> I think you've stacked up so many assumptions and points of risk that you're headed for disappointment.

It's necessary project planning. Some of the planning is some scenarios. I used the Internet before the Web and didn't do such scenarios; I should have; big mistake. At that time, I had a terrific background in computing and applied math and could have done any of the really successful Internet projects. I don't want to miss out this time.

The $2 per 1000 from KPCB's Mary Meeker was, IIRC, for ads displayed, not pages displayed. I agree that having 6 ads on a page might not yield $12 per page, but I don't know how much less it might yield. I did mention that I admit I might have to divide by 2, 4 or some such.

> especially since you're using ad networks instead of selling inventory directly.

If that difference is costing me seriously, then later I will change over. My plans do call for my own ad targeting which, BTW, should be able to work with the ads from an ad network. As I understand it, the ad network business is competitive. So, going to Ford, Pepsi, Game of Thrones, etc. directly myself should not be necessary. Or, apparently lots of Web sites are using ad networks; maybe they are not hopelessly bad.

There is, sure, the medium and longer term, but I want to get to profitability, even just $20,000 a month fairly quickly. If the ad networks get a big bite out of the ad revenue, initially okay by me. Since I'm a solo founder, 100% owner, and the only employee, just $20,000 a month would give me a nicely profitable lifestyle business, and that would not be a project failure. Getting the ads myself now would be premature optimization. More broadly, nearly no business is fully vertically integrated and, instead, makes use of good vendors. Ad networks should be by now close to such good vendors.

If all the people in the world like the site as much as I intend and believe, then I'll have the first business with market value of $1T+. So, for possible results somewhere between $20,000 a month and a $1T+ business, I should go for it.

The probability of success is irrelevant and what is very relevant is the conditional probability of success given the details of my project. The crucial, core details are nice, with some shockingly powerful math well beyond essentially anything out of Silicon Valley. There's essentially no Web site out of Silicon Valley where the powerful, valuable, crucial core is some original applied math with some advanced math prerequisites. E.g., the Stanford, Berkeley, Davis, CMU, MIT, etc. computer science profs didn't take the right courses in grad school to have the prerequisites.

E.g., IIRC the Plenty of Fish guy was getting all his ads just from Google and getting revenue of $1 million a month still as a solo founder and only employee -- serve farm from two old Dell servers. Sure, later he grew his staff to 70 people and then sold out for his $500+ million.

> Also, I suspect 10 pages per visitor is high, but maybe not.

The site is interactive. To get from the site what is intended, it's about 10 pages per visit. People will look at a page for ballpark 30 seconds each. So, the 10 pages will be 300 seconds or 5 minutes. So, I will get their eyeballs to look at my content and then also the ads for ballpark 5 minutes. That 5 minutes figure will vary quite a lot depending on what the user is after in the addictive adventure that is the UI/UX. That is, a user might flip through the pages quickly or on some pages stay a while. I will be eager to look at the site log file and see how long users stay. For now, I'm planning that my session state server time out after 30 minutes -- there is good reason to believe some users will get highly involved and stay that long (really longer since the time out is for inactivity time, not total session time -- total session time can be an hour or two).

> Finally, it's easy to say "one visitor per second", but that seems kind of arbitrary.

Yes, that arrival rate is in this planning, of course, nearly
fully "arbitrary" but does have a good purpose in the planning:

Can the arrival rate be this high? Yes, if believe the one necessary basic assumption that people will like the service. If people don't like the service and don't grow to, then the whole project is a flop -- that's possible for nearly any startup.

To be more clear, the main, one crucial, assumption is just that the target audience, i.e., all the Internet users in the world, will like the service. With that main assumption, all the other assumptions are quite believable and small potatoes. Without that main assumption, there is no hope for the project.

Can the arrival rate be higher? Sure, but the point here is to understand what would an arrival rate of 1 per second, if do get it, would represent in both monthly revenue and server farm size -- good to know this for the planning. The answer is ballpark, back of the envelope, simple assumptions, $300,000 or so a month. Also from my software timings, the arrival rate of 1 per second doesn't take a 1 million square foot server farm, need to know that, and, instead, just one mid tower case with one processor, whole system for $1000 in parts -- just did some quite careful shopping for such parts.

Or, for a scenario, go live with one server. If people fill that server, then there will be plenty of free cash for more servers.

Or, if I go live with just one server and people like the service, then the usage will generate enough cash for more servers; that is, the project is ready for organic growth if and when users like the service.

Again, the arrival rate of 1 per second is relevant, not so arbitrary, because it is about what one server with $1000 in parts could handle.

If the site does get to an arrival rate of 1 per second in, say, only a few months of being live, then just from common sense and the fact that the service is intended to have very broad, not just niche, appeal, the arrival rate should keep growing, a lot. Then I will have a quite successful, significant new Internet Web site and business.

Sometimes Web sites do become popular. Plenty of Fish did. One shocking example is Drudge Report: Look at the data he shows on his site: He runs only one or a few ads per page, but with the page views he's getting he has a heck of a business. He may be getting more revenue than, say, the NYT. By now, Drudge stands to be a quite wealthy guy.

It's the Internet! A LOT of people like a LOT on the Internet a LOT. Sure, Google, and Facebook are big. But so is Instagram and Snapchat, Twitter, Drudge, and more. The Internet in total costs super big bucks, and the bucks are there -- shocking but true. The appeal of Google is nearly universal; Facebook is somewhat less universal (e.g., I'm a good Google user but basically hate and avoid Facebook). The rest, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. have relatively narrow appeal but still are very successful as businesses. E.g., Drudge is not really broad but to the right of center. Same for Breitbart, which also gets one heck of a river of traffic.

I remember using the Internet -- downloaded from a friend the source code for the old IBM Scientific Subroutine Package -- back before HTTP, HTML, and the Web. I didn't see the potential of Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Drudge, etc. just because I would not have assumed that so many people were willing, one way and another, to spend the money to add up to the big bucks. IBM didn't see it either: At one time, they ran the whole Internet. E.g., I noticed Amazon right away -- books and records. Well, now the guess is that they are nailing Sears, K-Mart, Macys, a big fraction of all the shopping malls, and threatening much of Walmart. How? Sure, Internet data rate high enough for the many excellent still images for the good product descriptions on the Amazon Web site. Those images need the now much faster Internet download speeds, and who would have predicted those? I should have but didn't.

My service is to solve a problem pressing for essentially every user on the Internet. I have a really good solution, and no one else does. Due to that, and the success of Amazon, Google, Facebook, Snapchat, and the Internet as a whole, no way will I assume away an opportunity for success for my work. Again, if any reasonable fraction of the people in my target audience like the service to any significant extent, then I'm on the way to the world's first $1T+ business (right, the whole ad business may not be that large!).

The service I'm providing solves a pressing problem for nearly everyone on the Internet. I believe I have a good shot. At this point, there's only one good way to know -- use the TIFO method, try it and find out. So, to try it, go live, do alpha test and beta test, get some publicity, pay attention to additional feedback, and see if people like the service.

If people don't like the service, then at least I got some good experience on the software development side of bringing up a Web site. If people do like the service, then I'm wealthy. Drudge is wealthy; so is the founder of Plenty of Fish. Maybe I will be, too. This effort doesn't have to get to $1T+ to be successful for me. The $1T+ is scary: That's not just money but power, more than I want.