Ideas - Thursday, April 24, 2008 12:30 - 6 Comments

DHH nailed it.

Ever see a movie you thought was so damn good you want everyone you know to see it? I just did, only it wasn’t a drama, or reality TV: it was David Heinemeier Hansson (aka DHH) giving a presentation at Y Combinator’s Startup School this past weekend on The Secret to Making Money Online.

No, DHH has not given up on 37signals and Rails to join the rancid ranks of Internet Marketing Mavens - he’s fired off a wake up call to all the startups in the world who’ve decided there’s nothing in between doing a open source project for free and creating some sort of insanely godzilla killer next Facebook app thing that it just has to be bought by Google, Yahoo or Microsoft for a billion dollars.

There is something in between, and it’s called a microISV.

You don’t need a billion dollar idea to launch a microISV like you do to get Venture Capital money to burn scale up; you just have to find a problem someone, anyone, will pay you to solve and work very, very hard. Because if you do the right things to find one customer, then you’ve probably done the right things to find or be found by thousands of customers.

I will warn the easily offended, VCs and those who think programming = vow of poverty this video contains profanity, common sense, a healthy respect for what making good money can do for you and a hell of a lot of great advice. Plan on watching it three times - it’s that good.