Many do! 37 Signals, Magento, and also our agency Company 52 (responsible for Pluggio and TinyGrab) being some examples.
Ask HN: Why don't freelance hackers and development companies create startups?
11–20 of 39 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why don't freelance hackers and development companies create startups?
#12Typically, wife/kids. Also, mortgage/car payment.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't freelance hackers and development companies create startups?
#13Many do! 37 Signals, Magento, and also our agency Company 52 (responsible for Pluggio and TinyGrab) being some examples.
Harvest, Balance Media, Disrupto, Pivotal (I know 6 months ago they were starting to get serious about Tracker as a product), and that's only off the top of my head. I think turning to product dev is a pretty common aspiration for consulting companies.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't freelance hackers and development companies create startups?
#14I see two reasons: (1) A very small proportion of the applications ever built, constitute ballgame-changing breakthroughs. The other applications could still make some money, but not much. (2) The closer to the client, the bigger the slice in the value chain. A client may pay 5000 USD for small modifications -- often only applicable to his own setup -- to a program that may only have cost 100 USD to buy in the first place or that he even downloaded free of charge. In other words, for lots of developers, it makes economically more sense to customize a ball-game changing application for a client rather than to spend their time trying to push self-created but actually mediocre applications.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't freelance hackers and development companies create startups?
#15Here are several reasons, from experience -
1) Consultants live off of short term payouts. Its a challenging business leap to go from getting paid lump sums now to building something essentially on spec and hoping for a payout later.
2) When you are a consultant, your time is typically tied to billable hours. It becomes extremely difficult to sacrifice billable hours in the short term with hopes for it performing well in the future.
3) Taking resources away from clients to work on an internal project narrows the bandwidth you have for taking on more clients.
4) Consulting work typically is linear - in that you build once, to the client's spec, release it and then move on to the next project. Its rare to be in it for the long haul, improving on different iterations and monitoring performance. This is a big mental gap when building a product - its not just a single launch and done like a client project. Its a long term process nurturing and iterating until the product is successful. We consultants just don't have enough experience in this, and have become pretty hardwired to projects being "done" and instant payouts at launch time. Personally, I've struggled with this a lot in the past and am still learning how to break free of this "one and done" mentality.
So basically thats why consultants who make successful products are an exceptional and special breed.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't freelance hackers and development companies create startups?
#16Can you give me an example of a development company or freelancer that isn't working on their own products in some capacity?
Me. I'm in grad school and I do ruby/backbone.js dev on the side.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't freelance hackers and development companies create startups?
#17Here are several reasons, from experience - 1) Consultants live off of short term payouts. Its a challenging business leap to go from getting paid lump sums now to building something essentially on spec and hoping for a payout later. 2) When you are a consultant, your time is typically tied to billable hours. It becomes extremely difficult to sacrifice billable hours in the short term with hopes for it performing wel…
Interesting angle, as I'm probably the opposite on the 'done' aspect for client work. I mean, at some point, I stop, but usually want to keep iterating on things for the client when they simply don't want to. They don't have the bandwidth for continual iteration - they need something that works for needs X, Y and Z. Once it meets those needs, they're 'done' (and usually 'done' with me too). I struggle to not keep working on something, iterating, etc beyond what the initial specs were.
I'm working with a couple clients where it's an interesting mix - we're iterating the product to meet evolving needs, and discovering some of those needs as we go along, but many projects aren't like that.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't freelance hackers and development companies create startups?
#18Consulting is a job. You have one or a couple clients, and you only have to satisfy them to get paid. You can work during the day, relax at night, take vacations, and generally let work come to you, since there is massive demand beyond supply for your services.
A startup is your whole life. Your job isn't just to satisfy a couple focused business people, but generally thousands or millions of fickle consumers. There is a high probability you won't ever be paid for your work, and if you are paid, it is often way more than you actually need.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't freelance hackers and development companies create startups?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a really short-sighted view, there are literally thousands (if not more) of freelancers and development companies who have no wish to work on their own products. It just isn't in some peoples mindsets. They literally just don't care. Just because in our dimension every development agency, or freelancer writes a blog doesn't mean they're the only guys who exist.
> there are literally thousands (if not more) Like who?
Me. I started working for myself in 2000. Certainly I've had ideas for a product, and a few that I've prototyped, but nothing more than you might expect from someone trying out a few things at home, away from their actual job.
(Strictly speaking that's not quite correct. I have released a few open source "products", but I charge no money for them. My revenue for the last 12 years is from consulting and training.)
Re: Ask HN: Why don't freelance hackers and development companies create startups?
#20Consulting is a job. You have one or a couple clients, and you only have to satisfy them to get paid. You can work during the day, relax at night, take vacations, and generally let work come to you, since there is massive demand beyond supply for your services. A startup is your whole life. Your job isn't just to satisfy a couple focused business people, but generally thousands or millions of fickle consumers. There…
> There is a high probability you won't ever be paid for your work, and if you are paid, it is often way more than you actually need.
Way less you mean? Getting paid way more than you actually need is the part of why people start a business isn't it? :P