Ejovi Nuwere

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I know a lot of entrepreneurs. I’d even say 90% of the people I associate with are entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs. But most of the good ideas and inspiration I receive are from people who have no interest in the “internet business.”

There is a stark difference between tech entrepreneurs and blue collar entrepreneurs. Tech entrepreneurs generally want to make cool websites and blue collar entrepreneurs want to make money. My first question these days when I hear a new business idea is “How does it make money?” and I’m frightened when I hear things that depend on a critical mass of users. Esther Dyson told me simply, “sometimes those 50K users never show up.” And she is right. If your idea can’t make money with 100 users, you are in trouble.

SmugMug has 100K paying customers. No, they don’t have 1M+ users like flickr did before Yahoo! bought them, but have something just as valuble. Money. And lots of it.

“I want to open a bakery. And I’m going to give the food away until we’ve had about 50K customers, then I’m going to create a premium cupcake. That I’ll sell for $3″

My definition of a web 2.0 company is one that has a pretty website and no cash. Then there are the normal businesses. The ones that try to make money first and pretty websites second. I like those.