41–50 of 85 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mean you haven't heard "three", or "figures"? Because you've definitely heard "six figures".
One of those cases where you've heard "three" and "figures" but not "three figures" :P (I've probably heard it used only a few times in my life)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely disagree with this, this isn't an echo chamber, and no-one's buying into that ethos. Let's be frank, b2b is boring as shit. It's not even vaguely interesting. The only challenge to setting up the ultimate competitor to Sage/Quickbooks is that it's so mind numbingly dull. B2B programming is an utter pile of mind-numbingly boring crap. It's not sexy because it's incredibly simple with a colossal amount of…
The only challenge to setting up the ultimate competitor to Sage/Quickbooks is that it's so mind numbingly dull. Yes, the dullness of the topic is why no one has bothered to enter the market and compete with the $3 billion Intuit, or the $1.5 billion Sage. It's just too boring for them to bother with that kind of money. You're fing kidding right? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the 17,000 pages in GAAP have some…
You can think of any software as consisting of a set of problems of varying degree of "difficulty". Sort them in ascending order and plot them. This graph will give a very tell-tale signature as to what you're facing.
B2B / enterprise / call it what you will software has an infinite number of individually easy but collectively mind-numbingly painful problems. Yes, a lot of that bs comes from laws/rules created by "others".
"Interesting" software has a small-ish number of very difficult problems and then a manageable number of easy ones. These are the type of problems where you can take a small team of very smart people and really knock it out of the park. They are most unfortunately very few and far between.
Social cat photo software I can't speak to. I'm certainly not implying that it's in the "interesting" bucket...
Good stuff, and I agree with almost 100% of that. The only thing I take exception to is the (seemingly) implicit suggestion that "sexy" is defined by what college kids like: And that’s true. B2B is unsexy in that I don’t build things that my college friends want to use. Nah... if you're doing sexy technology, it's sexy even if not a single college kid has ever heard of it. I'd encourage everyone to NOT buy into the H…
The problem is how to get exposure to B2B processes as a software developer. Unless you have previous work experience as a sales guy/marketing/inventory procurement/etc. or a MBA or already developing B2B tools, how can you learn about the needs and opportunities?
Many of these niches are technologically very simple. e.g, there's someone I used to talk to online who makes a software package for manufacturing that consists of little more than basic geometry and a good UI. To a customer base that hates math and needs to do certain calculations frequently, that $29.95 program is perfect.
What's B2B?
Good stuff, and I agree with almost 100% of that. The only thing I take exception to is the (seemingly) implicit suggestion that "sexy" is defined by what college kids like: And that’s true. B2B is unsexy in that I don’t build things that my college friends want to use. Nah... if you're doing sexy technology, it's sexy even if not a single college kid has ever heard of it. I'd encourage everyone to NOT buy into the H…
I completely disagree with this, this isn't an echo chamber, and no-one's buying into that ethos. Let's be frank, b2b is boring as shit. It's not even vaguely interesting. The only challenge to setting up the ultimate competitor to Sage/Quickbooks is that it's so mind numbingly dull. B2B programming is an utter pile of mind-numbingly boring crap. It's not sexy because it's incredibly simple with a colossal amount of…
I also think a lot of what you said can be applied to the B2C space:
B2C is is boring as shit and not even remotely interesting.
The only challenge to setting up a competitor to Facebook/Twitter is that it's so mind numbingly dull. B2C programming is an utter pile of mind-numbingly boring crap. It's not sexy because it's incredibly simple with a colossal amount of edge cases. B2C is mindbogglingly complex simple software.
B2C is just the edge cases.
It's not the remotest bit challenging to most people. It often lives and dies by the latest fad and undeserved hype in tech blogs.
But you'll get a lot of VC funding.
Do you want to read about it? No, because it's so ridiculously shallow and played out. That's why everyone's sick of it.
(disclosure: I'm actually writing B2C software (no, really, I seriously am, not joking or being sarcastic at all there))
Sexy is in the eye of the beholder. If you characterize all B2B software like Quickbooks then yeah, it'll be boring to most people in the same way that yet another social network, geo-whatever, so-lo-co-mobile app is going to be boring to most people. You're right about the edge cases when you label them as edge cases. But if you think of them as niches then it becomes interesting again and a whole new market is laid out before your eyes.
Your whole comment was very general and you seem to apply your personal opinion to "most" people. I do get what you're saying and I can see how a lot of B2B products can be boring to a lot of people but the way you put it makes your argument weak.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only challenge to setting up the ultimate competitor to Sage/Quickbooks is that it's so mind numbingly dull. Yes, the dullness of the topic is why no one has bothered to enter the market and compete with the $3 billion Intuit, or the $1.5 billion Sage. It's just too boring for them to bother with that kind of money. You're fing kidding right? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the 17,000 pages in GAAP have some…
I think he understands it rather well - it's "complex simple software". You can think of any software as consisting of a set of problems of varying degree of "difficulty". Sort them in ascending order and plot them. This graph will give a very tell-tale signature as to what you're facing. B2B / enterprise / call it what you will software has an infinite number of individually easy but collectively mind-numbingly pain…
I've been programming for 15 years, and have personally used sage for 7 years. 10m loc is definitely within reason for the number of features the app has.
If he doesn't understand WHAT the software IS. Then how can he sit there and say what the level of difficulty is.
He DOES NOT KNOW. because HE DOES NOT KNOW what quickbooks is.
Good stuff, and I agree with almost 100% of that. The only thing I take exception to is the (seemingly) implicit suggestion that "sexy" is defined by what college kids like: And that’s true. B2B is unsexy in that I don’t build things that my college friends want to use. Nah... if you're doing sexy technology, it's sexy even if not a single college kid has ever heard of it. I'd encourage everyone to NOT buy into the H…
Wholeheartedly agreed. My reaction to the headline was: "What!? B2B is awesome! It's REAL!"
If I had to pay for Facebook I'd say fuck it and use the phome which I already pay for. If Quickbooks started free then asked me to pay I'd pony up because it not only saves me time and the monetary value of my time but it also saves me on hiring someone to do the work Quickbooks does for less. That's a real problem.
Another example happened to me just today. I'm heading up a project to start A/B testing our marketing efforts where I work. Right now I signed us up for a free Mixpanel account that I'm using to kind of start showing the team hard numbers before actually buying anything. This morning I had a meeting with someone from Optimizely which actually does exactly (literally exactly) what we want to do better than Mixpanel. I was shown how the service works and got a nice run through and at the end of the meeting I was dying to buy their platinum plan because of how much time it would save me personally, how much money it would save our company, and also for what the product itself does. My point here is that you don't see that in the B2C space. Most users would complain if a Facebook disappeared overnight but they sure as hell wouldn't whip out their wallets to keep it alive like B2B customers do when they like a service.
Good stuff, and I agree with almost 100% of that. The only thing I take exception to is the (seemingly) implicit suggestion that "sexy" is defined by what college kids like: And that’s true. B2B is unsexy in that I don’t build things that my college friends want to use. Nah... if you're doing sexy technology, it's sexy even if not a single college kid has ever heard of it. I'd encourage everyone to NOT buy into the H…
I completely disagree with this, this isn't an echo chamber, and no-one's buying into that ethos. Let's be frank, b2b is boring as shit. It's not even vaguely interesting. The only challenge to setting up the ultimate competitor to Sage/Quickbooks is that it's so mind numbingly dull. B2B programming is an utter pile of mind-numbingly boring crap. It's not sexy because it's incredibly simple with a colossal amount of…