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Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

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Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#161

Post by abiogenesis »

Joeri wrote: post #96
abiogenesis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair BusinessObjects is not SAP. It's just one of its acquisitions.

Well, if you look at it that way then Powerpoint is just one of microsoft’s acquisitions. After a certain period an acquisition becomes fully native to that business. In my view BusinessObjects passed that point with SAP a while ago.

Sorry, you are right, I should have been more specific. What I meant was BusinessObjects is only the reporting component they acquired to complement their product suite. It's not "the product" SAP sells (i.e. ERP).

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#162

Post by jonathanbull »

hnick wrote: post #137
nathanbarry wrote: post #65

Thanks for mentioning ConvertKit! We're happily building our niche product for creators and growing quickly. Just a couple corrections, at the end of 2019 we were just under $20M ARR (Not $24M). Today we are at $22M ARR and 30,000 customers. You can see all our numbers (updated in realtime) here on Baremetrics: http://convertkit.baremetrics.com I'm happy to answer any questions.

Very surprised he hadn't heard of ConvertKit. It's usually in the running whenever I google for email marketing/automation software. Price seems reasonable too (but not for us, we're more newsletter-based rather than conversion-based so it doesn't really work out).

Can I throw my hat into the ring? I run an email marketing platform (https://emailoctopus.com) that’s affordable and aimed at entrepreneurs/makers with newsletters. Shoot me an email if you’d like a discount.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#163

Post by KMag »

_bxg1 wrote: post #7

I remember reading this article about SAP a few months ago, and it just blew my mind: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Here was an entire market segment I'd never heard of, and just the market leader is worth $163B . And on top of that, the technology is so totally alien to anything I'd ever heard of before. It's like an alternate-history kind of thing. Like if we discovered a continent somewhere in the Pac…

My sister-in-law graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering, and got exposed-to/proficient-in SAP at one of her first jobs. Now, she does SAP consulting work, much of it from home (even before COVID-19), at a significant pay bump and highly flexible hours.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#164

Post by ohazi »

brundolf wrote: post #22
NikolaNovak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is fascinating to me, because virtually all my friends have heard of SAP outside of IT - as users or recipients. My engineer friend uses it for supply chain management, a beer store hq clerk helped implement it, construction accountant has used it, etc. At the same time, I guess you have to be at a company of a certain size for it to be relevant to your life... But that perhaps proves the point - HN is very star…

To add some context (for your curiosity), I'm not in The Valley and I'd never worked at a true "startup" until very recently, but I have only ever worked at small ( I had actually heard the name SAP come up in passing at my last company, who had lots of ginormous clients. But all I'd really gathered before reading the article was "it's some kind of database, or something".

> Except, that is, for the summer I interned at Hewlett-Packard. Not sure how it never came up there; maybe they just have their own equivalent system.

When was this? Leo Apotheker became CEO of HP in 2010, after 22 years at SAP (two as CEO). He then presided over a sequence of colossal fuck-ups, lost 40% market cap, and was fired less than a year later.

HP definitely knows about SAP, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're not big fans.

Correction: 22 years at SAP, not as CEO.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#165

Post by Craighead »

hnick wrote: post #116
tlb wrote: post #59

The metal economy is huge. Almost every product requires metal. But metallurgists don't take home a big fraction of it. What's special about the software economy is that people who write the software take home a large fraction of it. Maybe more than half, depending how you count. Which is unprecedented. It's not just because software can be zero marginal cost. Musicians don't take home half of music revenue. In most…

Good software is a force multiplier than enables everything else to be more effective. A traditional mindset applied to software results in the businesses we often see people complaining about. "We make the product but Sales gets all the money!" and that's very similar to your metallurgists. Code for hire as a product of labour. It takes an army of people to sell, to advertise, to make me want what it is you have (ju…

tlbs comment is still completely relevant

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#166

Post by heipei »

eb0la wrote: post #157

There are hidden "unicorns" everywhere. Sometime ago I heard Germany had a lot of "small" companies that are leaders in their market niche but you don't have it in the radar. For instance: Hohner (the Harmonica manufacturer), or Flexi (dog leashes) Every country has some of this hidden unicorns; but it is easier to spot them from the distance.

For what it's worth, those German Mittelstand companies are the exact opposite of what's usually referred to as a unicorn. They are small to medium-size, multi-generational family-run and family-owned businesses that focus on a very narrow set of products, such as just making gears for automative applications, or ball bearings, or blades. The people working there often work there their whole life, with the understanding that the company doesn't take any gambles and will do its utmost to not lay them off even in recessions such as right now.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#167

Post by [deleted] »

_bxg1 wrote: post #7

I remember reading this article about SAP a few months ago, and it just blew my mind: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Here was an entire market segment I'd never heard of, and just the market leader is worth $163B . And on top of that, the technology is so totally alien to anything I'd ever heard of before. It's like an alternate-history kind of thing. Like if we discovered a continent somewhere in the Pac…

[deleted]

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#168

Post by hnick »

jonathanbull wrote: post #162
hnick wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very surprised he hadn't heard of ConvertKit. It's usually in the running whenever I google for email marketing/automation software. Price seems reasonable too (but not for us, we're more newsletter-based rather than conversion-based so it doesn't really work out).

Can I throw my hat into the ring? I run an email marketing platform ( https://emailoctopus.com ) that’s affordable and aimed at entrepreneurs/makers with newsletters. Shoot me an email if you’d like a discount.

Sure no problem, I have heard of it before, there are just a lot of options out there and it takes time to dig into each one when I only help out part time. Having a "start for free" option is definite a good idea and I probably will check it out soon.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#169

Post by ivalm »

mokus wrote: post #104
ivalm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same time, I guess you have to be at a company of a certain size for it to be relevant to your life... But that perhaps proves the point - HN is very starup focused That’s pretty dismissive. I work at a company with ~80B in revenue, I never interacted or heard of SAP in work context. In fact it is only incidentally that I’ve heard of them previously. There are hundred of thousands of engineers working in com…

> The perspective “of you haven’t worked with SAP you are in a small org” is wrong. The fact that you are arguing against this might be why you are getting downvoted. The original comment was saying “if you are in a small org you probably haven’t worked with SAP”, which is not the same thing. Edit for further clarification: I can see how it might look like they were arguing what you stated, but it was more of a Bayes…

You know, I actually like your Bayesian interpretation. My main dislike was the dismissive tone in OPs phrasing, but I think his proposition might be OK.
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