Sites, Ecommerce, and a Bad Economy

We’re not economists at FoxyCart, but for various reasons we do take a keen interest in economics. (Partly because we’re huge nerds, and partly because we find it all quite fascinating.) In any case, with all the talk about the failing global economy we thought it’d be interesting to highlight an article by Paul Graham titled Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy.

It’s worth a read if you’re thinking about starting something yourself, or if you have clients that might need some reassurance about the money they’re about to pay you to build them their own new venture.

Recession-Proofing

One of the things that we particularly liked was this bit of advice:

Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible.

Our goal with FoxyCart has always been to serve web developers and designers. If we can make your job easier, if we can make you more efficient, then we’re smiling. If we run out of money and go out of business, we’ve not only failed ourselves, but we’ve failed you.

Time for Action?

We also found this interesting:

Well, founders aren’t much better. When times get bad, hackers go to grad school. And no doubt that will happen this time too. In fact, what makes the preceding paragraph true is that most readers won’t believe it—-at least to the extent of acting on it.

Nobody’s immune to this type of thinking, but before you think about “waiting it out,” it’s worth considering that now might be a better time to start that project you’ve been thinking about. Maybe not, but maybe so.