Scaling Ambition at StackOverflow

Monday, February 15, 2010 at 12:54PM
HighScalability Team in Strategy

Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood are raising VC money for StackOverflow. This is interesting for three reasons: 1) Joel has always seemed like a keep it small and grow organically type of guy, so this is a big step in a different direction. 2) It means they think there's a very big market in the Q&A space and they mean to capture as much as the market as possible. 3) Most importantly for this blog, Joel gives some good advice on when to stay fresh and local and when it's time to jump for the brass ring, scale up your ambition, and go for VC money. Please see Joel's blog post for the details, but here's when to go VC:

1. There’s a land grab going on.
2. There is a provable concept that’s repeatable.
3. The business itself could benefit from the publicity.
4. The investor will add substantial value to the business.
5. The business can potentially have a big exit or become a large, publically traded company.
6. The founders are not in it for their own personal aggrandizement.

Joel thinks StackOverflow and their team meets these criteria. Good luck guys.

Article originally appeared on (http://highscalability.com/).