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What you should know as a founder of a software company

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Re: What you should know as a founder of a software company

#81

Post by sbarker »

piptastic wrote: post #19
ivm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here, I agree that "good enough UI" will do but I can't remember Wikipedia or Gmail having a terrible user experience on launch. In case of Reddit and HN, I started to use them many years after I learned about them – mostly because of the weird UX. I still prefer hckrnews.com for HN.

Who do you use instead of craigslist?

I like Facebook Marketplace because I can search with in X miles of my location on my phone and I don't have to check, "Has Photos" like craigslist.

Re: What you should know as a founder of a software company

#82

Post by mbesto »

ukulele wrote: post #4

> Weak user experience design makes people hate your product. Big companies can get away with it because their clients often have no other choice, but it’s a crucial point for a new market player. This is not a generally true statement. Big (aka successful) companies with a poor UX are likely focused on selling or some core feature set that is hard to create, and if they're big then it means they are or were making t…

SalesForce is the greatest example of this - awful UX, but so many people use it because it does simply work. Lots of startups use SFDC and it's "their choice", so again the OP's statement doesn't really hold up.

Re: What you should know as a founder of a software company

#83

Post by ivm »

mbesto wrote: post #82
ukulele wrote: post #4

> Weak user experience design makes people hate your product. Big companies can get away with it because their clients often have no other choice, but it’s a crucial point for a new market player. This is not a generally true statement. Big (aka successful) companies with a poor UX are likely focused on selling or some core feature set that is hard to create, and if they're big then it means they are or were making t…

SalesForce is the greatest example of this - awful UX, but so many people use it because it does simply work. Lots of startups use SFDC and it's "their choice", so again the OP's statement doesn't really hold up.

SalesForce was founded in 1999. Are there any examples that released after 2010 and got a significant part of their markets? Except for maybe Snapchat which is not too bad, just weird.

Re: What you should know as a founder of a software company

#84

Post by marcosdumay »

Illotus wrote: post #63
fastbeef wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing about inifi-scrolling is that it's designed to save bandwidth, but I'd wager that most of the time the extra JS packages are bigger than the content actually being "saved"

Sorta, it does save bandwitdth, but more importantly it is used to keep users on your site longer by removing the decision point of browsing to the next page. Though for the best effect you need to do it background so that user never really realises that the feed/list never really ends.

Whatever you do, just, please, add a link for the next page at the end of your results. You can move it later with JS once you downloaded more results, but make sure the link is there.

I'm quite tired of not being able to use sites on slow connections.

Re: What you should know as a founder of a software company

#85

Post by marcosdumay »

golergka wrote: post #67
throwawaydoom wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "shut up or find yourself another job". I thought this too until recently -- got fired after trying to protect my employer from a toxic exec. There are some that do not accept anything but yesmans or silent codemonkeys. It sucks but it pays. If you are not willing to lose your position, just let it go.

In my experience, it's "shut or find yourself another engineer".

Normally, people that does that do not know enough to care about keeping good technical staff.

What is also another good way to say that, shutting up or not, they deserve to be out of an engineer, so go immediately looking for another boss.

Re: What you should know as a founder of a software company

#86

Post by joshuaheard »

emptybits wrote: post #47

Founder here. That list is a lot of cart before a horse. You could master all those points and still not have a company on your hands. #1: Solve an important enough pain point that companies or consumers will pay you for it. Sorry it's not more catchy.

What if, they are paying for something already, and you build a more advanced one? That is to say, it does something the others don't that makes it a little better and easier.

Re: What you should know as a founder of a software company

#88

Post by Nursie »

kuschku wrote: post #66
piptastic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you use instead of craigslist?

Ebay has a Craigslist competitor, too, in Germany running as ebay Kleinanzeigen.

Is that not what gumtree is in a lot of places?

That's what I've used in the UK and Australia, an ebay own it too.

Re: What you should know as a founder of a software company

#89

Post by bluetwo »

stephengillie wrote: post #27
rmdoss wrote: post #15

Too much content without addressing the real problem with most startups: They do not solve a customer problem. Solve their problem, make their life better and you will do well.

How do startups exist without customers paying them to solve a problem? From convincing investors that the problem exists? It sounds like the investors are the real customers and a narrative is the product they produce.

The best ones ignore the "scratch your own itch" advice and look for a problem that is outside their comfort area that has not yet been attacked.

Re: What you should know as a founder of a software company

#90

Post by mbesto »

ivm wrote: post #83
mbesto wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SalesForce is the greatest example of this - awful UX, but so many people use it because it does simply work. Lots of startups use SFDC and it's "their choice", so again the OP's statement doesn't really hold up.

SalesForce was founded in 1999. Are there any examples that released after 2010 and got a significant part of their markets? Except for maybe Snapchat which is not too bad, just weird.

> SalesForce was founded in 1999

Why is that fact relevant? Care to elaborate?

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