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Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

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Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#171

Post by ativzzz »

spockz wrote: post #158
ativzzz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience with a different but similar tool, it follows the pareto principle. It will do 80% of the work very effectively, but as your business grows and you need more niche functionality, you will need a developer to figure out a way to make the platform behave in a way which it doesn't expect, which can be time consuming. So great for MVPs or getting a business bootstrapped quickly and cheaply, but once yo…

I often wonder how much of that 20% of functionality is really needed. What if we as society spend the 80% effort that goes into customising things into building more that uses the readily available features? This is not an argument of quantity over quality. It’s just that I’ve seen so much effort going into doing the last 20% with so little outcome that it has me made skeptical. Of course, for products deeper in the…

I hear what you're saying, but for successful businesses in competitive spaces, those last 5% or even 1% are the sauce that sets your business apart from your competitors. Of course you won't know it is until you build it, but that's what quick mvp cycles and "lean startup" methodology is all about.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#172

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

berkes wrote: post #160
zenbryo wrote: post #16

Great to hear about your success story! However the number one ingredient must have been a good idea to start with. I hope to get the same viral success sometime for one of my projects, but its near impossible to foresee. Just work hard, keep afloat and hope for the best.

The usual warning against 'good idea' as most important ingredient, is apt here. In fact, I read the story as a shout out to perseverence. More than 'an idea'. (Belief in) A good idea can help you persevere, sure. But execution is king. And for that, you need hard work, ability to push through, and perseverance.

Could you then say to succeed you need a good idea and a good implementation of it, along with perserverance &c?

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#173

Post by ddri »

kitcar wrote: post #24

Congrats! Just a heads up, as a semi-happy webflow customer: your customer service chat bot / the way you hide methods to contact customer service is very frustrating. The first time I ran into a technical issue I almost considered just cancelling my account and moving elsewhere because I couldn't figure out how to speak/chat with a human. There are many services I spend less money on monthly that have infinitely bet…

A gentle reminder for anyone reading that "support@[company_name].com" is a pretty safe bet for anyone frustrated with the pattern of using bots or self-service funnels. If you're not sure if that's a valid address, a websearch will help confirmed that. Doing this for webflow results in the first result being:

"We provide email support Monday through Friday. ... We also might need the read-only link to your project and the email associated with your account. To contact our team, please reach out to us directly at support@webflow.com."

I've hit up Webflow support a few times this way (as a SaaS founder I actively avoid chatbots or delayed service funnels) and have found them to be amazingly fast and super detailed in their replies. It's partly what tipped me over to be a customer. In any case, I hope you get a quick reply to your query. And it did make me smile in a "very Hackernews" way that the first reply I saw to this wonderful post was a complaint :P

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#174

Post by Papirola »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #170
ivve wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is webflow better for that use case? Genuinely interested, have avoided using it until now.

I'm not in the target market (as I find coding easier than learning a new UI) but it's something like this: - Select a starter template (free or paid) - Customize text and css, add any elements, the UI is what you would expect from Photoshop or Unity - Add forms / payment forms - Publish on a xxxx.webflow.com domain or on a custom domain (for money) - pay extra if you are using e-commerce features I guess the goal is…

sounds similar to Wix

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#175

Post by spockz »

ativzzz wrote: post #171
spockz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder how much of that 20% of functionality is really needed. What if we as society spend the 80% effort that goes into customising things into building more that uses the readily available features? This is not an argument of quantity over quality. It’s just that I’ve seen so much effort going into doing the last 20% with so little outcome that it has me made skeptical. Of course, for products deeper in the…

I hear what you're saying, but for successful businesses in competitive spaces, those last 5% or even 1% are the sauce that sets your business apart from your competitors. Of course you won't know it is until you build it, but that's what quick mvp cycles and "lean startup" methodology is all about.

Exactly. So such a company should focus their effort on discovering that 1-5% edge and not waste effort going beyond 80% on things like hr/tooling/billing/etc that are irrelevant to (finding?) their value proposition.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#176

Post by Techonomicon »

aerosmile wrote: post #89
Techonomicon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this comment. I don't think this notion gets highlighted enough. This is definitively anecdotal, though I've been at / through approximately 5 startups across 12 years, and looking back, I believe each end everyone one (except for one) was definitely helped / started by a founder or set of founders who didn't have to worry about whether they went belly up or not due to family wealth. Hell, I still know some th…

If you don't come from wealth, please don't be deterred by this and similar narratives. The OP is not referring to any facts or data, just a personal experience, aka n=1. If you're looking for a more reliable guidance in life, look at YC which is n~3,000. If there's anyone who knows where to look for startup success, it's YC - and their search has increasingly shifted towards India, Nigeria and similar countries [1].…

Definitely not meant as a deterrent for anyone. Just stating information I've viewed. That's all.

