81–90 of 125 posts
The insane amounts of money people have made building products on “other people’s kingdoms” suggests the author is wrong.
This lesson extends to almost everything in life. Too many people wrap up their goals and aspirations to things that are really someone elses thing at the end of the day. It frequently doesn't end well. This is a really great article.
Well it's easy to say "don't build your castle in other people's kingdom", but when 95% of people live in someone else's kingdom and like it there it's much harder to actually pull that off. The author laments content creators trying to bring viewers into their discord or twitter instead of personal website but conveniently ignores the fact that people are much more willing to go to and likely to return to sites they…
Everyone lives in someone else's kingdom, except those people who own kingdoms.
Articles like these, repeated on HN year after year because they represent popular fantasies (and are thus always voted to the front page), are universally misleading and wrong.
Challenge someone to list how they plan to build a successful business, starting from scratch, outside of existing kingdoms. You'll get a lot of evasiveness in response in terms of answers.
It applies to online businesses as well as offline businesses.
Need advertising? You're in someone else's kingdom. Need marketing? You're in someone else's kingdom. Need cloud hosting or services? You're in someone else's kingdom. Need access to the Internet? You're going to span numerous kingdoms that you don't own. Need to process payments? Again, multiple kingdoms you don't own. Need a domain or access to an app store? Kingdoms you don't own. Need retail goods to put in your store? Numerous kingdoms you don't own. Need manufacturing for your widget? Numerous kingdoms you don't own. Need delivery services beyond local? Someone else's kingdom. Need utilities for anything? Someone else's kingdom. Need government licenses for anything? Someone else's kingdom. Need to travel at distance, by train or plane, for sales or similar? Someone else's kingdom. Need teleconferencing? Very likely someone else's kingdom. Need to sell something online? Someone else's kingdom (most likely; even if you just use Shopify).
And on and on and on it goes. The alternative scenario of trying to do everything yourself is hell.
A better premise would be: be careful where you build your castle, and consider putting it on wheels.
This lesson extends to almost everything in life. Too many people wrap up their goals and aspirations to things that are really someone elses thing at the end of the day. It frequently doesn't end well. This is a really great article.
Well it's easy to say "don't build your castle in other people's kingdom", but when 95% of people live in someone else's kingdom and like it there it's much harder to actually pull that off. The author laments content creators trying to bring viewers into their discord or twitter instead of personal website but conveniently ignores the fact that people are much more willing to go to and likely to return to sites they…
The insane amounts of money people have made building products on “other people’s kingdoms” suggests the author is wrong.
It's high-reward, sure, but the point is it's high-risk too. Look at everyone who was doing great in someone else's kingdom until the king kicked them out with no recourse.
The article does not specify good vs bad platforms. Is Apple’s App Store good or bad? Would the author not want to start Epic?
What about building B2B tools for Salesforce, or apps for Shopify?
Platform Risk is a form of risk that can be mitigated. Building on platforms is itself a mitigation for distribution risk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't understand the dynamics of "web3" at all yet, but early entrants look pretty much like another layer of abstraction that simply rolls up to the same thing.
You don't understand it because you refuse to even try it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well it's easy to say "don't build your castle in other people's kingdom", but when 95% of people live in someone else's kingdom and like it there it's much harder to actually pull that off. The author laments content creators trying to bring viewers into their discord or twitter instead of personal website but conveniently ignores the fact that people are much more willing to go to and likely to return to sites they…
The article discusses that. The idea is go where the people are and try to get them to come to your own kingdom. Use their platform to advertise your platform. I'm sure this is harder than it sounds, but it's pretty amazing the size of the organizations that don't even seem to be trying.
One thing about domain names: Choose both a registrar and top-level domain for your domain name carefully. Neither your registrar nor your chosen TLD registry should be in the habit of suspending domains at the drop of a hat, or be at risk of going out of business suddenly. For TLDs, I have said before¹ that if you mostly trust your local government, your national ccTLD should suffice. In fact, it should be your defa…
My counter argument is it can be nearly impossible to build an audience outside of a kingdom. Many popular YouTubers will try and splinter off and create websites where they can monetize better. I'm even subscribed to one of these websites because I really do want to support the Creator, but I still consume almost all of their content on YouTube. YouTube makes it very easy to upload something and for people to consum…
Just bait and switch. You don't have to be loyal to the platform that helped you grow, because it has been using you from the beginning. It has always been a mutual relationship, but people somehow realized it late. YouTube being the most profitable platform only means that people will consider it as /a/ primary target, but nothing prevents them from using other platforms. As long as the cost is justifiable, multi-pl…
Decouple. Take advantage of network effects. Model income generation wide and deep.
It’s all about extending social geometry.