Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video]

#151

Post by julianeon » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:56 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #16

jumperabg wrote: post #8

Pretty nice, 1 dev 3 team members in total and 1 million users? Are there any other products with such a small team and a huge userbase? Does this scale and when the business requires more coding and technical debt comes how do they manage it?

Instagram and WhatsApp (pre-acquisition) were both pretty legendary for how small their teams were vs how many users their apps had. Instagram had 13 employees, and WhatsApp had 55 employees at the times of their sales.

In Instagram's case I think it was very clear they were "borrowing from the future": they were accumulating a lot of technical debt and continuing to pile it on. It was not sustainable. The goal was to either hire more or get acquired. When the latter happened, the codebase quickly benefitted from the work of many more Facebook engineers.

Re: Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video]

#152

Post by kwakubiney » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:56 PM UTC

She talks about the story on this podcast episode[1]

[1]https://open.spotify.com/episode/5AGrLoFgkYZ0KxLXBOjbwB

Re: Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video]

#153

Post by kbutler » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:57 PM UTC

jumperabg wrote: post #8

Pretty nice, 1 dev 3 team members in total and 1 million users? Are there any other products with such a small team and a huge userbase? Does this scale and when the business requires more coding and technical debt comes how do they manage it?

Minecraft?

Not sure how big it was before Notch hired anyone else, but this reddit post encouraging him to hire somebody says he'd "brought in $67,903,100.72"

https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/kbiuv/notch_youv...

Re: Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video]

#154

Post by tptacek » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

dowager_dan99 wrote: post #43

burkaman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinboard peaked at about 30,000 users: https://x.com/Pinboard/status/1810893626274128048/photo/1

ha! kind of funny to read the comments in this thread and see this at the top of the Pinboard website: Notice (Dec 13): code cleanup continues; please keep reporting bugs to support@pinboard.in

Why?

Re: Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video]

#155

Post by tptacek » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #19

jumperabg wrote: post #8

Pretty nice, 1 dev 3 team members in total and 1 million users? Are there any other products with such a small team and a huge userbase? Does this scale and when the business requires more coding and technical debt comes how do they manage it?

Basecamp has always been a good example of that.

Basecamp has a full-sized team and has for many, many years.

Re: Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video]

#156

Post by rsynnott » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:59 PM UTC

sgt wrote: post #136

rsynnott wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A certain fraction of this website's user base are, and always have been, basically Quark from DS9. Some really bizarre attitudes to women.

Hilarious! But even on DS9, there was room for a Quark.

One, sure. If there had been about 15 per episode, as there are on any threads which so much as imply the existence of FEEEEEMALES here, it would've gotten old.

(There were other Ferengi sometimes, but they were far less strident on this particular matter, in general.)

Re: Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video]

#157

Post by TechDebtDevin » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:00 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #201

[stub for offtopicness] [good grief]

[flagged]

Re: Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video]

#158

Post by TheJoeMan » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:02 PM UTC

open592 wrote: post #46

jumperabg wrote: post #8

Pretty nice, 1 dev 3 team members in total and 1 million users? Are there any other products with such a small team and a huge userbase? Does this scale and when the business requires more coding and technical debt comes how do they manage it?

From a long time ago (~2009) but this comment instantly reminded me of the gem which was Plenty Of Fish https://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture/ "POF has one single employee: the founder and CEO Markus Frind. Makes up to $10 million a year on Google ads working only two hours a day. 30+ Million Hits a Day"

Thank you for sharing! Only issue with the article I see is that "CPM" is already "cost per mille (thousand)". So any lines such as "$15 per CPM" make me hesitate.

Re: Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video]

#159

Post by magnio » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:13 PM UTC

phildenhoff wrote: post #147

StoryGraph is an excellent tool and I continue to use it daily. I’ve also found Hardcover.app, which I quite like. It has an API and a slightly more refined UI, but it’s clearly more than one person working on it. Of course, if your focus is book clubs, Fable is likely the app for you

I also use Hardcover.app, but the community there is tiny compared to Goodreads, with the only possible exception being fantasy readers.

Re: Getting to 2M users as a one woman dev team [video]

#160

Post by OJFord » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 5:13 PM UTC

jumperabg wrote: post #8

Pretty nice, 1 dev 3 team members in total and 1 million users? Are there any other products with such a small team and a huge userbase? Does this scale and when the business requires more coding and technical debt comes how do they manage it?

WhatsApp & Instagram were I think both very small teams with very many users when Facebook bought them (I think was FB not Meta at the time) for very much money.

Which maybe goes some way to your second question, as they were slightly and slowly scaled up versions of solo serving 1M. (And obviously have continued that under FB/Meta with probably now a much less impressive/unusual staff:user ratio.)