I really have no clue what’s going to happen with the economy. I read all the same reports that everyone else does. And I do have this sense that human beings are really good at predicting that things will be kind of similar to the way they were in the past. (Which means of course, that they’re really bad at predicting that things will be very different.) But in the end, like I said, I have no idea what will happen — and likely nobody does.

Some people have asked us how the economic troubles will affect our little startup business. Most bloggers on this topic focus primarily on how VC funded startups will weather the storm. One predicted that many startups would go down to “life support mode” with only 3 or 4 people working at the company. I guess we’ve been (and still are) in life support mode since our inception. We have no VC pressuring us for a return in a down economy, but we also have no investors to give us cash to help us wait it out. We’re completely dependent on continually earning revenue to keep the business going.

My hope is that as we evolve our business and learn how to make recurring revenue that the downturn will set us up for long term success. I figure that if we can learn how to make money in a down economy, then when the economy picks up (positive thinking everyone) we should be poised to really take off. And unless society crumbles and lawlessness reigns, this doesn’t seem like an overly hopeful perspective. There are many stories of startups that survived the bubble at the beginning of the decade and thrived when the economy picked up years later. Hopefully we’ll be able to follow the same path. At the very least it will be super interesting.