There are a few hurdles between Landy Ung and her dream of
growing her startup into a household name. One is the fact that her
only outside funding comes from her mom’s fried chicken restaurant,
another is that her only full-time programmer is her boyfriend, who
has a day job.
She and her boyfriend, Wan Hsi Yuan, 27, run the business,
8coupons.com, from their 500-square-foot studio apartment, meaning
headquarters is, effectively, their couch. The business, which text
messages discounts to users’ mobile phones, keeps Mr. Yuan and Ms.
Ung, who is 28, up until 3 a.m. most nights. Then, Ms. Ung said,
she sometimes finds herself lying awake, worrying.
“I need to watch a little National Geographic special on the rain
forest or something before I go to sleep,” she said.
Welcome startup life in 2007.
Though their Internet bubble predecessors dreamed of stock
offerings, spoke blithely about burn rate and talked about selling
everything online, these startups are focusing on interactivity,
services for mobile gadgets and getting bought by a bigger company.
This time, the cost of everything from laptops to programmers is
lower and no one is splashing for fancy office space, so starting
up a company is cheaper, said Chris Shipley, the executive producer
of the DEMO Conference, a new-technology showcase.
“If your team includes some engineers, you’ve got a laptop,
you’ve got an Internet connection, you code like hell and see what
you can come up with,” said Ms. Shipley.
Venture funding for all industries has fallen by more than half
since 1999, dropping from $54.1 billion then to $26.5 billion in
2006, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
Funding for Internet startups is running at roughly $1 billion a
quarter in 2007, down from a high of $14.27 billion in the first
quarter of 2000.
At an October…