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A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

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Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#41

Post by moksly »

I’d personally drop gsuite, trello and slack and get a office365 essentials plan. I know, because I did, and it’s so much easier to manage and it’s also cheaper.

I’m not going to say the tools are better with Microsoft, because to me it’s really much of the same where I genuinely don’t really like any of the options. But because it’s not worse either, you kind of get used to it.

I think if you got the full teams/one-note experience on the essential plan that it might be better, but you don’t get the full experience in the browser. One example is that you can use Excel inside Onenote in the browser. But since I don’t really like slack or the g-suite stuff either, it’s basically the same with less hassle.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#42

Post by greyoda »

cbartlett wrote: post #32
Cau5tik wrote: post #6

Sublime Text isn't free. https://www.sublimehq.com/store/text

To give them benefit of the doubt, they may have already paid for it, and as it's a one time fee not included it in their monthly costs.

It has a yearly subscription fees if the license is bought for use in a business

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#43

Post by leeoniya »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #33

I am the CIO of a mostly remote, cybersecurity startup (50 FTEs). I balance between not single-threading all choices through me and not letting things get too out of hand. That means no one is every really happy. E.g., we use Uberconference for videoconferencing. We thoroughly looked at a bunch of others and chose UC for its functionality, price, and simplicity (every conference gets a simple phone number, no stupid…

> (every conference gets a simple phone number, no stupid 9-digit code plus pin plus participant id)

in our case, UC constantly failed hard to properly encode an essentially static excel sheet over screen share - jpeg artifacts the size of basketballs that never went away, even when given infinite time to "catch up". zoom has zero issues with screen share, but randomly drops calls, and yeah the phone + 9 digit id + participant id feels intentionally user-hostile (especially having to repeat that bs again after a dropped call).

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#44

Post by davidjgraph »

From the other side (vendor perspective) we see this SaaS fatigue a lot.

We have a free, open source, unlimited use product that has a very good, commercial, alternative. What we hear in calls is that there are just too many SaaS tools in the company and the monthly cost (or security review of all tools) ends up with the management saying "pick your top 5,10,15 most important" and drop the rest.

The GSuites, Slacks, AWS, Notions, Zooms, etc (picking from the article list) get in the top priority list and that list is so full the medium priority stuff just gets crossed out and pushed down to budgets lower down. Our category just rarely makes it.

A lot of the time we win out just because the company wants to avoid the admin of the paid solution, the tool just isn't _that_ important. Being creative in your business model, I think, is the way to go, particularly in terms of freemium offerings.

With the number of SaaS apps trying to get your monthly cost, being outside the core list is getting harder and harder and you need to define those niches and totally own them. Forget starting at the company level, start with 1-5 people groups for a _long_ time.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#45

Post by homero »

matsemann wrote: post #24

Not exactly the same, but I have sometimes wondered how many startups are just burning other startups' money, and would collapse if VCs tightened the belt. For instance, startup X seems profitable but all revenue is from other startups not making money yet. Like a big ponzi scheme of sorts. Most products mentioned in the article are now mainstream, but for lots of them a few years back they were small and only used b…

I had this thought for a while too. A VC invests then has you subscribe to his other companies. A circle jerk basically.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#46

Post by Tainnor »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #33

I am the CIO of a mostly remote, cybersecurity startup (50 FTEs). I balance between not single-threading all choices through me and not letting things get too out of hand. That means no one is every really happy. E.g., we use Uberconference for videoconferencing. We thoroughly looked at a bunch of others and chose UC for its functionality, price, and simplicity (every conference gets a simple phone number, no stupid…

Eh, the problem with the "IT department dictates all the choices because the devs are stupid" approach is that it takes ownership away from the devs, therefore leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I can't be trusted to make technology decisions for the system I know about (and the IT department knows nothing about), then why should I care about delivering the best possible product?

Sorry, I've seen exactly that pattern happen in my (still) current company and it just leads to teams that are completely unable to think for themselves and work like machines in a cog.

I'm not saying company guidelines shouldn't exist or that you should allow a proliferation of 200 different programming languages, but I have never seen the "devs are stupid" approach work; if this is indeed a problem in your org, hire better people! (Which doesn't mean: smarter hackers. It means: responsible, professional individuals that work well together in a highly effective team and can be trusted to make decisions in the best interest of the product.)

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#47

Post by pravj »

moksly wrote: post #41

I’d personally drop gsuite, trello and slack and get a office365 essentials plan. I know, because I did, and it’s so much easier to manage and it’s also cheaper. I’m not going to say the tools are better with Microsoft, because to me it’s really much of the same where I genuinely don’t really like any of the options. But because it’s not worse either, you kind of get used to it. I think if you got the full teams/one-…

I find this interesting, It shouldn't take much time before we have a new category of startups:

- that lets you (as a startup) optimize spending on day-to-day tools (similar to optimizing your cloud spendings)

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#48

Post by Tainnor »

matsemann wrote: post #24

Not exactly the same, but I have sometimes wondered how many startups are just burning other startups' money, and would collapse if VCs tightened the belt. For instance, startup X seems profitable but all revenue is from other startups not making money yet. Like a big ponzi scheme of sorts. Most products mentioned in the article are now mainstream, but for lots of them a few years back they were small and only used b…

I suspect the bubble is going to burst at some point. Not really an expert in any of this, but it seems conventional wisdom is "invest in 10 startups, see one succeed", whereas by now I'm led to believe that the chance of success is much lower than 1 in 10 given the often times ridiculous companies that are being invested into. But happy to be proven wrong.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#49

Post by noir_lord »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #33

I am the CIO of a mostly remote, cybersecurity startup (50 FTEs). I balance between not single-threading all choices through me and not letting things get too out of hand. That means no one is every really happy. E.g., we use Uberconference for videoconferencing. We thoroughly looked at a bunch of others and chose UC for its functionality, price, and simplicity (every conference gets a simple phone number, no stupid…

I hear you, I work for a large manufacturing company as a lead engineer (household name in the UK) and this complete lack of agreement between teams on how to do things results in a colossal amount of churn/wastage between "new shiny" and "already working".

Lots of "Lets move X to Y" which never gets completed then someone addes "Z" and now you have 3 ways of doing basically everything.

Worse is our documentation (which is generally good) frequently documents X but not Y or Z because the person who decided on Y or Z didn't look.

It's mentally fatiguing, I feel like every choice on what to use comes with more trade-offs than I should have to consider for something so simple.

Video conferencing is a good example, We variously have Hangouts, Skype and others, teleconferencing equipment in one room is one thing, in another something else.

The only reliable way to throw video to a screen is a USB-C to HDMI cable I keep in my rucksack.

Feels like half my decisions are saying "No" to an engineer who wants to replace Foo with a very shiny but 99% identical and unknown Bar.

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