Who is Damon Chen and why should I take this commentary seriously?
Apparently he is the founder of testimonial.to which this link is going to so this looks like self promoting blog spam.
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The golden era of being an open startup is gone
51–60 of 114 posts
Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone
#52> The main reason behind my decision is that I used to share the revenue to track my solo journey. Now with someone else on my team, it’s no longer my personal milestone anymore. I somehow have to be responsible for the whole team.
Interesting how when revenue was likely equating to profit, they are open to sharing. When they have to pay someone else to help out, they want it to be a secret. I don't think the motivating factor here is very complex at all.
Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone
#53Who is Damon Chen and why should I take this commentary seriously?
Damon Chen here (waving hand)
I'm just a guy quitting 9-5 and hope to make some money online to support my family :)
I mentioned apps I built before in this tweet. Testimonial.to is the only one that took off. https://twitter.com/damengchen/status/1344525420813697024
Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone
#54Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone
#55> The main reason behind my decision is that I used to share the revenue to track my solo journey. Now with someone else on my team, it’s no longer my personal milestone anymore. I somehow have to be responsible for the whole team. Interesting how when revenue was likely equating to profit, they are open to sharing. When they have to pay someone else to help out, they want it to be a secret. I don't think the motivat…
Hey, G here, CMO at testimonial.to. There's still plenty of profits left each month, that's not the reason! In one sentence, he just no longer believes in sharing every core metrics but still plans to build in public.
Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone
#56I don't really agree or maybe I have misunderstood the author's thesis here. Is he saying it's harder to grow a business by building in the open nowadays because so many people have already done it, so now consumers are weary of it? Or is he upset that many of these companies that were once open have stopped being open once they found success? Just because many established companies have stopped doing it, doesn't mea…
Hi Reid, G here, CMO at testimonial.to. In one sentence, Damon just no longer believes in sharing every core metric but still plans to build in public. It's been a core part of what he does and something I know he likes to do instead of building everything behind curtains with no feedback loop.
Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone
#57I don't really agree or maybe I have misunderstood the author's thesis here. Is he saying it's harder to grow a business by building in the open nowadays because so many people have already done it, so now consumers are weary of it? Or is he upset that many of these companies that were once open have stopped being open once they found success? Just because many established companies have stopped doing it, doesn't mea…
I am also a bit confused by some of what the author has said here. On the one hand he talks about not disclosing things because others are ripping off designs, etc, but in other places he's referring to things like employee salaries and run-rates, etc. Maybe I'm dumb and not connecting the dots, but why would sharing things like your costs allow others to steal your business? I genuinely don't understand this, so I t…
Hi, G here, CMO at testimonial.to. To clarify, Damon just no longer believes in sharing every core metric but still plans to build in public :)
Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone
#58I don't really agree or maybe I have misunderstood the author's thesis here. Is he saying it's harder to grow a business by building in the open nowadays because so many people have already done it, so now consumers are weary of it? Or is he upset that many of these companies that were once open have stopped being open once they found success? Just because many established companies have stopped doing it, doesn't mea…
This Damon Chen guy seems like a nice guy but like an independent journalist or something. He seems like he could be a great evangelist. He started some websites, wrote about Open Startups, and in this article he mentions he had his own 'revenue bar' on Twitter which went from $0 to $1 but he took it down because the age of Open Startups is over. I look at all this and wonder where the actual dudes going to work at j…
Entrepreneur is a very broad term. A power lifter may wonder why the boxer is doing footwork drills when he just needs to lift heavy weights until he realizes they’re both athletes but in different events.
It’s silly to label “open startups” as a movement when it’s more a technique which may or may not be useful to you.
By being open ,people can follow your story, which can translate to marketing/sales/feedback.
There’s also an aspect of idea exchange and psychological motivation by being part of an entrepreneurial community.
I think it’s silly to consider it a movement rather than a tactic. Whether it’s applicable depends a lot on whether it will help you reach potential customers. If you’re trying to sell fintech to big banks, probably not, if you’re selling no-code landing page builders, it probably will.
It’s also a bit of a pendulum where the business default is secrecy, new school thought says build in public, now people are realizing it’s just trade offs .
This has been a key part of many successful products such as Stack Overflow (Jeff Atwood’s blog), Basecamp (Signal V Noise blog). Convertkit is another one and has a really good interview on Indie Hackers about it.
Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone
#59We are just about starting out with my company and I've literally just made our live analytics public at https://analytics.moonka.space - it's literally everything we see. We are using Plausible.io (kudos to them!), a privacy-first analytics platform that provides just enough data without abusing our users' data. This way, we don't even have to show a cookie notice. I'm planning to open up our financial details as we…
It looks great, congrats on shipping this! The issue you might face in the long term is the 'sources' section or 'top pages'. It makes it too easy for someone to replicate your strategy, but you're still early! Wishing you all the best :)
Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
This Damon Chen guy seems like a nice guy but like an independent journalist or something. He seems like he could be a great evangelist. He started some websites, wrote about Open Startups, and in this article he mentions he had his own 'revenue bar' on Twitter which went from $0 to $1 but he took it down because the age of Open Startups is over. I look at all this and wonder where the actual dudes going to work at j…
Entrepreneur is a very broad term. A power lifter may wonder why the boxer is doing footwork drills when he just needs to lift heavy weights until he realizes they’re both athletes but in different events. It’s silly to label “open startups” as a movement when it’s more a technique which may or may not be useful to you. By being open ,people can follow your story, which can translate to marketing/sales/feedback. Ther…
Totally agree, it is odd that the author of the article labeled "open startups" as a movement. I can see why they did so, labeling it as a movement improves the story, makes you a "thought leader", etc, which all leads to better marketing / sales.