Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

Post by sillysaurusx » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #229

sillysaurusx wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$130k to pay a single employee for one year. I don't know about you, but it's extremely difficult for most people to save up that kind of runway.

> $130k to pay a single employee for one year. I don't know about you, but it's extremely difficult for most people to save up that kind of runway. I think the idea is that step one isn't hiring a subordinate employee; it's having secure enough finances that you (or you and your co-founders) can work for yourself for a time. Step two is actually working on the business, and step three is growing is revenues to the po…

Post by rusticpenn » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

drchopchop wrote: post #226

silexia wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen this firsthand. I was a finance major fifteen years ago and for the last ten years I have run a completely bootstrapped agency. If you have to live off your own revenues, it means you don't do any premature scaling... You have to focus on the needs of your customers to reach the next level. VC backed companies have to reach the VC exit goals which means they are forced to scale immediately even if things…

From first-hand experience, however, bootstrapped companies often don't have a ton of cash in the bank. They can quickly fail if there's an adverse event (COVID, for example). You can also get crushed by well-funded competitors who can innovate faster than you due to larger team sizes, salaries, etc.

Post by ardy42 » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #231

ardy42 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $130k to pay a single employee for one year. I don't know about you, but it's extremely difficult for most people to save up that kind of runway. I think the idea is that step one isn't hiring a subordinate employee; it's having secure enough finances that you (or you and your co-founders) can work for yourself for a time. Step two is actually working on the business, and step three is growing is revenues to the po…

Co-founders? Why are they co-founding? Profit sharing? That's an excellent way to devolve into squabbling about who gets what. VC also protects against that: the money is for the company, and it's illegal to siphon it out of the company. Unfortunately in practice your suggestion tends to become "You're working for yourself, alone." And sure, I love the idea of a one-person company. Lots of talented devs can sell, if…

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

drKarl wrote: post #144

victor106 wrote: post #95

It’s rare these to read stories of software billionaires and think it’s well deserved. This is one of those rare cases. Also, IntelliJ runs on Java, for all the bashing that Java gets on HN, it’s an example of how “what technology you pick is less important than your focus on user experience”. It’s amazing that their products are so performant on Java

That is actually a misconception. You may have this mental classification of Java as a slow language if you looked at its performance 20 years ago. Now it's actually really fast, it goes neck to neck with C++. Sure, Rust or Go or C (or definitely assembler) might be faster in some workloads, but Java is definitely very very fast nowadays. It uses a lot of memory because of the way Garbage Collection works, but it is…

Post by apocalyptic0n3 » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

drKarl wrote: post #219

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's definitely faster than Python, Ruby, PHP and many other kids on the block... I don't know why, but I got a good laugh from that statement. Those "kids" are all the same age or older than Java; PHP, Ruby, and Java were introduced within a few months of each other in 95 and Python dates back to 91.

I know, I didn't say "kids" implying these languages were new, it was just a manner of speaking.