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2M users but no money in the bank

exercism.org

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Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#31

Post by surfingdino »

benreesman wrote: post #15

Where the fuck are the VCs looking at serious hackers with millions of users who haven’t gotten the business model dialed in yet? Y-Combinator says “build something people want”. Two million sounds like a lot of people. I’ve only glanced over this so I could be missing some critical fact, but superficially it sounds like pmarca or pg should write a check before the rest of us stop believing in the startup lottery.

> Where the fuck are the VCs looking at serious hackers with millions of users who haven’t gotten the business model dialed in yet?

Busy investing in AI?

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#33

Post by zurfer »

Oras wrote: post #21

I'm just thinking out loud here, but for 2 million users learning to code and improving their skills, there is a chance they want to change jobs or are already looking for one. Have you thought of adding a hiring feature? Where people upload their CVs, and companies search (anonymously) for talent? There is a hiring model called PPA (Pay Per Application), or monthly fees to search CVs. Your unique selling point would…

even easier, just a job board (like stackoverflow), where companies pay to advertise a job.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#34

Post by andrewstuart »

re-thc wrote: post #16
Laaas wrote: post #10

How are they managing to spend 7.5k a month in server expenses? Are they using AWS?

> Are they using AWS? Yes!

$50/month gets you a 12 core 24GB VPS with unlimited traffic on a 1Gbps link on Ionos.

https://www.ionos.com/servers/vps

$7500/month would get them 150 such servers.

Maybe they should cut the AWS costs and hire their developer back.

Id be really interested to hear the breakdown of their AWS bill. It would be a crime if they were blowing what money they have giving Amazon 9 cents per gigabyte egress.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#35

Post by grardb »

galactus wrote: post #24
sneak wrote: post #13

Why not charge 5000 users money instead of servicing 2M users for free? It seems to me if you can’t get 1 in 500 of your users to give you $10 per year then maybe your product isn’t actually valuable or useful and should just shut down. I say this without knowing anything whatsoever about this product or its utility; it just seems like a general thing. If you have this many signups and you can’t charge even a tiny ti…

They say in the article they tried to force 1000 random users to convert to paying account and none of them did

Can you point out where they said this?

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#36

Post by renewiltord »

benreesman wrote: post #15

Where the fuck are the VCs looking at serious hackers with millions of users who haven’t gotten the business model dialed in yet? Y-Combinator says “build something people want”. Two million sounds like a lot of people. I’ve only glanced over this so I could be missing some critical fact, but superficially it sounds like pmarca or pg should write a check before the rest of us stop believing in the startup lottery.

There's nothing special about a VC. It's just someone with money to allocate. Go ask them to give you a big chunk of the company for $25k if you think this is just a few steps from being a blow-up success. Being able to differentially detect when a company is successful is a pretty good skill. If you think you've found a diamond in the rough, you should go in.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#37

Post by elAhmo »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #23

> For the last few months, I've been working on a new educational product teaching coding fundamentals that I'm going to launch in 2025. 96% of people who try to learn coding give up - which I find unacceptable, so I'm aiming to change that. Feels like you've been kickstarting a competitor/pivot on the side.

With those stats, even with just 4% of people wanting to learn, and just a fraction of them actually paying, that would be dozens of thousands of paying customers. Even at 1USD per month, it seems a relatively sustainable business.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#38

Post by LunaSea »

benreesman wrote: post #19
EduardoBautista wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, exercism is a "not-for-profit organisation registered in the UK" according to the footer of their website. Edit: It appears that their "not-for-profit" message in their footer is a bit misleading, as explained by those who replied to my comment.

OpenAI is a 501c nonprofit. Doesn’t stop Sam taking big time meetings more often than he checks his email.

Part of OpenAI is a nonprofit, not in its entirety.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#39

Post by benreesman »

renewiltord wrote: post #36
benreesman wrote: post #15

Where the fuck are the VCs looking at serious hackers with millions of users who haven’t gotten the business model dialed in yet? Y-Combinator says “build something people want”. Two million sounds like a lot of people. I’ve only glanced over this so I could be missing some critical fact, but superficially it sounds like pmarca or pg should write a check before the rest of us stop believing in the startup lottery.

There's nothing special about a VC. It's just someone with money to allocate. Go ask them to give you a big chunk of the company for $25k if you think this is just a few steps from being a blow-up success. Being able to differentially detect when a company is successful is a pretty good skill. If you think you've found a diamond in the rough, you should go in.

This absurd hagiography about efficient markets allocating capital will be viewed by future historians like some kind of flat earth theory. Eugene Fama himself is walking back the idea and he won a Nobel Prize for asserting it.

Markets are what people do when they’re not having sex. No sense in fighting markets.

Cartels and market failures are what happens when the holders of capital aren’t terrified of Lina Khan or Maximilian Robespierre for longer than 12 seconds.

The Battery Club is for kingmakers who decide things together for their mutual benefit behind closed doors. They learned their lesson after Don’t Poach Gate: it’s not in writing anymore.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#40

Post by michaelt »

Laaas wrote: post #10

How are they managing to spend 7.5k a month in server expenses? Are they using AWS?

It sounds like a lot, but even if they dropped server expenses to zero they'd only have $90k/year to spend.

That is not much, considering they need to cover all aspects of running a nonprofit; they need enough technical staff to maintain a 24/7 on call rota while letting people occasionally go on holiday; and they need to pay healthcare and pensions and suchlike on top of salaries.

And it's not like they can offer a meagre salary now but promise vast wealth in the future, like a startup might.

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