Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia • Hacker News Board

Re: Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia

#21

Post by dozzie » Mon, May 28, 2018, 12:51 AM UTC

rsoto wrote: post #15

sheeshkebab wrote: post #9

Sometimes I wonder about what’s more profitable in B2B space - product or consulting/contracting. Doing the latter I manage to pull in more in 3 months what this guy generated it sounds like in 3 years. That gives me a pause everytime I want to sink 3 months of my time into some startup idea.

As someone that has done both, you might be right. Consulting is way more profitable, but the thing is that you basically are working for someone else, and you can scale it as far as you can fit it on your calendar or hiring. But with a product you can sell 1,000% of what you had yesterday, the schedules might be a little tight since B2B expects at least a few sales meetings. So it has its pros and cons. And from my…

> As someone that has done both, you might be right.

I don't think he has done both. He wouldn't have asked in such a case.

Re: Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia

#22

Post by bigiain » Mon, May 28, 2018, 12:55 AM UTC

sheeshkebab wrote: post #9

Sometimes I wonder about what’s more profitable in B2B space - product or consulting/contracting. Doing the latter I manage to pull in more in 3 months what this guy generated it sounds like in 3 years. That gives me a pause everytime I want to sink 3 months of my time into some startup idea.

Accenture and PwC et al show there's unicorns in consulting, but not many.

There's also the in-between/both approach - Oracle and Salesforce are both "Here buy our shit!", followed up very quickly with "Here, you need our services department and a support contract to make that shit work".

Re: Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia

#23

Post by alfredallan1 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 1:13 AM UTC

bigiain wrote: post #22

sheeshkebab wrote: post #9

Sometimes I wonder about what’s more profitable in B2B space - product or consulting/contracting. Doing the latter I manage to pull in more in 3 months what this guy generated it sounds like in 3 years. That gives me a pause everytime I want to sink 3 months of my time into some startup idea.

Accenture and PwC et al show there's unicorns in consulting, but not many. There's also the in-between/both approach - Oracle and Salesforce are both "Here buy our shit!", followed up very quickly with "Here, you need our services department and a support contract to make that shit work".

Increasingly, Microsoft seems to be taking the same approach, at least with its Azure line of products where you can buy “service” separately from the actual cloud product.

Re: Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia

#24

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 28, 2018, 1:17 AM UTC

sheeshkebab wrote: post #9

Sometimes I wonder about what’s more profitable in B2B space - product or consulting/contracting. Doing the latter I manage to pull in more in 3 months what this guy generated it sounds like in 3 years. That gives me a pause everytime I want to sink 3 months of my time into some startup idea.

[deleted]

Re: Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia

#25

Post by alfredallan1 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

sheeshkebab wrote: post #9

Sometimes I wonder about what’s more profitable in B2B space - product or consulting/contracting. Doing the latter I manage to pull in more in 3 months what this guy generated it sounds like in 3 years. That gives me a pause everytime I want to sink 3 months of my time into some startup idea.

If one is sufficiently skilled, consulting pays much better in the short term and carries almost no risk. Building a product pays negatively (costs money in the form of expenses and investment) in the short term, and is very risky (the product may or may not actually get built, even if it does it may or may not fit the market, even if that happens, it may or may not generate sufficient revenues, and then there’s the risk of the company going out of operations due to internal/external problems). The founder that wrote the article this comment thread is discussing stumbled at the final stage - company went out of ops due to internal problems.

Re: Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia

#26

Post by bigiain » Mon, May 28, 2018, 1:24 AM UTC

alfredallan1 wrote: post #23

bigiain wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accenture and PwC et al show there's unicorns in consulting, but not many. There's also the in-between/both approach - Oracle and Salesforce are both "Here buy our shit!", followed up very quickly with "Here, you need our services department and a support contract to make that shit work".

Increasingly, Microsoft seems to be taking the same approach, at least with its Azure line of products where you can buy “service” separately from the actual cloud product.

Not _super_ surprising. AWS has spawned an entire industry who provide addon services/support for it (and if I were those companies, I'd be waiting for the Bezos shoe to drop and eat the entire space's profit). The company I work for has a bunch of clients who outsource all of their AWS capability - usually in insanely expensive and inflexible ways...

Re: Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia

#27

Post by alfredallan1 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 1:38 AM UTC

bigiain wrote: post #26

alfredallan1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasingly, Microsoft seems to be taking the same approach, at least with its Azure line of products where you can buy “service” separately from the actual cloud product.

Not _super_ surprising. AWS has spawned an entire industry who provide addon services/support for it (and if I were those companies, I'd be waiting for the Bezos shoe to drop and eat the entire space's profit). The company I work for has a bunch of clients who outsource all of their AWS capability - usually in insanely expensive and inflexible ways...

Of course, even companies like Salesforce, SAP have little cottage industries sprung up around them that do the “requirement analysis”, setup, maintenance, etc.

I always wonder if it’d not be effectively cheaper to hire a parttime sysadmin to manage one’s own servers than all this trouble companies now go to with AWS/Azure.

A while back, I had a good look at the AWS offerings, and they were alluring enough to someone in the early stages of anything. But the initial knowledge-barrier is not too low (there are even courses on AWS) - so why wouldn’t I instead to use my preexisting Unix skills to do it by hand; and why wouldn’t a beginner choose to learn the (not too hard, and IMO of comparable complexity as AWS) basics of handling storage etc in Unix than to pay a vendor. The moment one is at even intermediate scale, having one’s own setup seems more practical.

Re: Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia

#28

Post by blazespin » Mon, May 28, 2018, 2:30 AM UTC

rsp1984 wrote: post #7

If you are trying to start a startup with a friend, think about this, do you really know this person? are you confident that under high levels of pressure this person is going to help you or is he going to break apart? I started a startup with my best friend whom I knew for several years. The startup succeeded (kind of, we got acqui-hired by BigTech) but the friendship turned into a deep alienation in the process. St…

I dunno about true character, maybe levels of maturity. Learning patience and dealing with stress comes with age. Anyone can do it.

Re: Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia

#29

Post by blazespin » Mon, May 28, 2018, 2:31 AM UTC

nyrulez wrote: post #18

not_a_moth wrote: post #4

The author opens by nobly asserting "I take all responsibility for the failure" yet then, everything that follows is how his co-founder screwed him who he is now suing. Feels kind of inauthentic overall.

How is that incompatible? If you partner with a crook, can't you take a responsibility for making that mistake (of not seeing the signs) but still call the other person out for being a crook? Taking responsibility is different from saying other did no wrong.

It’s my fault everyone around me is an idiot. Lol

Re: Top Mistakes and Learnings from My Startup: Postmortem Samsamia

#30

Post by segmondy » Mon, May 28, 2018, 2:38 AM UTC

heliodor wrote: post #5

Reading the abstract reminded me that so many people don't understand effective communication. The academic essay style is a travesty of global proportions. Effective communication would start with the conclusion section, then the body, and leave the intro out. Make your statement quickly, and then expand upon it for whoever wants to keep reading. Saying, "in this essay I will tell you what I learned" is not going to…

Give him a break, it's obvious that English is not his first language. The article is about mistake and learning about his startup, but you have moved the topic to his style of writing. Seriously, you do realize HN is worldwide right and many of us don't speak English as first languages?