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In search of organic software

pketh.org

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Re: In search of organic software

#21

Post by mathgladiator »

pketh wrote: post #3
altdataseller wrote: post #2

"I’m open to the idea of selling ~5-10% equity in Kinopio for to live a smoother life right now." And what would we get in exchange for that equity? Would you have a plan to give dividends to equity holders?

yup that'd be one good option, I'm sure there are others as well. I think fundamentally rethinking the default assumption of investment models from taking many risky bets on 20x-100x return, to taking less risky/more-informed bets on 2-4x returns may also be something to look at

I'm a fan of dividend model. All I really care about is my 8%. Although, with inflation, this will change.

Re: In search of organic software

#22

Post by [deleted] »

pketh wrote: post #8
jabo wrote: post #5

One trait I’ve seen in “non-organic” software is the use of the Enterprise SaaS playbook. Start bottoms up, give away free or low/no margin services, gain adoption, capture the market, then with the pressure to grow, they start moving upmarket, go after 100K+ deals and raise prices, and eventually price out / fire vast chunks of their early adopters. Been personally bit by this a few times, so these days I tend to ve…

> these days I tend to very cautious about adopting non-organic software I’ve noticed the same thing happening to myself and hope to avoid a future where consumers only feel like they can trust/adopt software developed by FAANG type companies) Really great blog post and ‘Customer-funded’ is a really good term. I agree, much better than bootstrapped UPDATE: read even more of your posts/product page… if/when I add full…

[deleted]

Re: In search of organic software

#23

Post by joshmarinacci »

pketh wrote: post #3
altdataseller wrote: post #2

"I’m open to the idea of selling ~5-10% equity in Kinopio for to live a smoother life right now." And what would we get in exchange for that equity? Would you have a plan to give dividends to equity holders?

yup that'd be one good option, I'm sure there are others as well. I think fundamentally rethinking the default assumption of investment models from taking many risky bets on 20x-100x return, to taking less risky/more-informed bets on 2-4x returns may also be something to look at

Something more like the dividend model would be interesting to me. I'd be willing to do some small scale funding like that.

Re: In search of organic software

#24

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I write "organic" software.

In today's software industry, people not only don't care about Quality; they are actively hostile towards it. It almost seems to be a race to the bottom.

If it isn't scaled into millions of users, billions of dollars, or gigantic numbers of GH stars, then it's not worth anything, and anyone that works in a way that treats software development as a craft, is treated in a rather shabby fashion.

I don't particularly care (anymore), but I probably would, if I were trying to make money. It used to make me rather upset, but these days, I'm more amused, than anything else.

Re: In search of organic software

#25

Post by polote »

jabo wrote: post #5

One trait I’ve seen in “non-organic” software is the use of the Enterprise SaaS playbook. Start bottoms up, give away free or low/no margin services, gain adoption, capture the market, then with the pressure to grow, they start moving upmarket, go after 100K+ deals and raise prices, and eventually price out / fire vast chunks of their early adopters. Been personally bit by this a few times, so these days I tend to ve…

This is clearly not the enterprise playbook. The enterprise playbook is to sell on slides, iterate with a few customers and go after even bigger customers.

Start small and trying to go upmarket is the normal playbook for a b2b smb company that is not growing anymore. Managing enterprise customers is easier than managing thousands or small companies. And it also create a natural barrier to entry

Re: In search of organic software

#26

Post by jabo »

polote wrote: post #25
jabo wrote: post #5

One trait I’ve seen in “non-organic” software is the use of the Enterprise SaaS playbook. Start bottoms up, give away free or low/no margin services, gain adoption, capture the market, then with the pressure to grow, they start moving upmarket, go after 100K+ deals and raise prices, and eventually price out / fire vast chunks of their early adopters. Been personally bit by this a few times, so these days I tend to ve…

This is clearly not the enterprise playbook. The enterprise playbook is to sell on slides, iterate with a few customers and go after even bigger customers. Start small and trying to go upmarket is the normal playbook for a b2b smb company that is not growing anymore. Managing enterprise customers is easier than managing thousands or small companies. And it also create a natural barrier to entry

> The enterprise playbook is to sell on slides, iterate with a few customers and go after even bigger customers.

I would call this product discovery and development with early adopters, something I hope every startup is doing. I've also seen this be called a Lighthouse program.

> Managing enterprise customers is easier than managing thousands or small companies. And it also create a natural barrier to entry

I definitely get the appeal. To build a billion dollar revenue (not valuation) venture scale company, you can either get 1000 users paying you 1M dollars each, or 1M users paying you $1000 each [1].

It's just painful as a relative early customer to get priced out and no longer be the target market for a company, especially when it has set its eyes on exponential growth and starts to see the SMB market as a means to an end.

[1] https://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-ways-to-buil...

Re: In search of organic software

#27

Post by theIntuitionist »

I think “organic” is prob the wrong word. It’s already a rather tortured word, even in just the farming world where it’s legislated. My brother, a small organic farmer with about 5 acres really groaned recently when telling me that hydroponic veggies can be labeled organic. And when I see it on non-far products (like salt, which is a real example that will make any nerd’s hair stand on end), it just feels like intentionally misleading marketing, not an honest description.

Anyway, I have a real soft spot for the sort of software the author talks about. I think of shops who build software like this as “design build”. Like in the construction world where design build means a small shop focused on overall quality and fit of the home to its owner, not scale or economy, etc. maybe that is a phrase that works?

Re: In search of organic software

#28

Post by hmmdar »

theIntuitionist wrote: post #27

I think “organic” is prob the wrong word. It’s already a rather tortured word, even in just the farming world where it’s legislated. My brother, a small organic farmer with about 5 acres really groaned recently when telling me that hydroponic veggies can be labeled organic. And when I see it on non-far products (like salt, which is a real example that will make any nerd’s hair stand on end), it just feels like intent…

I recently had a similar experience. I purchased a bag of citric acid, and it was boldly labeled as non-GMO and "approved for use with organic food".

Re: In search of organic software

#29

Post by russellallen »

pketh wrote: post #13
UnchartedSystem wrote: post #11

just wanted to say the actual mind mapping tool the author is building has is a stylish and cozy piece of software. The wii shop music remix attached to the pricing card made me grin.

thanks I never know how much to self promote on HN :) if anyone else is looking for the mind-mapping software I build, it's at https://kinopio.club and there's no sign up required to use it

It's great. The movable boxes and links between them remind me a lot of the Self programming language which I love, and the way the boxes wiggle when you pick them up is just genius.

Re: In search of organic software

#30

Post by eternityforest »

I usually treat anything that isn't open source, or a product that makes multiple billions of dollars and is totally entrenched in industry, as basically disposable.

I will use it, especially if it's free/youretheproductware, if it's convenient, but I don't want to build anything on top of it. I don't want to create anything with it that can't be ported elsewhere.

With open source it's a lot more comfortable to say "This appears to be popular and will be around for a long time, I don't need to start thinking about alternatives".

Occasionally in some areas it's helpful to keep alternatives in mind in case something better comes along, but some things are already near universal.

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