Funny, I've always enjoyed the mountain climbing analogy.<p>You look at the peak from afar and you get excited. As you get closer to the base, you start to get a little scared. Half an hour after you start, your legs are already burning and you're thinking "wtf am I doing here, I could be having a pint on the patio I passed by earlier!" But you keep on eyes on the path and keep grinding, step by step, one foot in front of the other. Your mind goes blank and you get used to the discomfort. Occasionally you stop to rest and then you see "wow, I'm actually making progress, this is pretty neat. And the view! This is way better than some random patio.". You keep going and going for years.<p>Few climbers make it. Mostly you give up and walk back down (ie fail). Sometimes, someone likes your climb and sends a mule to help you on the way back (acquihire) and sometimes they even send a helicoper (product acquisition). And if you make it (IPO), you find out it's a fractal game - you always keep climbing, otherwise someone will come from behind and push you over the cliff. :)
Best advice in the post:<p>"Easy. I stopped reading Techcrunch."<p>42Floors is a magnitude bigger than my company (<a href="http://periscope.io" rel="nofollow">http://periscope.io</a>) and has always seemed like one of those runaway startup successes that we aspire to and occasionally despair of. Reading something this is incredibly motivating. Thank you for writing.
Great article, thanks for sharing.<p>Couldn't help but notice one thing on your home page: the price is given in $/sqft/year. Did you A/B test with other representations? It doesn't feel intuitive at all to me. I would expect people to have an idea of the total budget they have (/month or /year).<p>Also I'm sure it's in your backlog already, but a lot of your listing prices are way off (<a href="http://42floors.com/?page=1&order%5Blistings_rate_per_sqft_per_year%5D=desc" rel="nofollow">http://42floors.com/?page=1&order%5Blistings_rate_per_sqft_p...</a>)
Someone told me that entrepreneurship is the art of blurring what is true today and what will be true shortly. 42floors has done a great job projecting success through your web presence, which certainly has at least a small part to do with why you're actually experiencing success today. I'm looking forward to reading your post about employee 100 next year. Keep up the good work!
"Most people walk on paved roads in the valley below"<p>I know it's not the author who said this, but oh piss off with that self-congratulatory crap. How on earth do you know what <i>most</i> people do? Let's see, according to <a href="http://www.statisticbrain.com/world-poverty-statistics/" rel="nofollow">http://www.statisticbrain.com/world-poverty-statistics/</a> 50% of the world lives on less than $1.50/day. If you're lucky enough to be in the U.S. with the means and opportunity to become an entrepreneur, maybe put in a second's thought before you go off and say how uberman you are.
Been influenced by your earlier blog about A/B testing and am using your experiences to guide me to a large extent.<p>your designs assumes ( correctly I believe) that whoever comes on to 42floors already know what they are looking for. So no need for a video or marketing spiel.<p>Having thought about it even a new user should get it but have you checked it out, like asked a random to go to your site and track their experience. Or would you term such randoms to most likely not be your customers.