is breeding some truly bad business ideas. This is one of them.

Seriously, I'm supposed to wash my entire car with a quart-sized seventeen-dollar bottle of mostly-water in order to save a few gallons of tap water? There's a small number of people out there who are dumb enough to pay for anything if they think it's "helping the environment" (at least until the next fad comes along to displace the green-panic fad of the moment) but the market seems really very limited, both in extent and in duration.

nanijoe17y ago

Turns out the most successful of all the examples they gave in the article DID quit his day job (actually got fired from it)

goodkarma17y ago

"Not so long ago an Internet venturelet like Otrib might have seen a swarm of venture capital firms, or at least some commercial banks offering high-priced loans. Nowadays such financiers want to see businesses with revenue, customers and a logo solidly in place before they commit capital."

Revenue, customers, and.. a logo?

josefresco17y ago

Yet the VC crowd is dumping money on web apps like Twitter with no revenue.

They do have 2 out of the 3, maybe it's like the ol' "good/cheap/fast, pick any two" thing.

aceregenOP17y ago

I think they were referring to the "brand equity" when they are talking about the logo.

LogicHoleFlaw17y ago

This may be a shallow thing to take away from the article, but "Lobster Gram" is most appropriate and hilarious name for a company that I've heard in a long time.

bdotdub17y ago

duplicate? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=235658

Mistone17y ago

pretty cool to see these companies and founders reaching success milestones while doing the day job thing. the quote from the ZoomInfo CEO about supporting his employees in their entrep. pursuits was great. A friend recently left zoom to start viximo, so its the truth. some inspiration for all the yc moonlighters, including me.

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