Wow, this was definitely inspiring. They stuck through it even as they weren't making a lot. They were happy to get just 10-20 users.
It made me feel very proud of what our own startup has achieved relative to other startups. We just hit a million users, we have revenues, etc. I made a post about it at http://qbix.com/blog . I know it sounds like self promotion but I genuinely was happy to see that we have been able to pull it off despite not being accepted into YC or anything like that. So far all the funding has come from friends and family, but I can definitely relate to what these guys were going through ... we are at a point where we need to raise our next round of funding, because we still haven't reached our break even point and our burn rate still exceeds our revenues.
I can tell you from experience, when you pick a problem you really are passionate about solving, then you have a reason to work on your startup every day, and a reason to continue it even when things are looking tough.
Everything those guys are saying ... about prioritizing paying the people who are working for you, all is exactly what we've been going through, and are still facing. So great job guys! Really inspiring for us to see that they've made it.
Just FYI, http://qbix.com/ just shows "Error rendering this page." in Opera. Took me a second to realize it was just a browser compat issue, at first I wrote the whole service off as broken.
You might want to drop in an explicit browser support warning.
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
― Calvin Coolidge
It made me feel very proud of what our own startup has achieved relative to other startups. We just hit a million users, we have revenues, etc. I made a post about it at http://qbix.com/blog . I know it sounds like self promotion but I genuinely was happy to see that we have been able to pull it off despite not being accepted into YC or anything like that. So far all the funding has come from friends and family, but I can definitely relate to what these guys were going through ... we are at a point where we need to raise our next round of funding, because we still haven't reached our break even point and our burn rate still exceeds our revenues.
I can tell you from experience, when you pick a problem you really are passionate about solving, then you have a reason to work on your startup every day, and a reason to continue it even when things are looking tough.
Everything those guys are saying ... about prioritizing paying the people who are working for you, all is exactly what we've been going through, and are still facing. So great job guys! Really inspiring for us to see that they've made it.