We launched early yesterday morning, but an overwhelming spike in traffic, a subsequent server crash and no fallback combined to shut down the Web site for a whole day.
We’ve learned some lessons.
1) It is hard to launch a start-up. It is surreal to be on this side of the Internet meltdowns, something we covered smugly in our previous role of employed reporter. I recall how we at SiliconBeat wrote about blog search start-up Sphere on the morning of its launch a few months ago, and linked to them — only to discover they’d been stymied by some last-minute bugs. All this traffic hit their site, when they were down, and much of that traffic may not have returned. Tony Conrad, Sphere’s chief exec, at the time, had a very rough morning. Tony, now it’s your turn to chuckle. We feel your pain.
2) Got to think big. We were paying $30/month for our old SiliconBeat server. So when people suggested we upgrade to a special stand-alone server for VentureBeat, at $100/month, we thought it a prudent move — placing us at the top end of what we thought appropriate for our old traffic at SiliconBeat. But when high-profile bloggers pointed to our site from their blogs (such as Om, Arrington, Primack. Jessica Guynn, among others) yesterday morning, we crashed and never recovered. We didn’t figure out the whole story. But we’ve changed our minds since this morning, and decided to pay $400/month. Be cheap, but not too cheap. And because we’re boot-strapping, this isn’t always an easy call.
3) If something can go wrong, it will. Murphy’s Law. Toni Schneider at WordPress warned us about this a couple of months ago. He even stood by, ready to host us on WordPress servers for free. Still, Murphy’s law kicked in. We had nailed everything else. Thor had crafted the site, I’d proofed it. But we didn’t take the servers seriously enough. We launched, it felt great to be in the air — “until the wing fell off,” as Thor, my developer put it.
4) Have friends. A dead server makes one panic, and we want to thank the folks for their support, in particular Nik Cubrilovic, over at TechCrunch, for lending sound advice. Read this post he shared with us about the overload earlier this year at Techcrunch.
5) The fight goes on. No point whimpering, or pointing fingers about blame. The next day is coming, and you got to try flying again. We remember Tony Conrad’s smile on his face a week after his botched launch, when everything was going dandy for him again.
18 Comments
-
You Mon Tsang said:
Matt:
Now you’ve gotten all the bad luck out of the way, it should be smooth sailing from here.
Congratulations on VentureBeat. Knowing you and how hard you work, you will do very well.
-
Matt Marshall said:
Thanks. There are a few bugs we’re aware of, for example broken links on the “contributor” items, but we’re fixing.
-
CJ said:
Two words… Load Balancer! :)
-
Startups.in/India said:
Finally!
But well it has been worth the wait. The layout looks refreshing and neat. Let it rock Matt. -
Victor Hanna said:
As a loyal Silicon Beat reader, I’m excited to see what VB will bring.
Best of luck, and sweat the small stuff!
Victor
-
LaunchSoon said:
Where are you hosting now? What do you get for 400/mo?
-
Brian SOlis said:
Matt, how sweet it is to have your own RocketBoom…ok ok, had to inject some humor in light of the situation, but seriously you got everyone talking and to have the biggest and brightest call VentureBeat a “daily read” has got to make everything alright in your book! Congrats…looking forward to reading.
-
Rex Agbulos said:
I hope the best for you Matt… If you work this website the way you workout at the gym, I know you’ll be very successful. Again, good luck on your new journey — or should I say new “Venture”.
-
dave mcclure said:
>> Two words… Load Balancer! :)
nope, actually i prefer 3 words:
dedicated. sys. admin.
congrats matt, and hope things go a little less rocky as you roll on ahead :)
- dave mcclure
ps - we had our moments during the GigaOm launch too… seems every blogger going commercial appears to have had their own private trial by fire.
-
Deep said:
Finally i can see your website and blogs….
Keep up the Good Work ;-) -
PJ said:
$400/month? Too much for a website that’s basically text.
-
George Zachary said:
Excited to see your excellent coverage and insight continued! Congratulations…And really like the new layout
-
Matt Marshall said:
Testing. Some people are saying they haven’t been able to leave comment.
-
Startups.in/India said:
That’s right, Matt. Haven’t been able to view/post the comment section since y’day. Working fine now.
-
dumbfounder said:
Hmmm…a relaunch before a holiday weekend and no posts for 3 days? Seems like you guys wasted the buzz you just generated.
-
Kevin at TasteTV.com said:
You keep bringing on the hard-learned lessons and we’ll keep learning from them!
-
Giovanni Rodriguez said:
Congrats, Matt! I did notice the server crash, and was very impressed. :)
-
click here said:
Hello. May I rent your layout for my site? :)
2 Trackbacks
11:37 pm
Venture Chronicles said:
[...] Matt launched VentureBeat, the successor to SiliconBeat, on a new site last week. Unfortunately, the surge in traffic and a few other issues overwhelmed the server and it was down all day on Thursday and Friday. I talked with Matt on Thursday night and the series of issues and decisions he went through getting this launched and dealing with the server after it went down is something that will eventually make a great series of posts that all entrepreneurs will find useful, he does have a good post offer sage advice here. [...]
3:45 am
BlogForward : Money » Roundup: YouTube pays, Truemors, Techdirt, Kokua, Boo.com and more said:
[...] something about lack of preparation, because the ability to scale is crucial. Happened to us at VentureBeat when we launched. Toni Schneider of Automattic/Wordpress says many people neglect scale; Wordpress lead developer [...]