If anything those coming from backgrounds I didn't list should try to be as involved as possible with startups. Thanks for the alternative take, but nothing stated was meant to deter as much as inform.

We also shouldn't erase potential truths for lack of crowdsourced data. We as a tech community have a large desire to ask for the source, which is great, but double edged.

Relaying information of this sort that I and others brought up is important on the basis of more eyes on the potential problem and looking into the data than not.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#177

Post by Techonomicon »

notatrumper wrote: post #69
Techonomicon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't think there was any weighing in on fairness going on as much as it not being acknowledged enough. I believe, from experience seeing it, many founders who succeed will quote literally everything but their background, upbringing, and privilege as a factor, even though the fact that they had little to worry about while building their empire with respect to you know, the things everyone else has to care about on a…

My impression is that "privilege" has by now taken on that meaning of "unfairness". It seems to be the most common modern use ("check your privilege" and so on). It sounds as if those people don't deserve it. It's a shame, because I think it used to mean exactly the opposite, having a privilege was an honor. Is the phrase "it was a privilege to have known you" still being used?

You should recognize your privilege along with your strengths, and not overtly hide your privilege to appear on equal footing.

I have intimate knowledge with writers, specifically offspring of well known writers who do their best to hide this fact, yet will still use their parents agent. And yes, it is unfair for them to believe they are on equal footing with any other writer.

That doesn't mean they don't try hard, but they do have benefits built into their life that others don't.

If you want to trailblaze without being perceived as someone of privilege getting there then you should take paths that align with that, and not ones that don't.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#178

Post by pembrook »

ivve wrote: post #163
pembrook wrote: post #53

After spending 7+ years in the static site generator world, I recently started using Webflow exclusively for all marketing sites and landing pages and have been blown away with how much better it is than dealing with the complexities of the Static site + Headless CMS ecosystem. It seems you've actually delivered on the vision that dreamweaver was originally trying to create all those years ago. I wouldn't be surprise…

Why is webflow better for that use case? Genuinely interested, have avoided using it until now.

I, like most developers, got swept up in the gatsby/Netlify/contentful hype and have been building marketing sites that way for a few years now (mostly for Saas and startups).

The problems with this approach are many. First, getting set up is a giant pain in the ass. And not just the fact that you have to code everything from scratch, it’s the build process headaches, fixing the shitty SEO defaults of the static site generator, fighting over whatever hot CSS framework to use(its 2021 so tailwind now!!), etc. Then hooking the site up to a headless CMS is another big nightmare—-and then training your team how to use it is another.

And that’s just the beginning. Guess what happens when your team(or you) wants to update the marketing site (happens all the time)? You have to go through the nightmare all over again, fix some inevitable build process errors, re-learn how everything works, re-hook up contentful to the new content models, retrain the team again, etc.

Contrast this to the Webflow approach. I built the entire site in a day and haven’t had to touch the marketing site since. Our designer owns it completely now and has already done 2 complete redesigns in the time it would take me to do a small update the old way.

Our copywriter logs directly into Webflow when he wants to change the copy, the designer builds new landing pages for marketing initiatives in a day, and I never get bugged by the marketing team to “update this small thing” since they own it now.

Honestly, I now think the entire static site ecosystem is designed for developers to set up a personal blog using whatever front-end framework they think is “cool” at the time and never add content to it.

I would guess 98% of gatsby/Hugo/etc sites have less than 10 posts on them. And of those sites, there’s a 78% chance the only post is “how I rebuilt this site in Gatsby”

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#179

Post by pembrook »

Papirola wrote: post #174
jokethrowaway wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in the target market (as I find coding easier than learning a new UI) but it's something like this: - Select a starter template (free or paid) - Customize text and css, add any elements, the UI is what you would expect from Photoshop or Unity - Add forms / payment forms - Publish on a xxxx.webflow.com domain or on a custom domain (for money) - pay extra if you are using e-commerce features I guess the goal is…

sounds similar to Wix

I'd put Wix, squarespace, etc. in a different category. They are classic sandboxed site builders, you can only do as much as they allow you to.

Webflow is like a modern version of Frontpage/Dreamweaver that actually spits out modern, semantic HTML and sane CSS. You start from scratch and can build anything with it. It's actually hard to use if you don't understand how HTML/CSS works, because the UI is basically just a faster way to do front-end code.

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