If true then VC money would dry up. We definitely are not at the stage where new company formation has ended.
Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
111–120 of 239 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#112Yes, but not in relationship to products being copied. Copying the technical aspects of an idea has been possible for a long time anyway.
Knowing how to acquire, support and cultivate a growing user base is the challenge.
The availability of a technical "moat" has always been a select property of only a few products. All real moats are network effects.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#113I would strongly recommend staying away from software startups unless: - The CEO of some major corporation or a big VC is a close friend or friend of your family. - You are rich and have a lot of friends who will buy your product. - You already finished the MVP; which you started building 12 years ago... Might as well try to complete. - You're a criminal. The market is insanely saturated and people already have more…
You’re talking about VC startups. I disagree with the sour mindset, as I don’t feel those games were necessary for my startup, although I admit mine was bootstrapped (0$), and didn’t grow as far as the others, it still made me millionaire, has paid my employees a high-than-average salary and has the potential of adding them a few hundred thousands each. I admit the old market (do web apps to manage records! or notes!…
How do you find users? Organic? SEO is useless as all the projects with any meaningful pagerank are all pointing to each other. Social media advertising is useless; nobody even sees your tweets or posts. Advertising? How do you get a return on CPC? All the big competitors seem to be running negative margins. Also, small volume social media ads tends to attract only bots... Are you operating in a niche? How do you get word of mouth in this case? Niches related to solving bureaucratic problems are often regulated! No SOC2 or ISO27001, no contracts for you.
In the last 15 years, I met just one person who bootstrapped a tech startup 'on their own' to be worth a few millions... This guy was super smart and switched on... But I later found out his wife's parents were multi-millionaires. I'm thinking that was probably the differentiator. I met a LOT of successful tech people. They always got major help. I never actually met one who didn't have access to significant help.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#114Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is this a problem? As long as the problem gets solved.
I would expect it to be obvious that caring about making money above fixing a problem means the problem won’t be solved that well compared to the alternative. Are you really going to claim you never encountered a startup that is obviously shitting on customers and degrading the experience to make a buck? Do you honestly believe all startups are created to solve a problem (the original claim I responded to) and none a…
I don't see how its "obvious" at all. I think most problems wouldn't be solved at all with this view because most problems aren't something people care about. Money gives people the incentive to solve every problem possible. Someone who "cares" is free to solve it even better and make even more money.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is this a problem? As long as the problem gets solved.
I would expect it to be obvious that caring about making money above fixing a problem means the problem won’t be solved that well compared to the alternative. Are you really going to claim you never encountered a startup that is obviously shitting on customers and degrading the experience to make a buck? Do you honestly believe all startups are created to solve a problem (the original claim I responded to) and none a…
This is to some extent a false dichotomy. Generally speaking, products that prioritize fixing a problem “above” making money do not exist. There are no alternatives. Businesses can’t sustain that. Sometimes it happens for a short while, and eventually they reduce the level of service, or charge more money, or die.
I don’t know why you’re picking on startups. Big companies are where you see enshittification the most, and it’s because economies of scale require them to cut costs. Startups can often use VC fuel to offer delightful and unprofitably superior solutions to problems. That goes away after startups graduate to being real companies.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#117> Big companies can copy your product in no time Your advantage in this case, now or 10 years ago, is that this is simply not true. If your business is "a flashlight app", yeah, eventually they'll copy it (as it happened). However they'll take an unusual long time to do that simple thing (as it also happened). Why? Because everything at big companies is a political game, full of internal conflicts, multiple prioritie…
While I agree with sone of your points, there are many evidences that this happened in the past. One example is Microsoft creating teams to take on Slack.
Every single org I’ve seen using teams (sample size of 4-5 orgs) uses it because it came for free. And every one of them also got slack and paid for it.
That says everything about how shitty Teams STILL is. MS still hasn’t improved it much from the steady state turd that it’s been a few years ago.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree with sone of your points, there are many evidences that this happened in the past. One example is Microsoft creating teams to take on Slack.
I dont think the founders or early team at slack are upset with how things played out
Just the consumers unfortunately.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#119The problem is the software has already been made in the past. It has built up over time. Just like songs. There are so many already there.
When smartphones just came out I was already not making websites anymore. But every single app I made got at least 10k downloads in one week and around 1/5 got in the top 10 of a category like "social" even though I've only ever spent maybe a month max on developing any single app.
But now there are soooo many already there. Good luck getting into the top 10 social now with one weekend of coding.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#120Not with that attitude