111–120 of 123 posts
I had a similar experience growing my company (funnily enough, also a note taking app). When I reached the point where I had everything I needed, I had to ask myself, why keep going? The answer for me was a custom-fitted realization that building a company is to be treated no different than a game. A factory building simulation game, like Factorio. The goal isn't to achieve operational bliss, because that goal is wic…
I had a similar experience growing my company (funnily enough, also a note taking app). When I reached the point where I had everything I needed, I had to ask myself, why keep going? The answer for me was a custom-fitted realization that building a company is to be treated no different than a game. A factory building simulation game, like Factorio. The goal isn't to achieve operational bliss, because that goal is wic…
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The flip side of the story is that Sublime died. I know they have had some updates recently, but for years it was completely stagnant. The hole that was left by Sublime was filled by VS Code. Maybe Sublime would've survived with a subscription model? When you're paying a subscription you are paying for the maintainer's continued interest in the product over time, which is not to be underestimated. Software rots quick…
did sublime die? I use it everyday. and I am looking forward to sublime merge with plugin capabilities
Thank you for sharing! I have exact same experiance and I'm very uncomfortable talking about it. I guess one has to experience it first hand to be able to comprehend in full. Once I tried to explain, but I guess others mistook me for either being arogant or plain stupid. Not wanting more money is beyond their imagination. Thanks again, all the best in future endaveours!
Your comment reminds me of the fisherman and the business man: > There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village. As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish. The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?” The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”…
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Consider hiring a virtual personal assistant and delegating the low impact, high (time) cost tasks. There will be an inherent limit to how much money you can make if you try to do it alone. If you truly want to learn to build a business, realize that you aren't a software developer anymore. You're a businessperson and thats completely different. It's a different field and you can have a lot of fun learning it. It's a…
Something I've found helpful is to make a list every day of the tasks you completed, and circle anything you could've delegated. This is then an iterative process to help you improve your delegation skills, which should allow you to focus specifically on business tasks that provide the most leverage.
In those cases you should take the time to write a detailed how-to document to complete the task along with a checklist of items that should individually be true/complete in order to call the task as a whole complete. Instructions/code for a human to execute.
That "system" (how to) and "control" (checklist) forms the operational basis for most companies that scale nationally and will remove a significant amount of stress and work for the founder.
Congrats to authors and good luck. Have a question. I do pay for few things (netflix, amazon prime and couple of others). Their services are natural candidate in my opinion for being billed monthly. Now everyone my cats included are trying to sell their wares however small they are as a service. If I've paid monthly fee for every notepad sized program I use I'd be out of commission. How does this business model manag…
I agree, it's ridiculous! Not to mention that many app developers (as mentioned in the post) can't grind along on a single app for 10 years, so you most likely are not getting $5/mo (or more!) of value out of the product for 10 years. Sublime did it best, IMO. Charge a non-negligable amount ($70) for an individual, but pennies to a company. That's how many of us got our licenses. That $ should be enough to run their…
In reality most software offered a pseudo subscription through updates. Every couple of years they would offer a new release with heavily promoted features to entice you to open your wallet. Bug fixes were often an afterthought.
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I agree, it's ridiculous! Not to mention that many app developers (as mentioned in the post) can't grind along on a single app for 10 years, so you most likely are not getting $5/mo (or more!) of value out of the product for 10 years. Sublime did it best, IMO. Charge a non-negligable amount ($70) for an individual, but pennies to a company. That's how many of us got our licenses. That $ should be enough to run their…
Well people seem to expect support and updates in perpetuity. In reality most software offered a pseudo subscription through updates. Every couple of years they would offer a new release with heavily promoted features to entice you to open your wallet. Bug fixes were often an afterthought.
Lemme give you very particular example. I own old copy of DxO labs software for processing photos. It suits me just fine and works like a charm despite it being 4 years old. they keep sending me offers to upgrade to new version with new features at very attractive price. If one day the old one stops working for me for whatever reason I will upgrade then. But I have already saved tons of money on just this software alone never mind whole bunch of other titles that I bought.
Thank you for sharing! I have exact same experiance and I'm very uncomfortable talking about it. I guess one has to experience it first hand to be able to comprehend in full. Once I tried to explain, but I guess others mistook me for either being arogant or plain stupid. Not wanting more money is beyond their imagination. Thanks again, all the best in future endaveours!
Your comment reminds me of the fisherman and the business man: > There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village. As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish. The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?” The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>my Hacker Brain things this project _should_ have a free plan, because free plans are nice and good and neat. I agree free stuff is neat. I think the other side of the hacker ethos is "figure it out yourself", so I would never expect someone who hacked something together and shared it for free to then provide support for said thing. That's cool if you want to do it, but seems like asking for burnout unless you reall…
When somebody from free needs support, wouldn't that be a good time to "Upgrade for support or reach us on Twitter"
However, there's another breed of hackers that enjoys making things more than they enjoy making money from things they make (which involves a different set of skills and interests). In which case, it's also valid to just say, "Sorry it's hard, but I can't commit to formal support."
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When somebody from free needs support, wouldn't that be a good time to "Upgrade for support or reach us on Twitter"
Depends on the person providing the thing. If you're ready to build some revenue from your thing, then yeah, upselling free customers when they need support seems like the natural thing to do. However, there's another breed of hackers that enjoys making things more than they enjoy making money from things they make (which involves a different set of skills and interests). In which case, it's also valid to just say, "…