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Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

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Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#241

Post by Razengan »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #194
katbyte wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems jet brains managed so there is an alternative that doesn’t suck?

That's a bit like saying "This person won the lottery, so therefore..." Sure, it's possible. But having met a few founders, their lifestyle from taking VC money seems far preferable to the bootstrap approach. It's true that you have to grow, but if you have growth, then nothing else matters. And if you don't, then you're one of the most employable people in the entire world. A shocking number of people, somehow, end…

What you’re saying is like “I have never won the lottery, so therefore it must be impossible...”

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#242

Post by thrower123 »

hadrien01 wrote: post #29
manojlds wrote: post #3

Ok so everyone knows and loves JetBrains. What's their worst product so far?

I haven't been convinced by WebStorm (for Angular and Gatsby/React projects EDIT: with TypeScript). It doesn't feel as magical as IntelliJ or Rider/R#.

I'm always impressed by how strong the WebStorm intellisense is on pure javascript projects. Somehow it mostly gets jump-to-definition right, even in AngularJS tarpits that are full of ngInject magic.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#243

Post by xwdv »

astura wrote: post #128
xwdv wrote: post #4

I don’t get it though, why not just go public now and get tons of money? The IPO may never fetch as high of a price as it would now, even if the company gets more valuable in the future.

"Obtain as much money as possible" isn't the goal of everyone at every time, especially when one already has all the money and resources they need. Not everyone believes life is a game where the goal is to die with the highest score, above all else. Some do, but not everyone. You're able to control pretty much every aspect within a private company with no shareholders to answer to and no public disclosures. You're fr…

So that must mean they feel their values are worth more than billions of dollars? Really? Give up all that over some feelings about developer tools?

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#244

Post by cryptica »

This is a huge achievement because "without VC help" literally means "All VCs and all their corporate friends actively working to destroy you".

Maybe they succeeded because they got things going a long time ago. I doubt they would succeed if they started only a couple of years ago. They would have been crushed by the VC-corporate complex.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#245

Post by krzyk »

TravelPiglet wrote: post #136
cabirum wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not due to fear. It's just somewhat easier to sell their products using a EU based legal entity. Another example would be Yandex, registered in the Nethelands. JetBrains main dev offices are in St Petersburg, Moscow, Novosibirsk.

The Czech Republic wasn’t part of the EU in 2000.

Well, it was "a bit" closer to EU than Russia :)

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#246

Post by Justsignedup »

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.

The best small companies operate in their direct competitor's blindspot.

Stupid example: Tesla. Toyota reverse engineered their car. Can't make a competing product. Not because it is impossible, but because it is not how the entire supply chain / development is set up. It'd take Toyota a major restructuring of the company to be able to compete.

That's the idea. It doesn't matter how much cash the other side throws at you, you're working where they can't go. Time and time again I see our company out-maneuvering our competitors with less money. Not because we got some super geniuses on the team (okay we got some smart people), but because we started from the ground up working in a spot where our competitor could not go. And so we have years of experience more than our competitor in the thing that our competitor needs to get better at.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#247

Post by sillysaurusx »

ardy42 wrote: post #235
sillysaurusx wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Co-founders? Why are they co-founding? Profit sharing? Because they had an idea with you and want to work together to make it happen? Or all kinds of other things like that? And yeah, if you're going to do that, you're going to have to be careful make sure you're not the kind of people who will need adult supervision to avoid squabbling. VC might have its uses, or provide some service, but that shouldn't be misunde…

Hmm. You're dodging the question: Why would a cofounder want to start a company with you? No handwaving.

People cofound to get rich. Can your company offer that to your cofounder?

If you focus on that question, the rest falls into place. Unfortunately a lot of people don't want to focus on that question, because it's at the heart of why bootstrapping rarely works.

"Not needing adult supervision" indicates that you probably haven't done what you're saying. It's not a matter of supervision. It's managing expectations. You are legally required to lay out what you offer, in clear terms, and what you expect in return. That's the basis of a business arrangement.

So, we're going into business together. How will your company make me rich? Why should I work as hard as I possibly can to make the company succeed?

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#248

Post by jansan »

einrealist wrote: post #151

Jetbrains is one of the few tool vendors that do not have to aggressively market their way into our tech stacks. That alone is a key indication of how good and useful their products are. Great that this is rewarded. I really hope that they will stay this way and grow organically rather than with force. (Long-term user/customer here. I am using IntelliJ since like version 2 (with some gaps).)

And not to forget that their strongest competitors were Eclipse, backed by IBM, and NetBeans, backed by Sun Microsystems. To stand your ground against two enterprise backed open source alternatives as a startup without outside money is quite impressive.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#250

Post by syngrog66 »

golergka wrote: post #149
tuyguntn wrote: post #19

if JetBrains people are reading this, I want to say THANK YOU! You saved lots of developer time with IDE, then Kotlin language. I use Golang, Python and Database IDEs, and they are really nice and time saving, can't imagine how much time you guys saved to Java developers where everything is reflection based annotations and deep level of abstract class/interface implementations. (last time when I worked with Java in V…

They're also one of the best IT employers in Moscow and St Petersburg, and guys working there create a lot of value for IT community both local, and russian-speaking in general. You don't even have to work there to feel the impact on the whole programming culture here.

Moscow and St Petersberg... that is interesting. I'm a fan of their tools as well, but it is good to learn the Russian angle and take it into account.
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