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After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

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Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#21
$235K ? Yeah, erm, sure you're not missing a few zeros at the end of that ?

First people want well written software that has ongoing support and updates. $235K will barely get you to a workable beta version that competes with the Adobe suite.

Secondly, that's a hell of a risk calling yourself "Abode" and having a logo that could be argued to be "confusingly similar". Even if Adobe don't take you to court over it, they could still easily make you rack up $235K in out-of-court lawyers fees.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#22

Remember those "day in the life of a Google Project Manager" videos, where they do nothing but hang out on Zoom meetings and pig out on free food and snacks? Yeah, in many cases, those folks make roughly $235k/year. (And consume another $100k/year in lobster, shrimp, smoothies, and snickers bars.) $235k is absolutely nothing for software development, and you probably won't be able to hire even one talented developer…

In most countries for the majority of developers, $235k is a LOT of money and enough to finance a startup for the first two years or so with 2 developers.

There is this romantic notion that the huge company gets it all wrong and a couple of guys in a garage with the right approach can dethrone them. The Apple story all over again. This success story is actually exceedingly rare in practice despite how much we like it.

But Abode isn't even that. They appear to want to create what Adobe creates, but with a small team. Something many other companies have failed to do with bigger teams and more funding. It's basically competing with Adobe at Adobe's game, but with a tiny fraction of the resources. Well, good luck to them, but meanwhile expect to pay Adobe's tax for a few years still...

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#23

Remember those "day in the life of a Google Project Manager" videos, where they do nothing but hang out on Zoom meetings and pig out on free food and snacks? Yeah, in many cases, those folks make roughly $235k/year. (And consume another $100k/year in lobster, shrimp, smoothies, and snickers bars.) $235k is absolutely nothing for software development, and you probably won't be able to hire even one talented developer…

This type of attitude is exactly why silicon valley is primed for failure The bloat and the expense of silicon valley is going to be their downfall. plenty of regions in the US and other nations have many talented developers that are willing to work for far less and make a far better product than what you get for silicon valley wages

> other nations have many talented developers

Yes there are other nations that have talented developers. But anywhere that has genuinely talented developers, the developers will still want a decent salary.

I'm not going to name names, but if you are thinking about the "outsourcing nations", then I don't know about you, but I think most of us here have experienced the poor quality coding output from those developers. The Quality Control simply is not there, normally because the company doing the outsourcing is too cheap to pay for proper supervision and quality control.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of attitude is exactly why silicon valley is primed for failure The bloat and the expense of silicon valley is going to be their downfall. plenty of regions in the US and other nations have many talented developers that are willing to work for far less and make a far better product than what you get for silicon valley wages

> other nations have many talented developers Yes there are other nations that have talented developers. But anywhere that has genuinely talented developers, the developers will still want a decent salary. I'm not going to name names, but if you are thinking about the "outsourcing nations", then I don't know about you, but I think most of us here have experienced the poor quality coding output from those developers.…

Sure but a decent salary is far different from "235k/year. (And consume another $100k/year in lobster, shrimp, smoothies, and snickers bars.)"

If You can't see that there is a middle ground between impoverished wages and what was quoted above that I can't help you

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#26
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most countries for the majority of developers, $235k is a LOT of money and enough to finance a startup for the first two years or so with 2 developers.

There is this romantic notion that the huge company gets it all wrong and a couple of guys in a garage with the right approach can dethrone them. The Apple story all over again. This success story is actually exceedingly rare in practice despite how much we like it. But Abode isn't even that. They appear to want to create what Adobe creates, but with a small team. Something many other companies have failed to do with…

Everyone misses that Adobe is not whatever software they are selling, they are that and a modern 16 deck luxury cruise ship completely loaded with marketing professionals. It's not only the software that has to be beat but that gargantuan marketing machine. It's that marketing machine that wins software battles these days - it sure ain't the software, as too much of it is not what the marketing claims.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most countries for the majority of developers, $235k is a LOT of money and enough to finance a startup for the first two years or so with 2 developers.

There is this romantic notion that the huge company gets it all wrong and a couple of guys in a garage with the right approach can dethrone them. The Apple story all over again. This success story is actually exceedingly rare in practice despite how much we like it. But Abode isn't even that. They appear to want to create what Adobe creates, but with a small team. Something many other companies have failed to do with…

It is however true that the friction, internal bureaucracy and absence of accountability makes large companies typically slow and delivering far inferior products and services than the talent they employ are capable of.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most countries for the majority of developers, $235k is a LOT of money and enough to finance a startup for the first two years or so with 2 developers.

Maybe, if you're surviving on Ramen. That said, I wouldn't want to go up against Adobe with a team of two Ramen-fueled developers in Bulgaria. I don't doubt you can make a cell phone app for that money, but something that would compete with Adobe's incredibly polished and well-funded software suite... I'm thinking the odds aren't good at all.

$100k salary puts you in the top 5% of the society in Bulgaria. I wouldn't call that being "Ramen-fueled". I don't want people to get wrong ideas.

I agree with you that $235K is a small budget to build a serious software though.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#30

Remember those "day in the life of a Google Project Manager" videos, where they do nothing but hang out on Zoom meetings and pig out on free food and snacks? Yeah, in many cases, those folks make roughly $235k/year. (And consume another $100k/year in lobster, shrimp, smoothies, and snickers bars.) $235k is absolutely nothing for software development, and you probably won't be able to hire even one talented developer…

I use Gimp, Inkscape, Blender, ... Except blender the others don't have any funding near those 250k and yet they compete very well to Adobe (I know many would deny that, but for me they do)

Money alone doesn't make good software.

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