> Another thing I'm always looking for is tails that could wag the dog. The history of startups is full of these. Paypal started out doing security for hand-held devices. They created Paypal as a demo of their security software. But then eBay sellers started using it to take payments, and after a couple months the founders acknowledged that this was the business they were now in, even though they hadn't meant to be. So whenever founders build something peripheral to the main product I always ask: could this be the real product?
I never understood why anybody would pay for Slack when its based on IRC and IRC is free, but whatever. I guess when you are spending other people's money and all your employees are super insecure these kinds of things pay for themselves... maybe?
> I never understood why anybody would pay for Slack when its based on IRC and IRC is free, but whatever.
Comparing IRC vs Slack maybe made sense when Slack was very young, and it was like buying a Honda Civic vs a Ferrari, where one is obviously nicer but the other still accomplished the same thing with less frills.
These days it's the choice between buying a Honda Civic vs a Boeing 747. They both get you from one place to another (communicating between employees) but that's where the similarities end now. Slack has way too many API integrations, historical search, features for everything from compliance message archiving to embedding images to dumb GIF searches that people seem to like. The fact that it has irc-like channels and chatting isn't really the point of the platform anymore.
Yes you could code this all yourself using IRC bots, but at that point IRC is no longer free, it's costing you time. If you get to that point, Slack does it better and cheaper.
I guess I can see it both ways. Most people who claim to be software developers have never written software. They likely write some JSX, type a few commands, and pat themselves on the back.
For those of us who do write software an API integration is typically one HTTP request and I wouldn’t pay a subscription price per headcount for something that takes 10 minutes to build and test one time.
> Since startups make the best stuff, they're strongest on level playing fields. They're weakest in markets dominated by companies you'd describe as mafia. Record labels are mafia. PBMs are mafia. In these worlds you don't win by having the best product. Indeed you may only even exist for as long as the mafia chooses to allow you to. Which is not to say they can't be defeated. They probably can be, but you'd have to do it by coming in from the side — by somehow making them irrelevant, rather than by frontal attack. Then you wouldn't depend on beating them to succeed; it would be an ancillary benefit of winning in another dimension.
I think this is the strongest point being made here. It so accurately describes the situation in every category of software that it almost makes the rest of the post obsolete advice.
> is there a way to make the money flow through it? It's always good when money flows through you.
Ah, yes! The dream of being rent seeking middleman! The first thing that come to mind when I think “hacker” ;)
31 comments so far on this earlier submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49684196
> Another thing I'm always looking for is tails that could wag the dog. The history of startups is full of these. Paypal started out doing security for hand-held devices. They created Paypal as a demo of their security software. But then eBay sellers started using it to take payments, and after a couple months the founders acknowledged that this was the business they were now in, even though they hadn't meant to be. So whenever founders build something peripheral to the main product I always ask: could this be the real product?
Reminds me of Slack. https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/30/the-slack-origin-story/
I never understood why anybody would pay for Slack when its based on IRC and IRC is free, but whatever. I guess when you are spending other people's money and all your employees are super insecure these kinds of things pay for themselves... maybe?
> I never understood why anybody would pay for Slack when its based on IRC and IRC is free, but whatever.
Comparing IRC vs Slack maybe made sense when Slack was very young, and it was like buying a Honda Civic vs a Ferrari, where one is obviously nicer but the other still accomplished the same thing with less frills.
These days it's the choice between buying a Honda Civic vs a Boeing 747. They both get you from one place to another (communicating between employees) but that's where the similarities end now. Slack has way too many API integrations, historical search, features for everything from compliance message archiving to embedding images to dumb GIF searches that people seem to like. The fact that it has irc-like channels and chatting isn't really the point of the platform anymore.
Yes you could code this all yourself using IRC bots, but at that point IRC is no longer free, it's costing you time. If you get to that point, Slack does it better and cheaper.
I guess I can see it both ways. Most people who claim to be software developers have never written software. They likely write some JSX, type a few commands, and pat themselves on the back.
For those of us who do write software an API integration is typically one HTTP request and I wouldn’t pay a subscription price per headcount for something that takes 10 minutes to build and test one time.
> Since startups make the best stuff, they're strongest on level playing fields. They're weakest in markets dominated by companies you'd describe as mafia. Record labels are mafia. PBMs are mafia. In these worlds you don't win by having the best product. Indeed you may only even exist for as long as the mafia chooses to allow you to. Which is not to say they can't be defeated. They probably can be, but you'd have to do it by coming in from the side — by somehow making them irrelevant, rather than by frontal attack. Then you wouldn't depend on beating them to succeed; it would be an ancillary benefit of winning in another dimension.
I think this is the strongest point being made here. It so accurately describes the situation in every category of software that it almost makes the rest of the post obsolete advice.