Truemors is a web site that enables you to “tell the world”. You can post your rumours, news, and sightings, and anyone with web access can read and rate them within minutes. It was put together by Guy Kawasaki the ex Apple evangelist turned Venture Capitalist.

The site has been widely critisied in the tech/startup community, but despite the critisim, Truemors is an interesting case study in turning an Internet business idea into reality. Kawasaki recently posted a breakdown of Truemors’ startup costs which come to just $12,107.09.

While I’m not a fan of the site I generally tend to agree with Andy Beard who says that Truemors is more successful than most people realise. It shows just what you can do with a credit card, business idea and some open source software – a classic example of bootstrapping.

While just over $12,000 might seem like a tiny amount to launch an Internet business it is purely what it cost to get the site developed and live. The site’s revenue still needs to exceed the the running costs (staff, marketing, hosting etc) if the business is to generate a positive return on investment. Something forgotten by many in the last dot com boom.

I do think however that Kawasaki has undervalued his own brand, few people could launch a site like this and generate such intense coverage from the likes of TechCrunch. Without that level of coverage, achieved by leveraging Kawasaki’s own brand, I doubt Truemors could generate this much interest. Not unless a significant investment was made in marketing and PR.

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