Still, in B2B you typically want to show you have some megacorp logos (in particular due to larger deal size and up-sell potential), are attractive to different industries, et cetera. So this may be a known issue, but it's also considered when assessing startups.

SpaceX just bought a bunch of ads on Twitter.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/14/spacex-just-bought-a-big-ad-...

In a way, that that is _notable_ today is evidence that the dot-com advertising problem _isn't_ notable today. In 1999 that would be just What You Did, and not really worthy of comment.

> According to internal documents viewed by CNBC, SpaceX has spent more than $160,000 on the Twitter ad campaign for Starlink in Australia and Spain so far.

Your definition for "a bunch" is a bit questionable, but good on you for posting the source.

All this without your own definition of a "bunch"!

I'm no fan of Elon's recent antics but a $160k advertising spend doesn't strike me as a "bunch" for a major corporation.

How much do you think each ad costs that this wouldn't be a bunch?

The main article has this quote:

The ad campaign SpaceX is buying to promote Starlink is called a Twitter “takeover.” When a company buys one of these packages, they typically spend upwards of $250,000 to put their brand on top of the main Twitter timeline for a full day, according to one current and one former Twitter employee who asked to remain unnamed because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.

Which means 160k spent is actually well below typical deal and these deals are pretty normal for Twitter. So one may actually be worried that maybe SpaceX got a deep discount or something.

Okay but how is that still not a bunch of ads? Do you think it's one ad for $160k? Or maybe like many ads? Perhaps it's so many ads we can call it a 'bunch'?

I have no idea how many ads is that. Could be just one ad on the top of the timeline (which obviously would be shown to many people). The point though 160k spend is not a huge deal - actually below what usually happens with ad campaigns on twitter.

You got me. I wonder if we did a poll, how much money is "a bunch of money" and how much money is "a bunch of money on ads" for people.

I think if it had been $500k or $1M I would've called it a bunch, but $160k seems low.

The statement was actually "a bunch of ads"

I think that's a US English thing. How much is 'a lot of money'? How much is 'a heap of money'?

A bunch fits in a styrofoam beer cooler. A heap fits in the bed of a pickup truck. Anything more than that qualifies as a lot.

For a serious ad campaign 160k is definitely not that big. Especially for a company with a revenue in billions.

You can get a lot of impressions for 160K. You buy them in batches of 1000 using a term called CPM, which is cost per thousand -1-. CPM can be around 10 dollars for a really good segment. I'm sure there there are some adops folks that have a better knowledge than me. So, if CPM is $10, then that gives you around 1.6 million impressions.

-1- That's right M is for a thousand, because M is a thousand using Roman Numerals. You thought you would never have to remember that.

You are correct, though 160k is maybe a couple weeks of paid social budget for a company like starlink.

Typically 3-6 that are connected together in any stage of ripeness. The Brady one is a notable exception.

Yes. Nothing has changed. It's not quite the blind leading the blind but some variety of that idea.

A uses B uses C

C uses A but not B

B uses C

"Ooooo, A uses B I should use them for C!"

No, it’s a very different scenario.

Just selling to other early-stage startups doesn’t generate much growth/revenue or make you look like a solid business to a sophisticated investor. SaaS/B2B companies that make it big do so because they get huge numbers of small-medium businesses using their platform, not just startups - I.e, Slack, Stripe, Square, Shopify, Canva, Zendesk, Zapier, Segment.

Having other startups using your product is a good early source of product feedback and a strong signal to very early-stage investors, but that alone doesn’t give you the huge growth you need for bigger funding rounds.

It’s very different to the scenario PG was describing in the 90s; in those days, a startup would be founded, quickly IPO to raise several $million from unsophisticated retail investors, then spend much of it on advertising on Yahoo to drive traffic and artificially push the share price up. Hence when the music stopped in 2000 all that ad spend dried up and Yahoo’s share price crashed.

All those companies I mentioned above are going fine; slowed growth, sure, but they have real businesses with broad customer bases well beyond the startup ecosystem, so they’re all able to continue operating and doing OK.

If, at bottom, they are all also accomplishing something, then it's ok that they are using each other's product. If the whole web of startups selling to other startups is not actually accomplishing anything much except burning VC cash, then it is in fact a problem (one which will be resolved soon, I expect).