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The golden era of being an open startup is gone

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Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#21

Post by wolverine876 »

xyzelement wrote: post #11

The world is a competitive place and we are seeing some folks lose their innocence. If what you are doing is a real business, then given the choice to protect your business or aspiring to be "open" (but with no benefit, just risk") - you focus on the business. It's really no different than releasing too much of your secret sauce as open source - can only hurt you and is a sign you aren't that mature about what runnin…

People like to say something that's more harsh or cruel or greedy - almost any negative human trait - is more 'real', a sort of reactionary assertion, which assumes liberalism (used broadly) as 'unreal', fantastical, a silly dream. People like to say that about 'realist' international relations, but the truth is that countries that do good attract more allies and friends.

But the truth is that people balance interests all the time, including businesses. Every decision balances many interests, some involving profit, some involving doing good. That is just as real, just as common a trait in humans.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#22

Post by safety1st »

reidjs wrote: post #2

I don't really agree or maybe I have misunderstood the author's thesis here. Is he saying it's harder to grow a business by building in the open nowadays because so many people have already done it, so now consumers are weary of it? Or is he upset that many of these companies that were once open have stopped being open once they found success? Just because many established companies have stopped doing it, doesn't mea…

This Damon Chen guy seems like a nice guy but like an independent journalist or something. He seems like he could be a great evangelist.

He started some websites, wrote about Open Startups, and in this article he mentions he had his own 'revenue bar' on Twitter which went from $0 to $1 but he took it down because the age of Open Startups is over.

I look at all this and wonder where the actual dudes going to work at jobs are (no disrespect to those Open Startups who have made bank).

I am an entrepreneur so here is what the job looks like to me. I get up every day and I grind. Mostly that means working on new deals. I close as many of those as I can. When I have time I will call someone on my product team and ask them to walk me through what we're working on delivering next. I have a lot of feedback on that stuff because I come from a product background, but if I indulge that too much, I won't spend enough time on sales.

Sometimes I will look at what the couple of Ops contractors I have on payroll are doing (accounting HR etc.), and spot check their work for issues.

I don't know how any entrepreneur has the time to be off working on "movements." Some of the businesses in his post have higher ARR than me so maybe there's something for me to learn here. But in my reality being an entrepreneur basically means you're closing sales, making deals to increase your distribution, and trying to keep your product or service on track. I just don't get it. Maybe I'm getting old.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#23

Post by xyzelement »

wolverine876 wrote: post #21
xyzelement wrote: post #11

The world is a competitive place and we are seeing some folks lose their innocence. If what you are doing is a real business, then given the choice to protect your business or aspiring to be "open" (but with no benefit, just risk") - you focus on the business. It's really no different than releasing too much of your secret sauce as open source - can only hurt you and is a sign you aren't that mature about what runnin…

People like to say something that's more harsh or cruel or greedy - almost any negative human trait - is more 'real', a sort of reactionary assertion, which assumes liberalism (used broadly) as 'unreal', fantastical, a silly dream. People like to say that about 'realist' international relations, but the truth is that countries that do good attract more allies and friends. But the truth is that people balance interest…

Yup sure and I don't disagree.

And I think the connection to "liberalism" is a good point.

The difference is "doing something virtuous rather than maximizing revenue" vs "doing things that will clearly make your business/country unsustainable"

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#25

Post by andygcook »

xyzelement wrote: post #11

The world is a competitive place and we are seeing some folks lose their innocence. If what you are doing is a real business, then given the choice to protect your business or aspiring to be "open" (but with no benefit, just risk") - you focus on the business. It's really no different than releasing too much of your secret sauce as open source - can only hurt you and is a sign you aren't that mature about what runnin…

I wouldn't say there was no real benefit and only risk to being an "open startup". Sharing what you're doing and how it works is a marketing strategy, pure and simple. Up until recently, it was a low effort, high reward marketing channel to sell to other founders. Now with ruthless competition and the ease of cloning a service, it is becoming low value and even risky.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#26

Post by pffft8888 »

It’s not being an Open Startup that kills your chances. If you have an insurrmountable business advantage (it’s who you know, not what you know) and you keep the how-to details of your solution hidden behind a generic description where the solution is really hard to pull off well, being open only helps you. Firstly, by using idiots who would steal your idea to create buzz in the market for you as they pitch their silly me-too, and secondly by inspiring confidence and showing lack of insecurity, with clarity and transparency. I mean you can’t rely on NDAs anyway. Why act in fear unless what you’re doing is just run of the mill and you have no particular advantage.

I also argue that there is no net advantage to Apple's secrecy. If they had openly talked about the M1 (Apple Silicon) when they were working on it they would have just had more mindshare and the whole Apple ecosystem could have been preparing for it. By staying silent until they released it, it bought them nothing other than the element of surprise, which is like when little children don't want you to see what they're working on, in case you would take over their creative process, and instead want to surprise you with their brilliance.

I very much doubt that secrecy in the absence of insecurity has any value.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#27

Post by bordercases »

pffft8888 wrote: post #26

It’s not being an Open Startup that kills your chances. If you have an insurrmountable business advantage (it’s who you know, not what you know) and you keep the how-to details of your solution hidden behind a generic description where the solution is really hard to pull off well, being open only helps you. Firstly, by using idiots who would steal your idea to create buzz in the market for you as they pitch their sil…

It in the absence of insecurity, it preserves security.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#28

Post by isthisthingon99 »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #12
isthisthingon99 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peldi (Balsamiq) did this well, but in reality it was all pretend. He pretended like had this massive groundswell of people who loved his app but it was an incredibly well-executed PR campaign and he deserves mad props for it. He didn't make it clear at the time, but eventually it came out. Of course, people did love his app but he engineered that incredibly well. So if being open makes sense for PR, do it, but learn…

Was there a twitter thread about this or something? I'd love to read more. I actually don't think I've heard the name Balsamiq in 10 years

No, I was just obsessed with how he did it, so I swallowed every piece of info I could've until it was clear. It was manufactured, which is the best approach.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#29

Post by elefanten »

xyzelement wrote: post #23
wolverine876 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to say something that's more harsh or cruel or greedy - almost any negative human trait - is more 'real', a sort of reactionary assertion, which assumes liberalism (used broadly) as 'unreal', fantastical, a silly dream. People like to say that about 'realist' international relations, but the truth is that countries that do good attract more allies and friends. But the truth is that people balance interest…

Yup sure and I don't disagree. And I think the connection to "liberalism" is a good point. The difference is "doing something virtuous rather than maximizing revenue" vs "doing things that will clearly make your business/country unsustainable"

Appreciate the upthread perspectives from you both.

One thought that came to mind is that these are, in some sense, concentric frameworks that rely on each other: a society’s values, a political economy’s priorities and affordances, and how business is conducted.

Gut level, I feel that the social and political pieces circumscribe how business can viably be run. So, I can see a (perhaps very presently-rooted) perspective that we should strive to uphold and/or fight for certain goals and outcomes on the higher levels, but that pragmatically running a business within the existing (functioning, even if dysfunctional) framework may not allow the same opportunities as trying to evolve the sociopolitical.

Going further out on a limb, the higher levels evolve more slowly — often intergenerationally - and that makes it hard to see (or remember) which rules interact with which kinds of trade-offs.

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