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Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

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Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#251

Post by herodoturtle »

fxtentacle wrote: post #150

"Commoditize your complement" I had hosting issues in many of my companies and consulting projects, running from "WTF is this AWS bill $10k???" to "WTF did our 10gbit/s download just kick Heroku offline?" But people can only appreciate the things I build for them if they are hosted well. So I took the obvious next step and purchased a small struggling hosting company. We then introduced nicer tooling that imitates th…

> "Commoditize your complement"

Great tip - thanks for reminding me about this.

For those of you that are interested, here's Joel Spolsky's really good analysis of this:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#252

Post by throwawaylinux »

urthor wrote: post #211
throwawaylinux wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comments are difficult for me to understand, although you do have a fun and whimsical style! I wasn't taking it as gospel and I agree some engineering outfits are (or at least appear to be) overstaffed or inefficient, and a small number of very driven and talented people can produce some incredible things. But when it comes to making a product it can take a radically larger amount of engineering effort than it w…

Oh well yes I agree. There are problems that genuinely take more people. That said, Palo Alto Semiconductor was hardware, which has a far higher barrier to entry than software engineering does/can.

It was a fabless company so you basically write code and send it off to get built.

There's more details to it, but a single person could write a very small CPU and put it on an FPGA (or ASIC if they have the tools) in a few months.

That's just one example though. There's lots of software examples. Compilers, browsers, OS kernels, database servers, hypervisors. A single person can write any of those, but to make a competitive product it's often a very different story.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#253

Post by herodoturtle »

berkes wrote: post #115
k8sToGo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering, how do you sell a company? It's not like there is an eBay or craigslist for companies, right?

John Warrillow’s book Built to Sell has some good advise. My main takeaway: first ensure the company is optimised for sellability. And your question is answered too: agents. There are people and companies specialized in selling companies. Just like there are people specialized in buying companies.

> John Warrillow’s book Built to Sell has some good advise.

Just want to second this.

I've read several books on this topic. Warrillow's is easily the best.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#254

Post by bentobean »

eej71 wrote: post #194
raverbashing wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the ABCs A - Always B - Be C - Selling That is, seize the opportunities of presenting your work and your company.

I'll be that guy. Actually it's Always Be Closing. Obligatory Glenngary Glen Ross scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7y6EOGY87U&t=104s

Actually, it’s “Always be cobbling.”

https://youtu.be/J_vSirIJEsY

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#255

Post by biztos »

foreigner wrote: post #134
n-e-w wrote: post #109

Honestly, the two best things you can hire once you have some minimal traction are the best lawyer you can afford and the best accountant / business manager you can afford. The third bit of advice is just something you should tattoo inside your eyelids: cash is king. Now, on with the first two. "Hiring the best you can afford" doesn't mean hiring the best brand (Skadden. PwC etc). Find the person with the best techni…

Any more advice for picking a lawyer to someone who doesn't know anything about law? Also if you're bootstrapped how in the world can you afford them?

You probably know people who know people who are good lawyers, but you might not know which. So ask everyone you know.

As for paying, there are some law offices that offer startup-friendly packages and are probably good enough to get you going, at least they should prevent foot-gun mistakes.

And in the SF area you’d be surprised how many people will do stuff for “low fees but equity” if you show any promise.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#256

Post by wizwit999 »

biztos wrote: post #246
wizwit999 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've seen this approach work a lot. I've found https://www.enterpriseready.io is a good resource to learn more about the features that enterprises care about. I'm also working on a solution to make part of this easier, specifically audit logs ( https://apptrail.com ).

Sort of O/T but why the free tier for your service? I would think everyone with a legitimate need for an audit trail is a paying customer, in fact would prefer to pay so there is a contract around the audit trail, and “free tier” would just be a drain on your support resources.

We offer a free trial to encourage developers to easily try out and integrate the product.

Our free tier can cover low TPS usecases. We offer a free tier because we believe audit logs are too hard to build & consume and would love to see even smaller companies adding audit logs to their products.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#257

Post by swalsh »

eej71 wrote: post #194
raverbashing wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the ABCs A - Always B - Be C - Selling That is, seize the opportunities of presenting your work and your company.

I'll be that guy. Actually it's Always Be Closing. Obligatory Glenngary Glen Ross scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7y6EOGY87U&t=104s

Depends on your product. If you're radio shack, sure, always be closing. If you're selling me an essential component of my business, and I expect to have a long term relationship with you... concentrate on the relationship and trust.

I worked for a small startup that won a HUGE contract because the big guy stopped supporting them to their satisfaction. We twisted over backwards to support their needs and they liked that.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#259

Post by superasn »

mrborgen wrote: post #226

Charge for our product. I'm the founder of Scrimba.com, an interactive code-learning platform. We went almost two years from when we launched our very first free course until we launched our very first paid course. In the meanwhile, we planned the "perfect" business model and also pivoted to a Teams-based product for a while. Had I just dared to put up a pricing wall in front of our second course instead, we'd have g…

Sometimes the free product helps you get traction during the initial hard phase of your business when nobody knows your name.

A lot of businesses do this as a growing strategy so don't fully discount the backlinks, leads, social media it gave you.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#260

Post by pavlov »

saimiam wrote: post #210
fxtentacle wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. They were struggling to find enough customers to break even. I had the customers but lacked the hosting knowledge and technology.

Buy my startup @ https://PretzelBox.cc . Jokes aside, PretzelBox is a hosting company aka backend in a box and your comments are giving me a ton of hope.

That’s… not a hosting company though?
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