Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget? • Hacker News Board

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#191

Post by Grustaf » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #62

onion2k wrote: post #13

Literally every time you see a startup release a product that seems trivial it's because that's not the full story. You're judging without complete information. For example, the public face might be a simple Mac calendar widget, but that could be the gateway to calendar sharing, native office apps, meeting booking, event management, ticket sales, corporate flight sales etc. Building an audience with a cheap tool that…

Lo these many years, Twitter still seems like an utterly trivial application.

Twitter's selling point was never the application, it's the network. This product has no network, it's just a very basic app.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#192

Post by 015a » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

eitland wrote: post #30

2 observations: - I happily paid for a very similar product about 10 years ago (it was full screen width and had a brilliant timeline feature but otherwise very similar. It was broken when Snow Lion or something was released. I still look for an equivalent.) - Monthly payments forever for standalone apps is a big no no in my book. I get annoyed even just writing about it. Monthly payments for feature upgrades, perpet…

My opinion on pricing for software is pretty straightforward:

If its a local app, cloud/sync/whatever "anything" should be optional/opt-in. Developers should charge an upfront fee for a point-in-time of that release, bug fixes are included for N years, but feature releases are available as an annual/whatever upgrade.

If cloud/sync/whatever makes sense for an app, then that should be available as a separate, monthly service fee. If it makes sense, then the developer can "bundle" both that monthly fee and the annual/whatever feature upgrade fee into a single subscription.

That unified subscription is what most apps do, but its important that it be separate and opt-in, while giving customers a way to pay you otherwise. That way, your revenue is aligned with customer happiness. I think back to the 1Password transition to the subscription model, where they left tons of customers behind on the non-sync product without giving them a way to pay; now, their revenue is not aligned with the success & happiness of those customers. They're still customers! Yeah, they're not paying you every month. They'll probably pay you again in the future. But, oh no, they can't fit into your MRR metrics that you need to communicate to investors; that's your problem, but you're making it the customer's problem, which means you're actually anti-customer.

If we're speaking of a website, then fundamentally, you've willfully unaligned your business model with any ability to price it transactionally. Maybe that's fine; if I think about something like Slack, that app makes zero sense to price transactionally, it's gonna be monthly, so I can't complain about that business model. But, Notion [1] is an example of an app which should have a transactional model; not everyone wants sync.

Everything is connected to Money. And, in software, I think the biggest reason why customers have began noticing how much slower and less reliable software has become is literally because of Money; its because every app now needs to be a web service. Because your app is a web service, it has to live on the web. It gets served to customers by underpowered AWS m5.large instances; did you know that your customer's iPhone is more performant than an m5-tier AWS instance? It has to travel a thousand miles over the internet. The data model lives in a database; your customer has a 5Gbps SSD hardwired to the PCI-E bus of their CPU, but instead, by putting the data In The Cloud, you're making sixteen network hops just to query for something.

None of this is better. Some of it is necessary, for some product domains, but don't fool yourself into thinking its better.

[1] https://notion.so

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#193

Post by cratermoon » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #97

ehnto wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It shouldn’t take cycling through ten different apps and Chrome tabs to stay on top of everything. Whilst I agree, that's an organizational problem as much as a technology one. Why is the business built upon so many apps?

> Why is the business built upon so many apps? So many different functions. My company is purely cloud and we use Google as much as possible, but we still have tons as we need a help desk, a task board, HR software, credential management, Office for some people, Udemy, etc.

One, every subdivision of a company might have similar needs, but each one has niche table stakes that only one app provides. Case in point: Lawyers still use WordPerfect [1].

Two, and this is where I think Superpowered, the company in question, will stumble, is that every attempt to unify these disparate needs has ended up into a unholy giant mess of "Enterprisey" software that tries to be all things to all people. Inevitably there's at least one key area where it sucks to bad for the table stakes requirement of that user base that they never adopt it, strike out on their own, and now you're back to "why do we have so many apps?".

1. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/05/05/202768...

Edit: this should have been a reply to the parent of your comment.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#194

Post by alexashka » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #146

onion2k wrote: post #13

Literally every time you see a startup release a product that seems trivial it's because that's not the full story. You're judging without complete information. For example, the public face might be a simple Mac calendar widget, but that could be the gateway to calendar sharing, native office apps, meeting booking, event management, ticket sales, corporate flight sales etc. Building an audience with a cheap tool that…

$10/month is not a cheap tool. I'm paying $90/year for Intellij Idea which is my main development tool. IMO that cost is extremely prohibitive for most users and it's definitely not a way to get plenty of people on board to monetize it later.

