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Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

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Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#211

Post by lelanthran »

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

> In this case, this tool is $30/mo, or about $360 / year, what is that, 3 dinners for 2 people in a year? The tool may save the developer, let's say 3-4 hours / week and at 52 * 3 or about 156 hours of savings a year.

I think you're being unnecessarily harsh.

I can afford lots of things; I don't run out and buy them though.

So this tool might save you maybe 4 hours a week (I cannot really see it saving 4 hours a week, but lets go with your numbers here).

That is not "4 extra hours I get to spend sleeping". It is not "4 extra hours I get to spend with my kids". It is not "4 extra hours I use on my hobbies". It's "4 extra hours that my employee gets from me".

> At even 30 an hour, it's saved the developer $4,680, or at 60/hour, close to $10,000,

Nonsense. It's saved the company $10k. It's saved the developer exactly $0.

> My only recommendation is try to sell this product to businesses

I agree. Businesses get the savings from any tool they purchase for employee use, not employees, so they are more willing to shell out for productivity tools.

> Developers, my only word of advice, is seriously.. stop being so cheap and spend some money to make your lives easier.

Well, it seems to be working for them, isn't it? And you're being awfully judgemental about what other people find value in.

This tool, which you say will save 4 hours a week, costs $30/m. ChatGPT 3.5 saves me much more than 4 hours a week, and costs $0/m. Copilot costs $10/m, and saves me more than 4 hours per week.

Git (and things like gitea, etc) provide orders of magnitude more value than this, and you can find someone to provide a hosting plan for it for less than $10/m.

It's all about value delivered, which you seem to be missing. It's a purely rational and economic decision.

I can afford office 365, but I find myself getting by without that subscription. If I purchased every single devtool subscription, the monthly cost would exceed about half my salary, and all the benefits go to my employer.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#212

Post by recursive »

This generally looks pretty cool, but on my machine, the "pick any color you need" demo doesn't work. As I mouse over the image, it seems to be generating completely random colors for each pixel, with no correlation to the color that's actually there.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#213

Post by recursive »

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

> 360 / year, what is that, 3 dinners for 2 people in a year?

Either that math is wrong, or we're eating different dinners.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#214

Post by sharemywin »

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

I think your lumping developers all in the same category, but either way there's not much value in a subscription for a developer.

If your a developer business owner(not hourly freelancer) than absolutely makes financial sense.

If your an hourly freelancer your customers probably aren't going to offer you more money for your time.

If you work for someone else they should pay for it.

If you are fixed bid or some variation on that then probably makes sense because your time is money.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#215

Post by rylan-talerico »

As a non-technical product manager, this tool could be valuable to me if it works as well as the website illustrates.

I agree with the concern expressed in other comments re: price, especially considering the lack of a free tier or trial.

The marketing site is great. Congrats on your launch!

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#216

Post by CryptoBanker »

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

You act like 3 dinners for 2 people in a year is nothing.

Some of us only eat out once a week because we have debts, or we have children, or we live in an expensive place. Some people eat out even less than that.

Would I sacrifice ~6% of my meals out for this tool that (no disrespect to the developer, is a glorified color palette picker)? Definitely not, and it's not a matter of being "cheap."

Not to mention, I think you're grossly overestimating how much time a tool like this would save. If I truly spend 200 hours a year picking colors, I likely would memorize a few by that point.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#217

Post by pfg_ »

DANmode wrote: post #139
rcconf wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say they sells it at $10 / mo. They would need 1,000 customers to make a reasonable wage at $10,000 / month. If they sells it at $30/month, they would need only 300 customers. Can you imagine how annoying it would be to deal with 1,000 cheap customers that expect the world? Maybe they should sell it at $100/mo and sell it to only 100 people that really care about the problem. Maybe just sell it to a business fo…

You'd be shocked at how many devs have spent big bucks on Apple hardware just to run Linux on it. We spend. Intelligently. If this was a $400/$600 (or even into the thousands of USD) lifetime license, they may see wider adoption.

It is. There is a $900 lifetime license available

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#218

Post by sroussey »

zerocrates wrote: post #176
sroussey wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, we had requested donations for Firebug (which had millions of installs) and the revenue was embarrassingly pathetic. We used it to give contributors in non-western countries some bonuses from time to time.

There you're taking the already high-ish barrier for devs to pay for tools, as discussed elsewhere in this thread, and adding on the really high barrier to get people to donate to things they can use for free.

True, but there was a high barrier to entry to just install it. And for a long time there was little else you could use.

On the other hand, it was free and more important to get people to use it and be more productive then generate revenue.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#219

Post by warent »

zapt02 wrote: post #191
soneca wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a one-time pay option. $900. So, if you love to pay for nice things as long as you can own them, they have an option for you.

Problem is this product is worth like $30 in total.

I like how the original comment gave some thoughtful napkin estimates about how this product may be worth several thousand dollars as a function of time saved, and your counter argument is just "nah it's $30 total" with absolutely no reasoning or logic.

Like it or not, this is the kind of response from an engineer that falls into the category of emotionally cheapo.

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