Startup Treads Carefully
There are a few hurdles between Landy Ung and her dream of growing her startup into a household name. One is the fact that her only outside funding comes from her mom’s fried chicken restaurant, another is that her only full-time programmer is her boyfriend, who has a day job.
She and her boyfriend, Wan Hsi Yuan, 27, run the business, 8coupons.com, from their 500-square-foot studio apartment, meaning headquarters is, effectively, their couch. The business, which text messages discounts to users’ mobile phones, keeps Yuan and Ung, who is 28, up until 3 a.m. most nights. Then, Ung said, she sometimes finds herself lying awake, worrying.
Welcome startup life in 2007.
While their Internet bubble predecessors dreamed of stock offerings, spoke blithely about burn rate and talked about selling everything online, these startups are focusing on interactivity, services for mobile gadgets and getting bought by a bigger company.
This time, the cost of everything from laptops to programmers is lower and no one is splashing for fancy office space, so starting up a company is cheaper, said Chris Shipley, executive producer of the DEMO Conference, a new-technology showcase.
Ung said, “He develops and creates. I do everything else. People look at the site and say, ‘How many people do you have working on it? I think, ‘Umm. What should I say?’”
There’s a lot to keep her up nights.
Photo by Mark Lennihan.
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