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Enough

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Re: Enough

#61

Post by dgudkov »

edanm wrote: post #36

Of course everyone is free to choose what they want to do with their own business. And I have personally also chosen non-standard paths of smaller growth (e.g., I started a software consultancy instead of a VC-backed company). However, there are a few concrete reasons why companies, especially software companies (as opposed to e.g. restaurants), tend towards growth: 1. Some companies will require some amount of growt…

>If you're not growing, you're not facing new challenges.

While growth typically introduces new challenges it doesn't assume the opposite -- no growth, no challenges. Changing markets, customer preferences, and competitors' actions -- all that can bring enough challenge even when there is no growth. Even more than that -- if you're growing it most probably means that you don't have major problems with product/market fit. In case of no growth it might mean that you're losing the product/market fit and you still don't know how to fix it, which makes it very challenging.

Re: Enough

#62

Post by makmanalp »

shubhamjain wrote: post #47
coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I the only person sick of DHH and the 37 Signals people writing the same article 800 times? Well, for one, nobody forced anyone to read it. Second, you should at least be even more sick of the 50,000 other sources shouting and blogging the opposite message all the time. At least DHH brings a tiny balance to this.

VC talk can be overbearing at times but I haven't seen anyone harping on how raising money is superior to bootstrapping. DHH, on the other hand, keeps on lambasting the VC industry without much helpful advice. It's not the contrarian view that is exasperating, it's his parochial attitude that venture capital hasn't done any good. He strikes as a person who would use Uber everyday without acknowledging that without VC…

> I haven't seen anyone harping on how raising money is superior to bootstrapping

No, that's not necessary, because it's already accepted conventional wisdom. You're starting a company? How's your seed round going? Which incubator are you applying to? I know an investor friend who works for , want an intro?

Re: Enough

#63

Post by noway421 »

dgudkov wrote: post #61
edanm wrote: post #36

Of course everyone is free to choose what they want to do with their own business. And I have personally also chosen non-standard paths of smaller growth (e.g., I started a software consultancy instead of a VC-backed company). However, there are a few concrete reasons why companies, especially software companies (as opposed to e.g. restaurants), tend towards growth: 1. Some companies will require some amount of growt…

>If you're not growing, you're not facing new challenges. While growth typically introduces new challenges it doesn't assume the opposite -- no growth, no challenges. Changing markets, customer preferences, and competitors' actions -- all that can bring enough challenge even when there is no growth. Even more than that -- if you're growing it most probably means that you don't have major problems with product/market…

Challenge is not about challenge itself, but about the combination of challenge-reward. If you are fighting for something with a marginal return there's less incentive for that.

Re: Enough

#64

Post by davidivadavid »

tawayyy wrote: post #44
tybit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he has a decent point but someone commissioning custom super cars isn't in the best position to make it.

Doesn't this make his point stronger? Even with a company that does not want to grow indefinitely, he can still afford super cars. Reality is that unicorns only benefit VCs. Most founders should not take any VC money and try to bootstrap and get, like, N million dollars businesses, not to try to achieve billion dollar businesses. The former is 1000x times simpler.

It doesn't make his point stronger because his company is already comparatively huge if you look at most startups who supposedly fall prey to the "growth at all costs" mentality.

His point is moot because a lot of startups will agree with him when they reach the scale of Basecamp. They're not there yet, so they need to think about growth.

Meanwhile, companies who are huge and going after more growth don't give a fuck about what DHH writes. It feels like there's a pretty significant message/audience mismatch.

Re: Enough

#65

Post by jondubois »

coldtea wrote: post #43
austenallred wrote: post #33

Am I the only person sick of DHH and the 37 Signals people writing the same article 800 times? We get it. You don't have to raise VC or grow exponentially to have a great company. They have seriously written the same thing hundreds of times in hundreds of different ways, and it's barely even a contrarian view anymore. I hear as many people saying, "I wish more people would talk about how you don't have to raise VC" a…

> Am I the only person sick of DHH and the 37 Signals people writing the same article 800 times? Well, for one, nobody forced anyone to read it. Second, you should at least be even more sick of the 50,000 other sources shouting and blogging the opposite message all the time. At least DHH brings a tiny balance to this.

