I've successfully bootstrapped 3 businesses that became worth millions, so I know that part well (get your customers to finance you).

But I really would love to understand where these tens of millions go to build something like Ning or Linkedin.

I didn't see a huge banner ad promotion of either of them.
Linked had only 13 programmers in an older article I read.

Any VC guys or gals here to shed some light on this?

thanks
V

anyone who knows of a good site for this kind of topic, or some articles, please email me at victory@universityofvictory.com I really would like to get some definitive answers.
thanks
V

Hi Darwin,

In the risk of misunderstanding your question: You wonder why so much money have been used on developing these sites?

I guess there is a lot more to it, than just a relative simple site. The obvious is the labour cost, admittedly probably not using expensive external software consultants (but rather employees), software licenses (not to be underestimated) and as you probably can imagine such sites have a high traffic so we speak of buying bandwidth and probably server farms (not cheap).

13 Programmers - but you miss the other staff. Designers, testers, marketing, management etc. Haven't there been marketing activities in the states for e.g LinkedIn (tv adverts, radio spots, banners etc.)?

Best Regards,
- Henrik

Darwin and Henrik,

Don't you know that the bills always expand to meet the money available to pay them? Happy spending.

Regards,
Dan Light

dan@danlightdirect.com
www.danlightdirect.com