A $5.6B valuation means that Postman is about as valuable as Reddit ($6.4B). There might be an alternative simulated universe in which this makes sense, but it is not ours. Unfortunately, the market can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent, so I won't short Postman if it will be listed sometime in the future, but damn, I would really like to do so.
> At some point, the big company gets complacent or it gets so large it is bogged down in bureaucratic red tape or any other negative thing attributed to bigCorp loss of leadership in markets from the past. Then, as this sector likes to say "it's ripe for disruption."
I think it's inevitable that that's SpaceX's fate in the fullness of time.
But it seems like it'll be a while for them. They aren't indulging in typical market-leader behavior. They have kept their prices low - the market leader there by a substantial margin (based on $/kg to LEO). And they clearly have no problem making their best product obsolete via internal innovation. From what I recall, those are the 2 big pitfalls that entrenched market leaders tend to indulge in.
Fast. Fast always wins. Trying something, regardless of outcome teaches something about the world. The more trials, the more you roll the dice, the more you learn.
I really hate being wrong, but it is much better to be wrong a lot, and quickly understand why. The alternative is to try nothing. It’s kinda sad.
Man, the board already looked reckless and incompetent, but this solidifies the appearance. You can do crazy ill-advised things, but if you unwaveringly commit, we’ll always wonder if you’re secretly a genius. But when you immediately backtrack, we’ll know you were a fool all along.
I preach about using the REPL non-stop to my coworkers and we don't use Clojure. The problem with REPL-driven development is that you need to invest in your setup - so you have to believe it's worth it. Not even the Clojure REPL works out of the box: you need to make sure your definitions are reload-friendly, Emacs/Calva have to be connected for you to eval stuff with commands, use comment blocks as scratchpad, etc - it's a bunch of little conventions you need to buy into.
That being said, the setup cost is paid pretty quickly. Developers underestimate how much time they waste reloading stuff into place. Updated a function - woops, have to clear the variables I setup and run intermediate steps all over again. Even if you think 'yeah but I just write tests and those run the whole flow' using a REPL is worth it. I work with Rails, use guard and try to keep tests fast by sticking to POROs and still does not beat the interactivity of the REPL.
One workflow that comes close is working with Elm's compiler. Super friendly and interactive; gives you a similar iterative flow as a REPL but in a different context.
I targeted a niche (Japanese language learning) with communities that already exist and discuss resources intensively. Then I built what they're looking for (and what I could tell from other language communities that they would like but aren't actively asking for) and went to those existing communities where people already are to introduce it. I also actively respond on Twitter, Reddit, other niche forums etc. and plug my couple apps in non-intrusive ways when relevant. My users also recommend the apps within these communities. Some journalists and competitor publications also mentioned/reviewed my apps which helped, without me pitching them. I think the niche I chose to start with is particularly good because it is full of many tech-oriented people who already share and discuss resources, and has people who are fatigued with overly-configurable setups and are looking for easier solutions.
I have plans for pushing this much further (getting people to spread word of mouth more actively, virality elements, interesting ways to share content) but this was enough to get going and quit my job.
I also put keywords of some loosely competitive apps and former dead apps or Android-specific apps that people will still look for into iOS app store keywords so that my apps show up in search results. Technically not allowed but it is the norm and I see competitors do it with mine.
I also try to leverage everything I do in multiple ways, so that I have features I can reuse across other apps, a common foundation, etc. I'll start documenting these practices in the open under indiedevstack.com but haven't set that up yet.
Aside from my full time career as a programmer, the best side income stream I've built has been my book I wrote[0] to help software engineers develop the soft-skills that are necessary to reach a senior level position.
I spent 4 years on and off writing and preparing the book for publication, and it's been bringing in a steady stream of income since it was published in October 2022.
I assume you understand basic economics in a capitalist system, supply vs demand, etc, so I'll interpret your first question as "why isn't it banned," which goes to your second question:
Sure, "we" can ban it, Ohio and the US are still nominally representative democracies, it just requires you and millions of others (people or dollars will work) to make your representatives care enough to enact legislation.
This is generally when ennui sets in and people move on to the next thing in their feed.
I exchanged a few emails with Fred over the years. RIP Fred. Thank you so much for all the wisdom. Sharing one of the last responses here:
Thanks for your kind words. You will find lots of condensed wisdom in the three software books I
value most:
DeMarco & Lister Peopleware
2007. Software engineering: Barry Boehm's lifetime contributions to software development,
management and research. Ed. by Richard Selby.
Hoffman, Daniel M.; Weiss David M. (Eds.): Software Fundamentals – Collected Papers by David L.
Parnas, 2001, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-70369-6.
You might also like my later book on technical design in general: The Design of Design. Start
with Part II.
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.
Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
So I write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music.
