If two out of ten startups succeed, things are working normally. If, in a mature industry, a manager suceeds two out of ten of her/his initiatives, she’d better start looking for a new employer.

That leads to a culture where risk taking isn’t a smart move, exactly the recipe for failure on the fast changing web.

But worse than that, it leads to a product development mentality that puts monetary success first and the user second. That may sound sensible but it’s not working at many newspaper companies since the lure of short term revenue promised by the traditionalists trumps the ideas for something like Twitter which initially shows no promise of revenue.

Throw popups at your users and you are guaranteed a short term revenue boost, but is that the sound strategy toward a sustainable business in the future?

I imagine that the founders of newspapers were the types that would succeed on the web. Let’s face it, they need to invest a whole lot of money in building a press and hiring folks and didn’t even know if people would read their product.

That kind of chance taking needs to be present if one wants to succeed these days. Fortunately, it takes much less to try out ideas.

Unfortunately, in a company where revenues are declining and folks are being asked to tighten their belts, no one wants to risk one million dollars on ten ideas, with the hopes that one might work.

But that’s what it takes.

Ask not what we can monetize and then seek users, ask what we can provide our users and then monetize it’s popularity.