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Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

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Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#261

Post by sangnoir »

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #214
UncleMeat wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG is a VC. He isn't a god of entrepreneurship. Why is it that this argument only seems to apply to software and not to all of the other kinds of businesses out there?

Also as humans we are myopic and can only understand everything as a relation to us. His tweet ( https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1129897694984646657 ) about how you don't need to be rich to run a startup invariably shows that as humans we are poor at judging almost anything out of our current circle of understanding. The major major thing that makes a startup successful in almost all cases is money. With enough wind…

> With enough wind even chickens can fly.

Off topic: I'm not familiar with this turn of phrase, but as anyone who has ever chased after free range chickens as a child knows - chickens fly fine with no wind at all. The can only fly a short distance though.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#262

Post by selfmodruntime »

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #161
vbezhenar wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting that they initially offered subscription model without unexpirable license. But because of community backlash they changed it and people seem to be happy with the outcome. Listen to your users.

I feel like you are understating the backlash they faced. I came back from a vacation the day after they announced it and checked here, /r/programming, and a few other developer-focused forums including their own site and it was like the world was on fire. There were very few people who supported the change or were even indifferent. It seemed like the entire community united against it. JetBrains really didn't have a…

Just out of interest, what other development-focused forums are there?

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#263

Post by doyouevensunbro »

holtalanm wrote: post #150
krisgenre wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. and IntelliJ Ultimate has plugins that brings all the features of all of their IDEs(PHP, GO, Android, RUST, JS...) except CLion.

Does IntelliJ Ultimate include their C# functionality from Rider, as well? I used to use IntelliJ Ultimate, but I don't remember it including C# support.

No, you have to use Rider for that. That said Rider is fantastic and their Unity support is top notch. Going between Rider for game code and IntelliJ for the backend was a godsend when it happened. Makes my day to day workload manageable.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#264

Post by sangnoir »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #55

Thank the gods for JetBrains. I love their software. Excellent business model, I get to keep the software I bought when the license expires. Never forced to continually pay for something you don't see value in updating. I think that's one of the key factors which drives them to continue to improve their products. If future version of their products wasn't vastly improved over the previous then people wouldn't upgrade…

> Never forced to continually pay for something you don't see value in updating.

I'm glad they dialed back to this reasonable compromise. I am a big fan and was a paying subscriber (personally, in addition to a work license) when they changed licensing terms to brick the software when your yearly subscription was up. There was a predictable outrage, but they fortunately listened and changed to the present arrangement.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#265

Post by swat535 »

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…

Jetbrains products are amazing if you _need_ and IDE. Otherwise you're much better off using VIM or Emacs as they are open source, have tons of customization and plugins available and also they are simply lighter, faster and are available on all unix platforms.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#266

Post by Toutouxc »

artspb wrote: post #133
Toutouxc wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says on jetbrains.com that their HQ is in Prague, Czech Republic. On wikipedia it says they're a Czech company with headquarters in Prague, Czech Republic. edit: Looks like they're maybe not entirely transparent about that.

You can find all locations at the website [1], there are Russian cities among them. I believe it's pretty much transparent. [1] https://www.jetbrains.com/company/

I mean transparent about what is really their HQ.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#267

Post by est31 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #205
sillysaurusx wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg wrote a rebuttal to this in 2008: http://paulgraham.com/prcmc.html It seems generally correct, i.e. VC works because the alternative sucks.

PG is a VC. He isn't a god of entrepreneurship. Why is it that this argument only seems to apply to software and not to all of the other kinds of businesses out there?

200 years ago, railway was the big thing. Everyone was interested in building railways, steam engines, etc. Companies sprung up, many people got rich. Nowadays, the railways are already built and transport many goods. Building new railways is extremely expensive now because we have lost the know how, workforce, have higher labour standards, bureaucracy etc. Nowadays we are mainly considering how to operate railway tracks instead of building new ones.

Nowadays, software is the new economic frontier and enjoys explosive growth. The land that software embarks into is still virgin, and it's comparatively easy to build a new software company. It's a growth market.

In such an environment, bootstrapped companies are generally at a disadvantage to VC started companies, as bootstrapped ones can focus on capturing the market before becoming profitable, while bootstrapped ones have to keep both in mind. So people turn to VCs.

This situation of explosive growth is kinda unique to software, and VCs aren't the only solution to the problem, but the dot com bubble has shown what happens when companies go public more early on in the process.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#268

Post by varjag »

est31 wrote: post #259
vonmoltke wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because VC funded startups are forced to grow fast or die a lot of good, profitable, user focused ideas are trashed because they won't lead to rapid enough expansion. I have noticed that, to some people, "VC startup" is almost considered redundant. That is, if your company is not seeking outside investors, not seeking rapid growth, not seeking an "exit", then it isn't a real "startup". So, in addition to what you m…

Is this lifestyle business stigma a real thing? Or just something the VC lobby put out there? Personally I think anyone leading a business should deserve respect, as running one is hard.

Yes it's the business-y equivalent of calling one small-minded.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#269

Post by ardy42 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #247
ardy42 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

> 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?

I don't know. Why did Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple together?

I feel like you're laboring under a very limited model of how and why companies are founded and how people behave.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#270

Post by sangnoir »

avl999 wrote: post #252
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

Folks who still think that Java is a bad language either from the perspective of developer ergonomics or performance probably haven't programmed in it since the Java 4 days and still think of the language as the language of Enterprise Java Beans, Java Applets and hundreds of lines of XML. It is not that language anymore. Modern Java is blisteringly fast(and has been for a while) and almost the same level as C# in ter…

I haven't programmed in Java since around 6 - when Spring was just about to cement its dominance. The ergonomics then were bad too. It seems lots of quality-of-life features borrowed from other languages went into subsequent versions
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