It's actually very nice to see successful people being contrarians. What I'm sick of is elitist consensus.

There are a lot of people who don't have much voice in this society who are thinking what DHH is thinking from a different perspective.

Personally, I'm tried of competing with greedy, unprofitable VC-funded companies which are saturating the internet with their ads and financially-sponsored "thought leadership" blogs.

In the meantime, for the past 5 years I've been struggling to set up a one-person business around an open source project I created. It's a very hostile environment for a single-person business right now and greed is to blame... It's not leaving any breadcrumbs for the little people.

Re: Enough

#66

Post by yanilkr »

How would you talk to a teenager who thinks "C" grade is good enough? It's all relative. As an adult you can see the flaw in that teenager's mindset.

The beliefs behind your paradigm are important too. If you think one can achieve "growth" only by adding positive value to others, growth is not a bad thing. How is it possible to grow when there is no potential to grow? It would take some "crazies" to try to grow something that everyone else thinks this is it. We know that some people in history beat the prevailing expectations in sports, art and personal wealth.

I understand the conversation here is about when to stop or when should one realize that the idea has reached its potential?

I was at a startup pitching event where a founder was pitching a profitable "presentation software" company. The judge asked "How many billion dollar presentation software companies do you know?".

"Enough" conversation becomes important in software products because if smart people do not understand what is good, better and best they take more risks that only end up ruining the product.

Re: Enough

#67

Post by mr_ndrsn »

reitanqild wrote: post #21
notenoughdhh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His initial argument is that it's okay to be mediocre because continuous success is just a "paradigm." That much was already clear. His argument falls apart when he tries to justify having enough, since that contradicts his initial argument. If continuous success isn't written in stone, then neither is having enough. Nokia's anecdotal demise isn't a reason to not seek continuous success. In fact, one could use that s…

It's clear that DHH has some bias against success. Quite on the contrary I and many others think of him as extremely successful: Profitable since year 2 IIRC Have built nice products that you can pay for by money (instead of by privacy) Well known for a certain web framework that 100 000s of developers use and many love. I'd even go so far as to say he influenced (not shaped though) our entire industry by showing how…

> Have built nice products that you can pay for by money (instead of by privacy)

As a happy employee of Basecamp, this line makes me proud.

Re: Enough

#68

Post by coldtea »

shubhamjain wrote: post #47
coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I the only person sick of DHH and the 37 Signals people writing the same article 800 times? Well, for one, nobody forced anyone to read it. Second, you should at least be even more sick of the 50,000 other sources shouting and blogging the opposite message all the time. At least DHH brings a tiny balance to this.

VC talk can be overbearing at times but I haven't seen anyone harping on how raising money is superior to bootstrapping. DHH, on the other hand, keeps on lambasting the VC industry without much helpful advice. It's not the contrarian view that is exasperating, it's his parochial attitude that venture capital hasn't done any good. He strikes as a person who would use Uber everyday without acknowledging that without VC…

>VC talk can be overbearing at times but I haven't seen anyone harping on how raising money is superior to bootstrapping.

I've seen that + sneer at "lifestyle businesses" (aka normal businesses that don't aspire to be "unicorns" or lose on every sale but make it up in volume) countless times.

>DHH, on the other hand, keeps on lambasting the VC industry without much helpful advice.

Haven't he and/or Fried written like 2 books with business advice?

Re: Enough

#69

Post by bdcravens »

edanm wrote: post #36

Of course everyone is free to choose what they want to do with their own business. And I have personally also chosen non-standard paths of smaller growth (e.g., I started a software consultancy instead of a VC-backed company). However, there are a few concrete reasons why companies, especially software companies (as opposed to e.g. restaurants), tend towards growth: 1. Some companies will require some amount of growt…

> If you're not growing, you're not facing new challenges

> you need to have growth to provide them with interesting challenges

I think challenges are more the product of autonomy than growth. A response to growth is often to just increase the headcount and the infrastructure.

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