Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YC Analysis: "37signals/DHH style" companies?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 94 posts

Re: YC Analysis: "37signals/DHH style" companies?

#81

Post by pius »

attack wrote: post #80
pius wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really matter much to me if you watch the video or not. I did want to take the opportunity, however, to give you a taste of your own medicine after this incident: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135296 . ;) All that aside, the whole point of the talk was that one can live very well off one's web application even if it's only moderately successful. I think the example he gave was 2,000 small business us…

You could generally get 100 million free users for every 2000 40/month customers. Price curves, check them out! Very, very, hard. See my 1% comment.

There's a big difference between courting small businesses (which is what DHH was talking about) and courting individual consumers (who are preconditioned not to spend money on webapps). Depending on the sector, people won't even use your app unless you charge for it.

Re: YC Analysis: "37signals/DHH style" companies?

#82

Post by run4yourlives »

SwellJoe wrote: post #77
run4yourlives wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say what makes them different is the thing that makes them different enough to pay premium for a laptop/computer in the first place: These people place a value on quality. Add to that that I'd venture 80% of the windows users have never "bought" software (except games). Windows is either pirated or comes with the computer... office is acquired from work, some other programs are freeware/never paid for sharewa…

It's also a different culture. No one could possibly claim that vim or emacs aren't "quality" software. UNIX/Linux users also place value on quality, but the form of value is just different--historically the value you pay for something like vim or emacs is you send patches, you add syntax support for your favorite new language, you file coherent bug reports, etc. It's not in dollars, but it has a price. So, there's t…

The OP asked a question, and I simply extrapolated a response from my observations. I don't see how that makes me a "smug Mac weenie", I've got three boxes running, and only one is a mac.

To suggest that there isn't rampant pirating in the windows community by holding up Paint Shop Pro (generally a b2b piece of software) is ignoring the obvious, though.

Re: YC Analysis: "37signals/DHH style" companies?

#83

Post by nazgulnarsil »

a few people mention it but it doesn't seem to get zeroed in on.

don't just build a solution, build an elegant solution. ideally one that is practically transparent to the people using it. I think people constantly forget that the vast majority of computer users wouldn't know the difference between the internet and their desktop much less between campfire and huddlechat.

Re: YC Analysis: "37signals/DHH style" companies?

#84

Post by cstejerean »

tptacek wrote: post #60
cstejerean wrote: post #26

Github.com, Lighthouse, a lot of companies that make Mac software (think TextMate).

GitHub and Lighthouse are two examples of unproven products. 37signals makes millions of dollars a year, which is what makes them credible.

I would be very surprised if GitHub wasn't rapidly approaching being cash flow positive. Since they've been out of beta for only a few weeks I think that's pretty good. Personally I love their product and it seems I'm not the only one.

I think they're a great example of the types of companies in DHH's talk: have a product your users love and charge a price for it. As a bonus they also offer a free version for open source work for which they have my respect.

Re: YC Analysis: "37signals/DHH style" companies?

#85

Post by SwellJoe »

run4yourlives wrote: post #82
SwellJoe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a different culture. No one could possibly claim that vim or emacs aren't "quality" software. UNIX/Linux users also place value on quality, but the form of value is just different--historically the value you pay for something like vim or emacs is you send patches, you add syntax support for your favorite new language, you file coherent bug reports, etc. It's not in dollars, but it has a price. So, there's t…

The OP asked a question, and I simply extrapolated a response from my observations. I don't see how that makes me a "smug Mac weenie", I've got three boxes running, and only one is a mac. To suggest that there isn't rampant pirating in the windows community by holding up Paint Shop Pro (generally a b2b piece of software) is ignoring the obvious, though.

What makes you smug is that you stated that Mac users were different in that they appreciate quality, and thus that people who are not Mac users do not appreciate quality. And, you stated that 80% of Windows systems are running entirely pirated software, which is, frankly, a ridiculous claim.

Paint Shop Pro isn't b2b. It's the epitome of consumer software. Businesses buy Photoshop.

I'm not arguing piracy doesn't exist among Windows users, I'm arguing that you're being smug about being an exalted and holy Mac user which makes you uniquely capable of judging quality and uniquely honest enough to pay for the software you use--unlike the riff raff using other operating systems. Sorry you don't like the term...but that's smug.

I'll admit to being smug and thinking, like you, that Windows users are idiots. But, I take it one further and think that Mac users are idiots, too (and they paid too damned much for their computer to boot). Likewise for most Linux users. Users, in general, are idiots.

Re: YC Analysis: "37signals/DHH style" companies?

#86

Post by pchristensen »

SwellJoe wrote: post #77
run4yourlives wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say what makes them different is the thing that makes them different enough to pay premium for a laptop/computer in the first place: These people place a value on quality. Add to that that I'd venture 80% of the windows users have never "bought" software (except games). Windows is either pirated or comes with the computer... office is acquired from work, some other programs are freeware/never paid for sharewa…

It's also a different culture. No one could possibly claim that vim or emacs aren't "quality" software. UNIX/Linux users also place value on quality, but the form of value is just different--historically the value you pay for something like vim or emacs is you send patches, you add syntax support for your favorite new language, you file coherent bug reports, etc. It's not in dollars, but it has a price. So, there's t…

"smug Mac weenie" - take that, Lisp!

Re: YC Analysis: "37signals/DHH style" companies?

#87

Post by pchristensen »

subwindow wrote: post #31

The Craigslist comparison comes from: 1) The fact that in SF and NYC, they charge directly per listing in certain categories. 2) The fact that they didn't take VC funding. 3) The fact that they stayed small. 4) The fact that they didn't sell the company. All of these would have been extremely easy to stray from, but instead they stuck to the core philosophy. What DHH was talking about was just that: a philosophy. Any…

If 37s is the normal way to run a business, then no one should ever disparage marketing, open source contributions, or consulting as methods to start or bootstrap a business. 37s has ridiculously low customer acquisition costs (compared to competitors) because they

1) have 85K subscribers to their SvN blog

2) wrote a book that sold 75K copies

3) developed one of the most popular open source projects in the world

4) speak at conferences all the time

If you're just writing code, you'd better hope to get bought, because you'll never catch up to 37s as a business.

Re: YC Analysis: "37signals/DHH style" companies?

#89

Post by pchristensen »

hillel wrote: post #70

Direct sale is an excellent model but I don't think it's a requirement. To me it underscores the main principle which is about reducing dependencies. Why convince two parties to do something (someone to visit your site, and an advertiser to run an ad targeting that visitor) when you can convince one. I'd also add that the single most important thing I've found in creating a business like this is keeping your costs lo…

Exactly, direct sale = lower customer acquisition cost
Post reply on HN