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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

#371

Post by wpietri »

dasil003 wrote: post #329
wpietri wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good description. I'll also talk about "corporate feudalism", where you have the Duke of Engineering fighting with the Duke of Product, and the King/CEO must mediate the conflicts. The peasants, of course, are basically property of their various nobles. But I really like "soviet capitalism", as it points at a key contradiction. Somehow, fans of capitalism, which maximizes surplus value by freeing individuals…

I don't understand the contradiction you're getting at. The way capitalism works is that individuals are free to pursue their own interests. The way a corporation works is that they pay you a salary in order to pursue their interests. There's plenty of delegation happening in corporations, but ultimately there has to be some accountability controls since you are acting as an agent. What mechanism do you propose for l…

You really can't see the contradiction? I'll try again: Many fans of capitalism believe it superior to communism because free markets and high individual initiative produce better outcomes than central planning. However, they also believe in the awesomeness of corporations, which are generally run with central planning and no individual initiative.

Is that clearer?

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

#372

Post by fizixer »

robenkleene wrote: post #194
bad_user wrote: post #151

IMO many people end up with a tool fetish, but some of these tools aren't worth it in a small startup: 1. You don't need Slack ($13 / month) as a two person startup — just do email and Skype 2. Notion ($16 / month) — this sounds like a glorified shared note taking app — just use Google Docs, or Dropbox Paper, or text files in a Dropbox folder 3. Sentry ($26 / month) — OK, this might be worth it, but if you have a hig…

I agree with your point in principle, and it's my natural tendency to optimize out dependencies on recurring charges for services. But I actually think this perspective is wrong, or more precisely, focusing on this type of optimization will make your business less likely to succeed. The problem is ROI, $227 a month adds up to $2724 a year, which, assuming you're in the US (or similar cost of living area), is just suc…

Cost is the not the only issue. My first impression was, do you really need all that. And is it making your life as an entrepreneur worthwhile.

You could easily overdo if you only think about $227 a month. "Well, $227 is nothing. We could easily allocate $1000 a month on tooling. Therefore, let's go on a 6-month adventure of finding the best of the best tools, that are the hottest trend in the market".

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

#373

Post by gpanders »

OOPMan wrote: post #325
lmm wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's never been required as far as I know?

Anyway...you all have phones right ;-)

We all have Social Security Numbers too (in the US). Doesn’t mean we should share them with anyone who asks.

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

#374

Post by gwenzek »

derefr wrote: post #261
wpietri wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this corporate disdain for quality of work environment You may find the term "managerialism" handy. It's the belief that managers and execs are the central story of a company, that everything must flow through them, especially key decisions. And of course, that as the special people, they deserve outsized rewards. It's the dominant philosophy of US business, and although it seems eternal to us, it was invented in t…

What do you call the paradigm in old-world militaries, where a lord would conscript their knights as officers during wartime; grant them "personal" budgets; and then each knight could take that budget and use it however they wished—by investing in technology, fortifications, or salaried subordinate hires, in any mix they liked, as long as it got the job done? Yes, it's "feudalism", but it's a specific part of feudali…

> It would still be their head, because it's their promise to their liege-lord.

In a way working at Google is like that. If your project doesn't have "impact" your manager isn't promoted and nobody in the team is.

And engineers are generally free to change team.

It does have some inconvenients and it doesn't remove politics.

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

#375

Post by knolax »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #82
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 used to think this every time I downloaded a free mobile game. Probably 90%+ of ads in mobile games were for other free mobile games that presumably also have the same ad-supported model and the same sort of advertisers. It feels like there's a few games making heaps from IAPs and everyone else is just advertising in a pyramid toward them while also using IAPs in a way that makes their own game basically unplayable…

Similarly, web comic ads seem to consist entirely of ads for other web comics.

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

#376

Post by arminiusreturns »

lonelappde wrote: post #141
arminiusreturns wrote: post #98

I have concluded that existing businesses and other certain factors limit the application of what I am about to say to a subset, but there is great room for a holistic "here is your IT stack" company that focuses on open source tooling, reduction of stack complexity, and working out many of the oft-repeated learning curves. It's a huge market opportunity waiting to happen, because death or at least injury by a thousa…

Isn't that what MS, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, Amazon, and Google do?

Not at all. They provide little pieces. Businesses still have to cobble them together. Which is my whole point.

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

#377

Post by Aeolun »

cosmodisk wrote: post #347
wpietri wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly, almost exactly 20 years ago, I sat next to somebody at a wedding who had an almost-identical story about cleaning up after an SAP rollout, but all of the numbers had an extra zero or two. It amazes me that what the SaaS shift appears to have achieved is that now much smaller companies can get stuck in the same "solve everything" money pit. But I guess the fundamental problem hasn't changed: executives want t…

Some years ago, shortly before my manager asked me to join the company he was working for, they embarked on a mission to find an implementation partner to get their Salesforce system off th ground into a new level. So the business owners and him discussing how they'll pick the right consultancy. My manager says: we'll take those who will tell us that we talk nonsense instead of nodding head after every single word we…

I dunno, every time I interact with anything SAP or Oracle I am reminded of the fact that the software itself is bad.

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

#378

Post by aliceryhl »

gugagore wrote: post #220
krilly wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Discord always ignored in discussions of slack alternatives? It's literally a slack clone. Are you all just put off by the marketing or the fact that it's not exclusively used by 'professionals'?

Is it still required to have a phone to sign up for discord? That's what puts me off.

It's not required for everyone — only people Discord find suspicious for some reason.

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

#379

Post by aliceryhl »

nojvek wrote: post #338
bad_user wrote: post #151

IMO many people end up with a tool fetish, but some of these tools aren't worth it in a small startup: 1. You don't need Slack ($13 / month) as a two person startup — just do email and Skype 2. Notion ($16 / month) — this sounds like a glorified shared note taking app — just use Google Docs, or Dropbox Paper, or text files in a Dropbox folder 3. Sentry ($26 / month) — OK, this might be worth it, but if you have a hig…

Figma is pretty awesome. I’m on the free licence but deffo see the value. You can collaborate on designs, hand off easily to devs and build quick prototypes. The tool pays for itself pretty fast.

It's pretty cool but I wish scrolling around wasn't infinitely slow.

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

#380

Post by ska »

davidjgraph wrote: post #44

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,…

As an aside, draw.io (now diagrams.net I see, why the change?) is a nice tight project.

I was an early adopter (i.e. from beta releases) of lucidchart and really liked their first few years; convinced two companies to get a bunch of licenses. Over time they've become a hot mess of bad patterns in SAAS and I won't touch them for a few years now (and let a license for ~100 people expire).

Congrats on keeping things simple and not making it harder to use over time.

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