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Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

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Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#121

Post by tombert »

godot wrote: post #14

> Could it be bigger? Sure. But at some point — maybe even before 1,000 people — the vibe breaks. The intimacy evaporates. You stop recognizing names. People talk less because it’s harder to know who’s listening. Growth would make it worse, not better. > > Some things work precisely because they’re small. I'd argue this is true for social networks like Facebook actually. There was a magical period in Facebook between…

SomethingAwful is still fun precisely because they don't have too many people. At any given time, there's about ~2500 active users, which is enough to keep the chats funny and interesting and avoiding "dead mall" vibes, but not so much that it's horrible like LinkedIn or Facebook.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#122

Post by timr »

salomonk_mur wrote: post #70
kylecazar wrote: post #3

Building things for yourself is fun -- I do it. But the original article was written for startup founders, building companies.

Building a particular type of company - a tech startup. I'd argue that we need to apply this to companies too. Stop building startups (which start losing money and may never ever make a profit in the process of scaling) and start creating companies (which make a profit ASAP and may never scale).

"Tech startups" that make enough money to be interesting [1], but do not have the property of being a winner-take-all market, are the truly magical unicorns of software. If you have one, you should covet it and guard it viciously, because otherwise someone with more money is coming to eat your lunch [2][3].

OP wasn't talking about this kind of thing, of course. The phenomenon of hobby projects being "startups" has always been a weird fit.

[1] I define this at least as "supports more than one person's salary in perpetuity," but would probably add some things like margin requirements if I thought about it more. Obviously you can exist as a consultant charging by the hour, and that's not what either of us is talking about.

[2] The only examples of this I've personally ever seen have been dominant players in niche markets with high bars to entry. So they weren't hyper-growth unicorns, but weren't really your definition of "companies", either. You don't get to these kinds of businesses by aiming to be one - you get there by trying for something bigger and topping out the market.

[3] Consider the phenomenon of the small vet clinic, which is rapidly ceasing to exist. Private equity has been steadily hoovering up these relatively high-margin, low-regulation businesses for the same economic reasons that software companies get big. If you try to create a vet clinic, you will be assimilated or crushed by a bigger player with a brand and the ability to undercut your prices.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#124

Post by positron26 »

saubeidl wrote: post #100
brentjanderson wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually a term for this, Context Collapse [1] that explores how social media forces everyone to have a single online persona instead of presenting in the way that makes sense for a given social context (e.g. the "you" at work vs. the "you" at school vs. the "you" with family). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse

Google Plus tried fixing that with its "circles" feature. Of course, that never really went anywhere..

Circles was a killer feature. And then I never really used it. In hindsight, any SNS begins as a megaphone and if it can't make statements in culture, it doesn't exist. It's not actually about the individuals. Sure, people want to post things, but they want to be feeding into something that does stuff. I don't think Google ever made that case. It was pure chicken and egg with no ice breakers.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#125

Post by tomasphan »

This is absolutely true and the reason I left a job in software consulting. The future is asking an LLM to write anything for you. It will figure out the tech stack, hosting, integrations etc. “I am looking for an alternative to Discord” is now “make me a Discord clone for my friends and I”.

Quality of the code aside because now it doesn’t have to support millions of users anymore.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#126

Post by sowbug »

overgard wrote: post #112

Nitpick, but having side projects you don’t plan to scale isn’t anything unique to the AI era

The cost-benefit analysis has changed. It's now easier to build something indulgently complex -- something of larger scale than a "side project" -- for just a few people.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#127

Post by Seanambers »

godot wrote: post #14

> Could it be bigger? Sure. But at some point — maybe even before 1,000 people — the vibe breaks. The intimacy evaporates. You stop recognizing names. People talk less because it’s harder to know who’s listening. Growth would make it worse, not better. > > Some things work precisely because they’re small. I'd argue this is true for social networks like Facebook actually. There was a magical period in Facebook between…

At some point, everyone on Facebook realized almost at the same time, that it was no longer a place to share, but a place to compete.

Then everyone basically stopped sharing and started curating.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#128

Post by 101008 »

tomasphan wrote: post #125

This is absolutely true and the reason I left a job in software consulting. The future is asking an LLM to write anything for you. It will figure out the tech stack, hosting, integrations etc. “I am looking for an alternative to Discord” is now “make me a Discord clone for my friends and I”. Quality of the code aside because now it doesn’t have to support millions of users anymore.

I disagree. This existed way before LLM. Open source alternatives to most products are already available. And install them and deploy them is much easier than do it with LLMs, and you get updates, etc.

People don't want the responsability to keep them updated, secured, deployed, etc. Paying a small amount will always be more convenient than to maintain it yourself. The issue was never coding it.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#129

Post by jpgleeson »

Robin Sloan wrote about something similar a few years back. I think this is one of the most positive things to come out of the current cycle - even if things turn out less revolutionary than sold, enabling regular people to produce something small that sparks joy without having to know a language

https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#130

Post by danlugo92 »

saubeidl wrote: post #100
brentjanderson wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually a term for this, Context Collapse [1] that explores how social media forces everyone to have a single online persona instead of presenting in the way that makes sense for a given social context (e.g. the "you" at work vs. the "you" at school vs. the "you" with family). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse

Google Plus tried fixing that with its "circles" feature. Of course, that never really went anywhere..

IG and others have similar functionality nowadays at least.
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