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The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

broadcast.listennotes.com

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Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#301

Post by chrischattin »

whalesalad wrote: post #273

Technology is usually just a means to an end. Unless IP is what you are selling, boring is great. I’ve seen SO many teams burn SO much energy on complicated stacks just to drink kool-aid. It’s mind bogglingly frustrating, especially as a contractor. At the end of the day it’s great for me: I get brought into shit shows to clean up the mess. But deep down, I want projects to succeed and clean/sound systems architectur…

Yes! So much this. Every startup I've worked with regretted choosing a trendy tech stack early on. Speed of development is BY FAR the most important thing and the SPA/Javascript framework de jour trend of the past few years is an antithetical to rapid iteration. As a consultant, I'll happily bill hours to untangle that mess, but it's very frustrating to see startups with lots of potential spinning their wheels with unnecessary bloat on the front end.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#304

Post by sooheon »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #185
W-Stool wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago Joel Spolsky on his site "Joel on Software" had a "Business of Software" forum where a lot of very small ISVs hung out and discussed items of mutual interest. Anyone know where those kinds of folks hang out now to discuss things?

There’s https://barnacl.es/

Looks like lobste.rs. Any relation?

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#305

Post by theshadowmonkey »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #107
wenbin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wenbin, the author of this blog post & I built Listen Notes. Thanks for bringing up this question :) Yes, Listen Notes is making some money - not a lot, but enough to cover all the cost and bring in a bit profit as of today. The basic idea is that Listen Notes should be free to 99% of users, while making some money from 1% of super users. We run ads (obviously) on the website and we provide API: https://www.liste…

What are the pros and cons of charging a fee to transcribe someone else's audio content? Does ListenNotes need a lawyer to deal with contracts or problems related to original content creators?

Looks like they're taking an approach to transcribe first and then deal with it later. The transcription link has an FAQ asking them to contact them if they think they dont want others to transcribe their episode.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#307

Post by passwordreset »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #122
jcroll wrote: post #82

I ran a small company like this quite successfully earlier in my career. If you think this is awesome what goes unmentioned is how lonely it can get. Also, any issues you have (business or technology) you bear the brunt of alone. A coworking space doesn't really help either imo, if you like working with others you will miss having coworkers. Just something I think worth mentioning if you think this is something you m…

This feels like bragging but I also run a one man company and the loneliness is what I enjoy most. Granted, I only work from 08:45 to 14:30 and some hours in the evening, because I bring my kids to school and I pick them up in the afternoon, but the hours when I’m alone, I am 100% productive. When the kids are at home I mostly do some kind of manual labor to get some sort of exercise. Right now I’m building a shed. L…

How do you make money? I didn't think farming spiders would pay that well, unless they're really rare spiders.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#308

Post by dx034 »

whalesalad wrote: post #273

Technology is usually just a means to an end. Unless IP is what you are selling, boring is great. I’ve seen SO many teams burn SO much energy on complicated stacks just to drink kool-aid. It’s mind bogglingly frustrating, especially as a contractor. At the end of the day it’s great for me: I get brought into shit shows to clean up the mess. But deep down, I want projects to succeed and clean/sound systems architectur…

The only problem I see with rails is that it's hard to find devs these days (at least in Europe). Even if they could learn Rails for that project, many I've spoken to wouldn't want to take a job where Rails is required. I just witnessed a project switching from rails to React (for the frontend) because they just couldn't get enough good people willing to use Rails.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#309

Post by hbcondo714 »

wenbin wrote: post #272
hbcondo714 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to track the API usage Thank you for this excellent write-up. Monetizing APIs is always a great topic; did you consider or will you consider using a 3rd party API management service such as RapidAPI or Apigee to keep track and charge for API usage?

Yes. I used rapidapi initially (v1) and built my own api gateway to replace it (v2) earlier this year. The api was launched in Dec 2017 right here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15825900

I think your next project should be open source your api gateway so others can monetize their apis too

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#310

Post by spiderfarmer »

codela49121 wrote: post #228
spiderfarmer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like bragging but I also run a one man company and the loneliness is what I enjoy most. Granted, I only work from 08:45 to 14:30 and some hours in the evening, because I bring my kids to school and I pick them up in the afternoon, but the hours when I’m alone, I am 100% productive. When the kids are at home I mostly do some kind of manual labor to get some sort of exercise. Right now I’m building a shed. L…

What product/service does your company sell if you don't mind me asking?

I have developed a network of websites (communities and marketplaces) in several very specific niches, all focused on the agricultural sector. The revenue is mostly coming from subscriptions and Adsense.
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