Don't Quit Your Day Job

17 points by aceregen 18 years ago | 8 comments

hugh 18 years 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.

nanijoe 18 years 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)

goodkarma 18 years 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?

josefresco 18 years 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.

aceregen 18 years ago | |

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

LogicHoleFlaw 18 years 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.

bdotdub 18 years ago |

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

Mistone 18 years 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.