20．A.warned B．informed C．persuaded D．reminded
2
It’s
time to stop complaining about the economy.Here’s why.At no other time in the recent
history has it been easier or cheaper to start a new kind of company，possibly a very profitable company.Let’s call these startups LILOs，short
for “a little in，a lot out”．These are Webbased businesses that cost almost nothing
to get off the ground yet can turn into great moneymakers.In addition，launching such a company now will make
your company stronger later-you’ll learn to survive in hard
times until the economy improves.
That’s
what John Tayman is doing.He’s an author who lives in San Francisco，where I met him；he wrote reviews for a business magazine
I edited.Tayman knew little about technology and even less about business，but he dreamed of a website that would
summarize car reviews from other sources and rank every model of new cars.
Tayman said he intended to build the site on the side while
continuing to write for a living.He worked on his new company only at night and
on weekends.Oh，yes，he had only about $ 10,000. “Good luck with that！” I thought.Ideas are much easier to hatch
than they are to execute.
he learned about the virtues of
lightweight programming languages like Ruby on Rails， where you can find
software developers.He picked up the special terms he needed to describe his
project so he could put it out for a bid，and
he found his first programmer-in Ukraine-who agreed to start building the digital
scaffolding (脚手架) for the site.Within months，Tayman had 20 employees working for him
in five different countries.“In fact，I
hadn’t even met the guy who built
most of the site until the launch party，”
he says.
went live in January.Tayman
figures he works about 10 hours a week on it and hasn’t spent a cent on marketing or
advertising.Growth is modest but steady-nearly
10,000 people visit each week，he says，all of whom get there by the word of
mouth and via a software “bot” that lets users of Twitter，the popular micromessaging service，request reviews.
The cost to Tayman？“Almost
$ 9,800，all in，” he said.As for revenue，he just sold his first display ad，for，well，the low three figures.“But it’s a start，and we’ve already reached ‘ramen profitability’．”
He spends about $ 75 a month on server fees and other expenses.
The term “ramen profitable” was coined by Paul Graham，a Silicon Valley startup investor.It means
that your startup is selfsustaining and can create enough profit to keep you alive
on instant noodles while your business gains strength.
