101–110 of 191 posts
“No idea like this had existed, and the domain BuiltWith was somehow not taken already. Gary began building scrapers and his database of technologies.” I hate this paragraph. It doesn’t mention any domain names but also makes the assumption that com is the only one?
The vast majority of domain names are .com - it’s a fair assumption to make, isn’t it?
“No idea like this had existed, and the domain BuiltWith was somehow not taken already. Gary began building scrapers and his database of technologies.” I hate this paragraph. It doesn’t mention any domain names but also makes the assumption that com is the only one?
Given that it was the mid-2000s, I think dot com was fairly positive to be the general assumption. But thanks for the feedback, I'll make sure I clarify in future posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree this sounds suspect. A lot of people don’t realize what “$14mm ARR” means. The contract, accounting and legal work alone would require a couple of people. Not to mention Infrastructure, monitoring, QA, etc - all that good stuff. It costs money to generate revenue.
I mean, I run a startup not doing that much worse. I have 0 accountants (pay CPA yearly for tax work). 0 lawyers. 0 devops. 0 QA. 0 monitoring . 0 HR. I do have : 3 devs (if I include myself) 3 support (tickets) 2 other supporting roles If I coded 100% myself (which I have in the past and could in the future, it would just mean less new features) and had a way to not answer tickets (like the OP story it sounds like d…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree this sounds suspect. A lot of people don’t realize what “$14mm ARR” means. The contract, accounting and legal work alone would require a couple of people. Not to mention Infrastructure, monitoring, QA, etc - all that good stuff. It costs money to generate revenue.
I mean, I run a startup not doing that much worse. I have 0 accountants (pay CPA yearly for tax work). 0 lawyers. 0 devops. 0 QA. 0 monitoring . 0 HR. I do have : 3 devs (if I include myself) 3 support (tickets) 2 other supporting roles If I coded 100% myself (which I have in the past and could in the future, it would just mean less new features) and had a way to not answer tickets (like the OP story it sounds like d…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree this sounds suspect. A lot of people don’t realize what “$14mm ARR” means. The contract, accounting and legal work alone would require a couple of people. Not to mention Infrastructure, monitoring, QA, etc - all that good stuff. It costs money to generate revenue.
I mean, I run a startup not doing that much worse. I have 0 accountants (pay CPA yearly for tax work). 0 lawyers. 0 devops. 0 QA. 0 monitoring . 0 HR. I do have : 3 devs (if I include myself) 3 support (tickets) 2 other supporting roles If I coded 100% myself (which I have in the past and could in the future, it would just mean less new features) and had a way to not answer tickets (like the OP story it sounds like d…
If you had a way to not answer tickets, that means you would not offer support to customers, so likely a lot less customers would be interested to pay you. You don’t get to 14 millions by cheaping out that way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree this sounds suspect. A lot of people don’t realize what “$14mm ARR” means. The contract, accounting and legal work alone would require a couple of people. Not to mention Infrastructure, monitoring, QA, etc - all that good stuff. It costs money to generate revenue.
I mean, I run a startup not doing that much worse. I have 0 accountants (pay CPA yearly for tax work). 0 lawyers. 0 devops. 0 QA. 0 monitoring . 0 HR. I do have : 3 devs (if I include myself) 3 support (tickets) 2 other supporting roles If I coded 100% myself (which I have in the past and could in the future, it would just mean less new features) and had a way to not answer tickets (like the OP story it sounds like d…
> You can find every website using a specific keyword, and technology, and even break them down by location, spending, and social following. It's the perfect place to build your potential customers.
Doesn't this only work well if you can get an email address of a decision maker to contact? Otherwise, it seems like a lukewarm lead at best.
Also, it seems that the products and services a website uses tend to be sticky, at least far down the stack. So this lead-generation approach is really just about picking off technologies at the top of the stack, right?
The key takeaway for me was that the mid-2000s were the perfect time to be a founder of a software tool. I can’t help but feel that there are so many tens of thousands of similar stories without such a successful conclusion. In previous roles I’ve used BuiltWith before and it’s an invaluable tool. There’s a few companies with similar approaches except focusing on social media profiles (HypeAuditor comes to mind) that…
I think the takeaway should be that the mid-2000s to now was the perfect timing to succeed as a bootstrap if you were going to. In 2040, with the same survivor bias, people will probably say that 2022 was the perfect time to be the founder of a software tool.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's still no competition now compared to any time in the future for an internet business.
What do you mean? Give me some examples. There are plenty of saturated niches.