Shhh, don't give Jetbrains any ideas now :)

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#195

Post by nilsbunger » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

evanlivingston wrote: post #170

ryanSrich wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get when people say $X/month is too much. Too much for you maybe. But for me, if I can save 1 hour per month, that's worth $500. That's the top of what I've charged per hour for some consulting gigs. So $10/m is literally nothing for me if I can save time. Time is your most valuable asset. Money is nothing. Focus on time.

erm, isn't that assuming an income of $1,040,000 after tax based on a 40 hour work week?

Not exactly. To make it equivalent first you need to consider employer side of FICA, which take about $100k. Then health insurance and other benefits. And vacation, sick pay, and any equipment you need to do the work.

Finally, maybe the biggest variable is non-billable hours. Maybe there isn’t 2000 hours of work available at that rate. And a lot of people who charge that much spend a substantial time finding new clients, writing new project proposals (many of which don’t get executed), and doing things to promote themselves like conference talks or speaking to press.

It would typically net out to anywhere from $500k-$900k depending on how much of those overheads you have. Nothing to sneeze at but similar ballpark as senior FAANG comp

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#196

Post by cratermoon » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #62

onion2k wrote: post #13

Literally every time you see a startup release a product that seems trivial it's because that's not the full story. You're judging without complete information. For example, the public face might be a simple Mac calendar widget, but that could be the gateway to calendar sharing, native office apps, meeting booking, event management, ticket sales, corporate flight sales etc. Building an audience with a cheap tool that…

Lo these many years, Twitter still seems like an utterly trivial application.

Also remember that Twitter's users are not their customers. The users are the product.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#197

Post by wtmt » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

zffr wrote: post #160

vbezhenar wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$10/month is not a cheap tool. I'm paying $90/year for Intellij Idea which is my main development tool. IMO that cost is extremely prohibitive for most users and it's definitely not a way to get plenty of people on board to monetize it later.

To put it into perspective, for someone making $200k+/yr (a lot of the HN audience), $10 is about 6min of their time/month (assuming a 40hr work week). Over a year it adds up to 72min of time. On the other hand, researching and trying out alternative free/cheaper tools might take hours. For a busy person making good money, $10/mo to make them more productive isn't a crazy ask IMO.

Your comment comes with a very big assumption that the trivial amount of money you spend really serves your needs and that all marketing material is true and comprehensive. When you buy something and then realize it’s not really solving your problems, then you might apply the same calculation, buy another tool based on some marketing copy, be disappointed and then finally come to a “let me research this space better before throwing money at undeserving people and services” mode. I’m not saying this is how it will always play out. But those who do spend some time researching and trying things out aren’t quite stupid either.

I would also contest your claim that a lot of the HN audience makes $200K a year. I’d wager that it’s a lot lesser.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#198

Post by dehrmann » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

dagmx wrote: post #93

onion2k wrote: post #13

Literally every time you see a startup release a product that seems trivial it's because that's not the full story. You're judging without complete information. For example, the public face might be a simple Mac calendar widget, but that could be the gateway to calendar sharing, native office apps, meeting booking, event management, ticket sales, corporate flight sales etc. Building an audience with a cheap tool that…

I think the best example is when Dropbox was announced and how many people scoffed at the triviality of cloning data around.

Dropbox is in a weird place right now because its free tier is too small, the pair tier is too big and expensive, a $5 tier doesn't work financially, and Google, Microsoft, and Apple offer 80% as good solutions with 2.5x as much space for free. For corporate customers, again, they're probably Exchange or GSuite shops, so they can use one of those storage providers.

Dropbox addresses a real problem, it's just that the triviality of a business copying it means it became table stakes on a lot of platforms.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#199

Post by snarkypixel » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

Why invest in Microsoft back then? It was just a Basic compiler.

Need to start somewhere before leaping to the next step, and momemtum creates momemtum.

Amazon started with books. Paypal started with Ebay sellers or something. Airbnb started with couch sharing. Etc.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#200

Post by rchaud » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #123

dagmx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best example is when Dropbox was announced and how many people scoffed at the triviality of cloning data around.

For me that's still what it's best at and what it should focus on. "Paper", Signatures, Password, to me that feels like they're desperately trying to find something to not just be a reliable external hard drive for people. Oh and of course their number one ambition, trying to convince me to upgrade to whatever more expensive plan they have.

They don't have a choice. They're publicly traded now, so they have to be more than a cloud drive.