241–250 of 253 posts
This was one of mine. I invented it in 1978, when I built a house with a pool in the central atrium. You want that swimming pool to be both indoors and outdoors at the same time. Note the year that "they" invented it.
Pardon me while I just slink off and cry.
Er, nice story, really entertaining to read, but I think it would benefit from actually mentioning the "competitor" app that he ended up paying money for. I mean, he won't ship his own app anymore, so no harm done in mentioning it, right?
I was also dying to know so I went digging. It's Google Tasks. https://twitter.com/thekitze/status/1524809601538990083
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It seems a bit rich to say that when your SaaS has https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30427048 I'd say it's even contrary to "laughing at the notion you have to be the first to ship a solution to a problem".
Why?
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Why?
Because the GP said "most markets are large enough to accommodate several businesses" , but I don't see enough evidence that it's true in your case yet given your lifetime revenue so it's really odd to see you emphatically agree with the GP's assertion and provide your own business as an example.
Not the saddest; just the most recurring "just ship it" story ever.
Sure, there could be other reasons this can't be "the saddest" such story, but just being common doesn't logically seem to be one.
> My app is officially dead. Most markets are large enough to accommodate several businesses. There's really no reason to stop working on something just because you find that there is already someone solving that same problem. Who knows, they will shut it down at some point, or might head upmarket or pivot to a tangential area.
I'm sitting here running the 200th uptime monitoring service, laughing at the notion you have to be first to ship a solution to a problem. Build something good, that people want, and iterate rapidly as feedback comes in.
1. Check for open ports, to allow for non-websites (is my ssh server running) 2. icmp ping. (My ssh server is inaccessible. Is my networking/router down, or is it just my computer/program crash) 3. RSS feed for each defined check. This would allow integration with other services like IFTT. 4. Push notifications. First party or via other services; I personally send Pushbullet notifications for stuff via [1] (and currently looking at [2]), previously with npm and bash scripts; Pushover is fairly similar, and I've seen a newish offering called Pushkeep. Generalized webhooks might also work (I believe Pushbullet can be used this way, not sure about others).
[1]: https://github.com/GustavoKatel/pushbullet-cli python [2]: https://github.com/CaptnCodr/pushbullet-cli f#
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> For devs, Electron really is the easiest way to make desktop apps For developers who have never heard of Visual Basic, Delphi, or Free Pascal / Lazarus, Electron really is the easiest way to make desktop apps they know of. There, FTFY.
I'm gonna be honest, vanishingly few people use any of those technologies these days, and I'm speaking as someone who has used VB and some Delphi before. Electron and JS has magnitudes more libraries and support than all three of those technologies combined. To think that devs these days should use any of them is to be tone deaf to how the tech world works these days. Good luck convincing a dev, much less their boss,…
Libraries and support for what? Betcha 99 percent are for stuff that 99 percent of developers don't need.
> Good luck convincing a dev, much less their boss, to use Delphi to develop their cutting edge desktop apps.
Wasn't this a discussion about the single bloke working on his Minimum Maybe Viable Product? He's his own boss. And if he doesn't want to be convinced to use the best tools for that -- his problem, not mine. I was just correcting your factual error about the easiest way to make desktop apps.
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> it sure was easier back in, say, 2012 I was on HN in 2012. It was not any easier. People said the same thing back then. “Oh, if only I had gotten started in 2005, with DHTML, when things were easier.” “I wish I was paying attention when iPhone app store came out.” Just because you missed one boat doesn’t mean you’ll miss the next one. Keep an eye out for it. «History merely repeats itself. It has all been done befo…
I hope you're right!
— Walt Disney
The tone of this post suggests that if the author simply just shipped, they would be as successful as the competitor. Building successful products is not a matter of “shipping” but also promoting, selling, continually improving, studying user behaviors, providing customer support and engaging potential customers. Given that the author wasn’t even motivated enough to ship when all these other tasks weren’t even applic…
I've made the mistake of (falsely) convincing myself that what I was building was unique, probably because I wanted it to be true. It was rather stupid, but it's a mistake I will never make again.
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Serious question, how do you know whether it's your product or your marketing that sucks? For example, I tried twitter ads for my product [1] and I got zero sales after spending $50. What are good marketing strategies for niche hardware products? [1] https://www.invisible-computers.com/
You might be able to get some customers with that spend on average, but could have hit zero just from bad luck (randomness is clumpy). Customers can easily cost tens of dollars to acquire. As an example, for my own subscription box service the cost to acquire a customer from YouTube ads was ~$49.