TT: So Oriented.org has been a completely volunteer effort for the past four years? How have you covered the costs of the site and the time?
Gus: It's been mostly out of our pocket. Our time has actually been substantial [but] the costs have not been that high. It's the time, it's a big investment.
Christine: There was one year, where it was like, well, just so much time dedicated, like hours and hours, staying up all night ... I remember the day we launched ... there were so many last minute technical details. I was so excited about our launch and Gus was totally drained.
Gus: It was 2am in the morning.
Christine: There were still a lot of technical things to do and I was sitting in front of my computer and he comes over and says to me, "do you want to turn it on, do you want to do the honors?" So I turned it on and then Gus goes, "I'm going to bed." He didn't even look.
I stayed up for hours surfing the site and sending out e-mails to friends ... but the technical end has been a lot of work on his part. Everything you see on the site is his.
Gus: Christine did all the writing, all the content is hers.
TT: How did you keep it going through the dotcom bomb?
Christine: The answer to that is that we are cutting down how much we have to offer to a more sustainable level and the other thing is really it takes commitment and a reason. If it's money, that's fine, but you've got to have a purpose.
In our case we really believed that there was a lot of value we could be adding and when we leave Taiwan we can actually say that hey, we have contributed to this society.
It's no rocket science formula, it's all advertising, job postings, business listings, everything you see on Oriented.org and probably more. There are thousands of community sites out there and I don't think a single one is a rocking success.
I would like to be able to say this is going to be a million dollar company one day but the reality of it is I'd really like to see the service provided because I think it's important.
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