151–160 of 239 posts
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The real moat is not being forced to use Jira then.
I don’t do side projects related to computers and never have in 30 years. But I still use a Trello board to keep myself organized
Code is now cheap, so the advantage moved into things that cannot be copied by looking, accumulated data, hidden workflows, trust, and judgment earned by staying inside a problem too long.
Big companies copy shapes, not gravity. If your edge is visible, it is temporary. If it only appears over time, you are still early.
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This seems like a very jaded comment, and if it’s because you got burned in a startup, then you have my sympathy and I’m sorry for debating. Just know that not everyone is running on nothing but greed. You might be confusing VCs with startup founders a bit. VCs are definitely profit motivated, by design. It’s going too far, and incorrect IMO, to suggest even VCs, or anyone involved, doesn’t care about building soluti…
It doesn’t matter what the motivations were for the founders once they take VC money. The purpose of tge company then becomes the exit. Your personal sample doesn’t jibe with the literally thousands of even YC companies
Big companies are not your worry in most cases. They have so much bureaucracy and internal politics that it's often cheaper for them to buy out the up-and-coming startups than it is to build in-house. Instead, if you achieve success without much of a moat, you will be cloned by one of the "App Store mills". These are companies who employ multiple small teams (think 3-4 people), and each team is charged with cloning o…
Rocket Internet Is one of these copycat business style.
But maybe you’re referring to practices I am not aware of.
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It doesn’t matter what the motivations were for the founders once they take VC money. The purpose of tge company then becomes the exit. Your personal sample doesn’t jibe with the literally thousands of even YC companies
You’re arguing something different than @latexr did, and picking a VC as your example makes sense here but fails to counter the fact that most startups aren’t VC funded. Still, you’re also like GP confusing VC motivation with founder motivation. It’s possible for founders to care deeply about the problems they’re solving, and for the company’s primary goal to be an exit, at the same time. Both can be true, contrary t…
There are even fewer that are “successful” - ie where everyone involved wouldn’t be better off just working as a LOB CRUD developer.
The goal of the founders don’t matter even if they do “care” about the customer. The customer is at the whim of the strategies of the investors of the company and if an acquired, the customer will probably get an email about “our amazing journey” when the company is shut down
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Lol that's what they told us last year. And they'll say the same thing next year. It's obviously useful for certain tasks but the number of errors and hallucinations are still quite bad for anything large or complex or really novel. That part is improving very slowly and some fundamental theoretical breakthroughs will be needed.
I don't care what they told you last year, I didn't say jack shit. I'm saying it now. Cope or pretend it's not happening, I don't care, this is the year.
Not to pick on you, be mean or anything, but your github profile says no contributions in a year. Obviously there are other online git repo sites.
Care to share anything in prod? For a reply so aggressive, the proof is in the pudding.
Try another idea (while still running the above). Go for $1000 MMR. Still too small.
This is harder than you think and will teach you incredible skills. Next: keep going. :)
DISCLAIMER: obviously don't quit your job/starve/become homeless etc to try this.
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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,…
> I don’t know why you’re picking on startups. Read the thread. I’m not “picking on startups”, the conversation is about startups . Yes, Big companies do it too, that’s just not what this particular conversation is about.
I have read the thread, thank you, and you certainly have been talking about startups and founders as if these issues are unique to them. It’s not just ‘yeah yeah big companies too’… if you actually care about and study enshittification at all, it is, by and large, entirely coming from big companies, and it isn’t new to software, it has always been happening. The only thing new is a cute term for it that got popular recently. Old business terms that mean the same thing include: loss leader, hook product, bait and switch, and plain old “promotion”. Regardless of what the topic here is, it doesn’t make sense to harp on startups over quality going down. For that to happen, it had to be higher at some point, and that point is: startups. VC funding might lead to some quality decline, but all companies trim and get worse as they grow, and always have. Startup is the phase when companies provide the highest level of product or service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol that's what they told us last year. And they'll say the same thing next year. It's obviously useful for certain tasks but the number of errors and hallucinations are still quite bad for anything large or complex or really novel. That part is improving very slowly and some fundamental theoretical breakthroughs will be needed.
I don't care what they told you last year, I didn't say jack shit. I'm saying it now. Cope or pretend it's not happening, I don't care, this is the year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re arguing something different than @latexr did, and picking a VC as your example makes sense here but fails to counter the fact that most startups aren’t VC funded. Still, you’re also like GP confusing VC motivation with founder motivation. It’s possible for founders to care deeply about the problems they’re solving, and for the company’s primary goal to be an exit, at the same time. Both can be true, contrary t…
There are an infinitesimal number of tech based startups that are “lifestyle companies” that were bootstrapped and use revenues to grow without taking investor money. There are even fewer that are “successful” - ie where everyone involved wouldn’t be better off just working as a LOB CRUD developer. The goal of the founders don’t matter even if they do “care” about the customer. The customer is at the whim of the stra…
You’re not debating me, you’re contradicting @latexr.
> infinitesimal
You invented a narrow niche to knock down there, but as I said, I actually looked it up and the majority of startup companies that form are seed or self funded, not VC funded. I was responding to @latexr’s claims that “most” founders don’t care about product at all, which I believe is just false. You’re arguing with me about something else, and I don’t know what your point is yet. Mine is that caring about customers and caring about money aren’t exclusive things, a successful business must do both.