Ideas are cheap. Hacking together a PoC is too. Shipping some kind of product is a bit more difficult but the first to ship is usually a complete failure. You can point to almost <i>any</i> product category - whether computer related or not - and this holds true. Revolutionary ideas are ahead of their time both technologically and culturally. The makers don't know how to put the ideas to productive use. Then people flail around throwing product ideas at the wall to see what sticks. The implementation is often full of caveats, missing features, or is mere novelty (it folds! why? ... shutup, it folds ok).
Getting the details right is <i>really</i> hard and takes a lot of work. The last 10% takes as much work as the first 90%. Then the next 10% also takes 90%. Repeat a few more times and somehow it ends up being 1000% more difficult than you expected at the start. Often it requires merging multiple major ideas to create something that is more than the sum of its parts (then you get to watch fools who only got 1 of 50 parts correct claim they invented the whole thing).
Be assured that if you are successful a lot of people will rush to make sure you don't get any credit. I recommend you ignore them... their opinions don't matter and listening to them won't help you make better products or delight more customers.
Stay focused on what matters. Even if Slashdot calls your product "lame" it can still make a few billion. Even if HN says your idea can be done already trivially by "any linux user with curlftpfs" you can still create a startup, IPO, and become very rich. Even if someone says "we have had Mouse without Borders [...] for over a decade" you can still deliver a better experience that people will pay money for.
Just because there are existing "solutions" out there doesn't mean they are a) good or b) doing the job customers actually want them to do.
But do Synergy and Barrier Just Work? It has to Just Work, otherwise it's a defective product, or a rough prototype for some Apple product.
See, that's the thing. My guess is you had to configure Synergy, and as a techie you're blind to this effort. But it is still effort, hence a time sink and a cognitive burden. The Apple version is none of these and a joy to use because Apple puts the emphasis on making it Just Work with zero configuration if possible.
Hundreds of millions more people will experience multi-device control for the first time with Apple Universal Control, than will have ever heard of Synergy.
So, I can't claim to be "a good CEO" but I have founded a startup and we're working very hard to make it a success. I can tell you a little bit about what I did. How much you should infer from that, is up for debate.
1. Read. Books. I was the weird geek/programmer who always found business fascinating, so I've been collecting and reading books on business and marketing for years... going way back to before I launched Fogbeam Labs. A few titles you might want to consider, going from memory:
A. The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank. This is about as close as you get to a "paint by the numbers" guide to launching a startup. Invaluable. I felt like Neo in the Matrix going "whoooah" after reading it.
B. The Startup Owner's Manual - Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. This is basically the 2nd edition of The Four Steps To The Epiphany but there is some difference in the content. I'd honestly recommend reading both, but if you're really more specifically focused on web startups / SaaS apps and the like, there is more for you in this book than TFSTTE.
C. The Art Of The Start - Guy Kawasaki. One of the "Bibles" of startup knowledge. I found this indispensable as well.
D. Running Lean - Ash Maurya.
E. The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
F. Forget me trying to compile this list from memory. Go to Quora and find the threads titled something like "What are good books for entrepreneurs to read". [1][2][3][4][5][6]
2. Mixergy.com - Read their freely available stuff, then join and read/watch/listen to the great content they make available.
3. The Stanford Entrepreneur's Corner - Lots of great videos and audio of presentations and what-not, on entrepreneurship. Freely available. http://ecorner.stanford.edu/
4. Take a few classes at your local community college if you have one. I went this route, and took Introduction to Business, Introduction to Business Law and Introduction to Marketing. Those three classes are a good foundation for some basic stuff you'll want to know. An accounting class might not hurt either. In the case of my local CC, these classes were all available as online courses, and were fairly inexpensive.
5. Your state government (I'm assuming you're in the US, if not, this might not apply) probably has something like an "entrepreneurship center" or something, that provides information on this topic, and holds seminars and helps out. Community Colleges also have similar resources. There are probably also non-profit advocacy and education groups dedicated to helping entrepreneurs. Here in NC we have things like:
There are tons of resources to help you on this journey, and a lot of them are free. Dig in and take advantage. Obviously you found one great resource already, in HN, and there are a lot more out there.
Now I'm not against OSS movement and in fact I'm working at a company doing exactly this, but releasing your bread-and-butter as an open source project leaves you vulnerable to peer plagiarism.
Instead, you should just release the core version so others will build an open ecosystem around your mainline product. This will secure your market fundamentals by making sure no one could overshadow you especially in a fiercely competitve market of database.
So please stop open sourcing too much, I don't want to see the same ill fate again and again for great products like RethinkDB (and its downfall) that could change the world
I didn’t read the article but I’ve worked for one of these companies that was a startup and have a local mattress company as a client. So a little perspective.
These companies are all marketing companies. There is no “science” they literally get rolls of foam from foam makers, throw them on in layers and try to find the right combo. I was there, I’ve done it myself.
The companies that end up winning have fantastic marketing, like purple, or were early, like Casper.
Markup for foam mattresses in general is close to 2000%. Average foam cost for a king mattress was <$50. The old school mattress companies are close to The same which is why they have stores on every corner.
The industry is dirty as hell and as cut throat as they come.
