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I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

coinerella.com

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Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#211

Post by bdcravens »

palata wrote: post #187
snayan wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume your circle is mostly tech people? Outside that bubble, it's pretty obvious. People just want easy, don't understand security in many cases, it's the simplest path. Even absent the above. Imagine a signup flow. I can either click or I can go through a manual flow with input fields. The former is much faster than the latter. It surprises you people choose the path of least resistance?

It does not surprise me that people choose the path of least resistance. I find it sad that they happily connect everything to Google/Apple. What surprises me is that it is a "conversion killer". So if you ask people to create an account, it's sooooo very hard for them that they will just leave. And spend the next 30 minutes scrolling TikTok, I guess?

Probably suggests that the service is less valuable to them than TikTok.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#212

Post by jlokier »

palata wrote: post #194
hnarn wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't get why people love this. I wonder if there will ever come a day where the average HN user actually understands how normal people use technology. Just observe anyone in your social circle that does not "care" about technology and you'll see their reaction to a login prompt when trying, not rarely under time pressure, to access a service they haven't used for a while. They will sigh, maybe roll their ey…

> I wonder if there will ever come a day where the average HN user actually understands how normal people use technology. Well, I wouldn't say I don't understand it. If someone uses their smartphone as a hammer, regularly break it and regularly buy a new smartphone, I understand what they are doing. I just don't understand why they are doing it, I guess? In this case, the post says that it's a conversion killer. So p…

Both available choices "share the information with Google" for most people. The majority of email account creations use a Gmail or Google Workspace address, so Google gets the information either way, and in Europe most use Android so can't sign in with Apple.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#213

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

rithdmc wrote: post #140
palata wrote: post #49

> Your users expect "Sign in with Google" and "Sign in with Apple." You can add email/password and passkeys, but removing social logins entirely is a conversion killer. I know this is true, but I genuinely don't understand it. I want email/password and passkey, I will always go out of my way to avoid "Sign in with ...". I just don't get why people love this.

HN is going to skew towards people with password managers & concerns about vendors locking you out. I think most people just want low friction - be that 'Sign in with', or passwordless-based authentication like 404media (you want to sign in? You've been emailed a code)

> passwordless-based authentication like 404media (you want to sign in? You've been emailed a code)

How is this low friction to manually copy/paste a code from email as opposed to allow a password manager to log me in automatically?! This kind of authentication is the stupid current trend I hate the most TBH.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#214

Post by bdcravens »

palata wrote: post #192
apexalpha wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My email goes to the same company I can login with so might as well tap the button.

But if there is no Google/Apple button, will you just leave? Like not even create an account? That's what "conversion killer" means.

I may start to create an account, but after about 30 seconds of effort, I'll start asking myself if it's really a service I care about. Send me an email? If it's not there by the time I click my email tab, odds are pretty good I won't wait around unless it's a truly compelling offering. Want me to fill out a form? If it's anything more than just an email and a password field my password manager can complete for, again, I'll question whether I want you to have that info about me.

So no, I may not leave, but each tiny bit of friction increases the possibility of abandonment. From the perspective of conversion, abandonment is the same as "just leaving".

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#215

Post by dwedge »

thecopy wrote: post #177

Super timely - thank you! Im in the process of moving the entire stack of my SaaS* fully in EU as well. Hetzner bare-metal, Talos k8s, OVH Object Storage for backups, self-hosted (for now) image repo. For now im still on Cloudflare for CDN, but bunny looks interesting. Using GitOps (FluxCD) as deployment strategy enables no dependencies on e.g. GitHub Actions. For one thing running on bare-metal @ Hetzner is insane v…

Unless I'm mistaken you can install hetzner from ISO allowing you to use LUKS. You could use teng/clevis to allow it to automatically unlock (or refuse to, given certain conditions)

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#216

Post by adamas »

znnajdla wrote: post #190
fsflover wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple doesn’t control my production setup https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114

You can setup a Mac without an Apple ID. To be honest iCloud is garbage. Almost all Mac App Store apps are available without the App Store.

And I don't see an advantage to have an Apple ID setup if you want a Mac Mini Server. All things you might need are downloable through brew.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#217

Post by dwedge »

samrus wrote: post #164

Its a really good sign that this worked out at all. And the takeaways are enlightening - EU domain registrars might have some bullshit under the hood making the same TLDs more expensive. Might need to investigate - eu needs its own mobile app ecosystem, easy auth, and genAI offerings - - but interested to see why mistral wasnt feasible - other things need to be scaled up to have the community and maturity to function…

Have you tried Mistral? Admittedly I've only used it twice but I was disappointed. It feels like comparing openoffice to word 20 years ago - does the job but at an obvious compromise

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#218

Post by b112 »

Sammi wrote: post #178
Daegalus wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, I would only switch from Bunny if they allow IPv6-only origin servers and route IPv4 traffic to it. Also no pricing and a "Talk to sales" only link. Which usually means super expensive, or B2B only. I pay like 10 cents a month on Bunny something

Ah yeah I see CDN77 has no signup button and just says "Talk to sales" instead. That's not helpful to small self hosters.

Even for big corp.

When I see "talk to sales" I just move on. I don't have time to waste on that.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#219

Post by s_dev »

palata wrote: post #49

> Your users expect "Sign in with Google" and "Sign in with Apple." You can add email/password and passkeys, but removing social logins entirely is a conversion killer. I know this is true, but I genuinely don't understand it. I want email/password and passkey, I will always go out of my way to avoid "Sign in with ...". I just don't get why people love this.

> I just don't get why people love this.

For a single personal user it's only a small bit of friction but if you're in charge of 30 people SSO is a godsend for boring compliance work and managing groups of people. You want to change a domain in the company not a big deal. Don't have to rotate passwords every quarter, need to restrict an employee from a service etc. You aren't imagining other challenges other than your own here.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#220

Post by bdcravens »

lbourdages wrote: post #201

AWS does have a European sovereign cloud now: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/opening-the-aws-european-so... Now how bulletproof it is in practice will be tested in years to come, I'm sure. But it seems to be using the same model as AWS in China where a local company licenses and operates the software from AWS.

The Chinese version of AWS isn't the full offering, offering less than 1/3 of the services. ESC appears to be more complete, but it's not a third party local company, but rather, a walled-off subsidy of AWS in Germany.
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