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We Rewrote Everything in $hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed

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Re: We Rewrote Everything in $hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed

#21

Post by _wldu »

If they don't see the value, people won't even sign up for a free service. You have to build something that people actually want and need to use. That should be your first priority. Is there a real need? If there is, you'll get users no matter what language, platform or stack you are using.

The constant technology change is just self comfort/pleasure and ultimately an expensive distraction. Look how busy we are. Look how cool our work is. In the end, no one cares about that.

It's unfortunate that so many start ups continually have to relearn this basic truth.

Re: We Rewrote Everything in $hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed

#22

Post by mmaunder »

I wonder how many HN readers don’t realize this is satire.

It’s unfortunate that they used the word customer once in the post. Total omission would have been so perfect. The point of the satire is devs navel gazing rather than focusing obsessively on who their customer is and their customers needs and solving that customers problems.

There is a failure mode that has a dev team obsessing over building abstraction layers, tooling, automation etc and not writing a line of code that solves customer problems.

Re: We Rewrote Everything in $hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed

#23

Post by lukevp »

Hope this isn’t what’s happening with dark[0]. Saw the early demos and I think the concept is killer, and don’t see why they would focus on a rewrite instead of building on what they have. I never even got asked to pay for it before they pivoted? It kinda felt like giving up and going back to building something instead of marketing and selling what they had.

I say this with much respect for what they built, and someone who also tends toward focusing on the technical when things get hard.

[0]: https://blog.darklang.com/new-backend-fsharp/

Re: We Rewrote Everything in $hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed

#25

Post by anon73044 »

austincheney wrote: post #13
danfrost wrote: post #7

I've found: - amazing business running on ball of mud code maintained in an insane way - the perfect architecture, CI/CD, TDD where the business/product has little/no value for the customer Also, I've seen the same stacks succeed and fail. The only common thing I can see is: - when the tech team fully understand the stack they're using - when the tech team fully understand the product and business they're building (a…

Facebook was originally a garbage PHP app.

Technically, it still is.

Re: We Rewrote Everything in $hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed

#26

Post by not_knuth »

codeulike wrote: post #10

This is just a parameterized version of the post from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25198571

> Some tools might be unavailable due to heavy traffic in this file.

The irony of that is, that simply posting a parameterized version gained a lot of traction as well, because the satire just hits home so well (the product is good).

Re: We Rewrote Everything in $hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed

#27

Post by danjac »

jujodi wrote: post #11

Does this really happen?

Yes. Often times tech founders - especially if inexperienced - let the freedom and power of a complete greenfield project with no management oversight go to their heads. They've always wanted to build something in $cool_tech and now nothing stands in their way. That becomes the goal in itself, the business and getting customers and money being a far second.

Their desires could be far more cheaply satiated with a side project, but this way they don't have to use $boring_stack in their day job.

Re: We Rewrote Everything in $hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed

#28

Post by raverbashing »

colechristensen wrote: post #15
the_duke wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen the same, but came away with a different conclusion. Shoddy architecture and even a bad product can be compensated by marketing, hype or a good sales team, while the most pristine architecture and codebase will not help you at all without any customers. We technologists often focus on the technical aspects, but in many domains they are the least important part for a startup.

You are in the business of doing a thing, not having an aesthetically pleasing tech architecture. It is true that having a nice tech stack can make doing your thing easier, but it can also distract you from doing your thing well.

Very good summary. I was going to write a similar thing.

Tech stack is important but (customer) money in the bank is importanter.

Your daily reminder that FB started with PHP. Ship and sell first, the rest can be done later (yes your customer doesn't care that you rewrote your backend to use nanoservices in Go deployed to hundreds of lambda functions).

Re: We Rewrote Everything in $hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed

#29

Post by wojciii »

nablaone wrote: post #19
WJW wrote: post #6

I think I spotted the error they made. There is no mention of machine learning at all!

and no blockchain

I think that they hired people without checking that they could solve basic algorithmic problems on a whiteboard. This was clearly a fatal mistake.

Re: We Rewrote Everything in $hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed

#30

Post by tomhoward »

mmaunder wrote: post #22

I wonder how many HN readers don’t realize this is satire. It’s unfortunate that they used the word customer once in the post. Total omission would have been so perfect. The point of the satire is devs navel gazing rather than focusing obsessively on who their customer is and their customers needs and solving that customers problems. There is a failure mode that has a dev team obsessing over building abstraction laye…

But which startups does this describe, that actually get any media/public attention, or raise any funding, or succeed in recruiting any serious talent? I feel like this is trying to satirise something that exists in the author's imagination but doesn't exist in the real world beyond adolescent first-time founders' early misfires, from which important lessons are quickly learned.

It doesn't seem to be satirising something that actually needs to be satirised, as there is not a significant number of startups in the real world actually operating like this. A startup that operates like this wouldn't (barring a major mistake) get funding from YC or any other competent investor.

The Silicon Valley sitcom is funny and successful because it satirises stuff that really does happen in the startup/tech/VC world (I know, I lived through much of it myself), but it noticeably doesn't stereotype founders as utterly clueless and hapless the way this piece does.

With the sitcom, anyone who knows the startup world can point to real-world people/events on which the people/events in the sitcom are based. I don't think you can say that about this post. It's hard for me to believe the writer of this really knows any significant number of real-world startups.

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