As far as the returns, a reputable company will send the Salvation Army or local equivalent to pick up the mattress and it becomes a tax write off for the company. Otherwise like others have said they will tell you to keep it. No sense bringing it back to the warehouse and in a lot of places it is illegal to resell a mattress.
I was lucky to be part of the beta for my SaaS (https://turnshift.app) and I must say this new feature simplifies things A LOT.
Especially as a EU business owner, I previously had to sync every VAT tax rate possible, use a complex workflow to know if a customer needed to pay taxes or not, link tax rates to customers, and create taxes reports for my accountant. Stripe tax does all of that automatically, based on the customer full address and VAT numbers.
PS: Yes there were other services (Paddle) providing this (and much more to be honest), but the Stripe API and customization options makes it my go-to solution for integrating payments.
I would not recommend using a lexer/parser generator for writing a shell, especially if you want to support things like backquote substitution and here-docs, since parsing and evaluating are interleaved. A recursive-descent parser is more flexible and suitable to the task.
I feel like I read something new every week on HN about design philosophy; make your product this way not that way, try to do this and not that, here's 10 examples of products that failed because of x, here's 5 products that were successful because of y - maybe it's time to realise that there's no monolithic overarching "right" way to design a product. This is how we ended up with the current trendy cohort of minimalist apps with flat dark designs, with mobile apps that all look the same, with products that miss killer features for the sake of simplicity, with the annoying typefaces that all tech companies use that make it "trendy".
Our job in life is to engage in value creation. When money is decoupled from value creation, your long-term bet is that it will lose its value, as value creation is what actually matters in the “real” world.
This is also why “crypto” (the asset class, not technology) is so corrosive, because it makes people who have done approximately nothing to create value in society, but who’ve enjoyed a massive boost in monetary value, think they’ve “won” or accomplished something real. This doesn’t work long term, and will eventually collapse on itself like all false religions.
If you’re planning to be alive in 20 years, you’re better off making sure you have a work ethic and skills that generate value, than obsessing over any sort of wealth-hoarding instrument at all, because it is the only true protection against change.
Unrelated to original thread - I find it interesting the way you approach this comment. You mention pricing almost as if you're apologizing. Your competitors, even if they are binge-focused, don't apologize for charging customers. They would never have a an advert that says "we've got this great course, but before you go check it out, I'll warn you, it costs money".
I like your thinking of non-binge learning, and think you could really use that as a differentiator, in your marketing.
Your site looks great, and I really like the way you approach it, or describe it here, but that isn't coming through in your branding. Think Salesforce's "no software", they showed who the enemy was, and put them squarely against it, and if you really look at it, they were selling a CRM, not selling "no software", you're even closer to your product.
If you haven't yet, you may want to check out the book Play Bigger and category creation.
I watched Brandon Li's video yesterday on how to turn a shot into a scene. I feel like it strangely applies to marketing for solo developers. You packaged your disperse config files into a cohesive product, with a unified look, and your website even has an emotional response to it.
Here's his insight.
How to turn a SHOT into a SCENE - Travel Video Storytelling
One of the hardest thing about being a parent today is the constant shame and confusion about the “right” way to do it. We don’t live in a hunter gatherer society anymore, we just don’t. There’s lots of wisdom in that way of life, and sure we could learn from it — but there’s enough anxiety as it is, parents don’t need more of it.
We have three kids and we sleep trained them. (Not a pediatrician, standard disclaimer.) This article calls it an ‘extreme’ practice. For us, ‘extreme’ was the sleep deprivation we experienced with baby number one as we tried every ‘no cry’ method in the book. The baby cried and cried and cried. Once we started sleep training, there was a bit of crying and then - a sleeping baby! Through the night! Total amount of crying went from hours to zero. The kid became happier — they weren’t sleep-deprived anymore. And neither were we. I no longer felt like I was going to drop the ball due to extreme exhaustion.
Babies two and three had the benefit of our experience, and they barely cried at all. The third one would lay down eyes-open and fall asleep. “So it actually does happen! — I thought the books must be lying.”
By all objective measures our kids are happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. But that doesn’t mean we still don’t get the stink eye from people who think it’s a cruel practice.
Just raise your kids with love. Be compassionate, and patient. Find a doctor you trust. Don’t let people add to an already stressful endeavor.
I was looking for the same thing. Would be really curious if it got released. BTW I really enjoyed "Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process during the Golden Age of Steve Jobs"
When the consumer spending is hot, sell more product.
Many people don't get this, specifically that this concept is not married to any particular entrepreneurial idea, and many founders are following these financial axioms, not product line passions.
Way to go Coinbase for getting the ducks in a row.
- "No more Mr. Nice Guy" Robert A. Glover: A great book on identification and elimination of nice guy behaviors with lots of exercises.
- "When I say no I feel guilty" Manuel J. Smith: Techniques with lots of examples on how to stay assertive and deal with attempts to manipulate you into doing something. Relevant for dealing with colleagues, spouses, shop clerks, ...
There are others but those two books will get you very far if you take this seriously.
