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Dev Community Inc. Raises $11.5M Series A

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Re: Dev Community Inc. Raises $11.5M Series A

#21

Post by minimaxir »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #18
minimaxir wrote: post #5

Dev's rise parallels the early rise of Medium: both the good (lots of organic use/praise), and the bad (signal-to-noise ratio is very low from the content I've seen shared outside the site). Given this funding announcement, that's not a bad thing from their perspective. To Ben's credit, there were some Medium-esque growth hacks earlier in Dev's history, which were removed after I pointed them out. The recent implosio…

I'm pro Dev.to, but also pro Medium. What's nice about them both is that they are differentiated incentive structures so it does create actual choice for readers and authors. But, I'm not sure what implosion on Medium you're talking about. That sounds like the talking points that two publications were using as they left medium (HN and FCC). But there was a shady backstory there and a lot of posturing to set themselve…

I'm more referring to individual Medium contributors (which is more analogous to Dev's model) than publications. I haven't seen a dev-oriented Medium.com article pop up on Twitter/Reddit/HN in a very long time (I've seen much less TDS too in the past year, and pretty much nothing from FCC or HN since they went independent; I probably should research that further). Admittingly, that's anecdata.

However, "the paywall in particular is very author friendly" is incorrect. If you want to monetize, sure, but the majority of people I know went to post on Medium in the first place did it to share personal knowledge with an easy-to-use UI/UX and get feedback, not to generate money.

Re: Dev Community Inc. Raises $11.5M Series A

#22

Post by JeremyMorgan »

This is great news. I've been a member of the community for a while and it's really positive in nature, a good mix of new developers and experienced. I like the culture of the people there and the values of the founders.

Their success ultimately will hinge on:

1. Monetization (obviously)

2. Their ability to scale (I hope to help with this at some point)

3. Their ability to maintain the current culture.

If they're able to scale out their infrastructure as people come in, find ways to make money without annoying people, and maintain the culture they have right now, the sky's the limit.

I don't know a lot about the leadership other than what I've seen on the site and following them on Twitter, but they seem very capable of doing it. I have high hopes for them.

To me, culture is the biggest challenge.

There are communities on the internet that I refuse to do more than lurk in. I don't join communities to have flame wars (do they still call them that?), pissing contests, or play gatekeeper to new folks. But I see it all over, and it drives people like me out.

I just want to talk tech, teach what I know and learn from what others know. I'm the kind of user you want on your platform. I won't drive people away or cause you legal problems. I'll help people and bring in more. But I will absolutely BAIL when it starts getting political, or toxic folks are allowed to sling crap everywhere. There are a lot of people just me that will simply walk away. No big farewell post or calling people on social media. Folks like me just walk away.

So running a community you have to make choices as to what you'll tolerate and stick to it, it's a thankless and stressful job and you don't really have much control. I believe that's more challenging than things like establishing a revenue model or scaling. I just hope they can maintain what they currently have now. HN has done a good job over the years keeping their stuff moderated, so it can be done.

Oh, and hopefully they don't do too much of this voting/karma crap like Reddit. Invisible internet points are what's destroyed their culture if you ask me.

Re: Dev Community Inc. Raises $11.5M Series A

#23

Post by bradstewart »

kick wrote: post #13
klinskyc wrote: post #11

I never understood having Co-CEOs. Why not make Peter CRO or similar, and have a clearer structure.

What if Halpern were to get hit by a bus? Then there would be no CEO. The Oracle structure of co-CEOs leaves a company without any chance of instability, and works well for what it is.

Then the board finds a new CEO. How do you make decisions if the co-CEO's disagree?

Re: Dev Community Inc. Raises $11.5M Series A

#24

Post by tonystubblebine »

minimaxir wrote: post #21
tonystubblebine wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pro Dev.to, but also pro Medium. What's nice about them both is that they are differentiated incentive structures so it does create actual choice for readers and authors. But, I'm not sure what implosion on Medium you're talking about. That sounds like the talking points that two publications were using as they left medium (HN and FCC). But there was a shady backstory there and a lot of posturing to set themselve…

I'm more referring to individual Medium contributors (which is more analogous to Dev's model) than publications. I haven't seen a dev-oriented Medium.com article pop up on Twitter/Reddit/HN in a very long time (I've seen much less TDS too in the past year, and pretty much nothing from FCC or HN since they went independent; I probably should research that further). Admittingly, that's anecdata. However, "the paywall i…

I appreciate you saying anecdata. Yeah, definitely, it's a mixed bag. My hard data says someone's still writing to generate all these page views. But I don't have any way to help expand on your anecdata about which authors think it's a bad deal and which think it's a good deal. I only meet the ones that think it's a good deal.

Re: Dev Community Inc. Raises $11.5M Series A

#25

Post by kick »

bradstewart wrote: post #23
kick wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Halpern were to get hit by a bus? Then there would be no CEO. The Oracle structure of co-CEOs leaves a company without any chance of instability, and works well for what it is.

Then the board finds a new CEO. How do you make decisions if the co-CEO's disagree?

Oracle gets by just fine.

Re: Dev Community Inc. Raises $11.5M Series A

#26

Post by bhalp1 »

ajsharp wrote: post #17

Congrats to dev.to on the fundraise. This feels like a positive and exciting development for open-source companies built in the open. dev.to is a unique and interesting service -- a company built in the open on open source technology, and has grown a large community based largely on that open-source culture. A discussion I'd like to see from the dev.to founders is how they plan to evolve what is primarily an open-sou…

A lot of good things here. I think I'll try to address a lot of this in an upcoming blog post or two. I'd get into it now but I'm a bit tired from an exhausting day of making this announcement.

You can follow me at https://dev.to/ben to get notice when I get a chance to flesh some of this out publicly.

Re: Dev Community Inc. Raises $11.5M Series A

#28

Post by type0 »

bhalp1 wrote: post #26
ajsharp wrote: post #17

Congrats to dev.to on the fundraise. This feels like a positive and exciting development for open-source companies built in the open. dev.to is a unique and interesting service -- a company built in the open on open source technology, and has grown a large community based largely on that open-source culture. A discussion I'd like to see from the dev.to founders is how they plan to evolve what is primarily an open-sou…

A lot of good things here. I think I'll try to address a lot of this in an upcoming blog post or two. I'd get into it now but I'm a bit tired from an exhausting day of making this announcement. You can follow me at https://dev.to/ben to get notice when I get a chance to flesh some of this out publicly.

I wish you would disable the so called social login (twitter, github) and just use passwords with 2fa, or at least would add selfhosted Gitlab integrations for open source developers

https://gitlab.gnome.org https://gitlab.freedesktop.org https://salsa.debian.org

just to name a few

Re: Dev Community Inc. Raises $11.5M Series A

#30

Post by siliconfgts »

JeremyMorgan wrote: post #22

This is great news. I've been a member of the community for a while and it's really positive in nature, a good mix of new developers and experienced. I like the culture of the people there and the values of the founders. Their success ultimately will hinge on: 1. Monetization (obviously) 2. Their ability to scale (I hope to help with this at some point) 3. Their ability to maintain the current culture. If they're abl…

What a bunch of SV people you are. What a retarded message to write, seek help or fuck off
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