Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

2M users but no money in the bank

exercism.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 367 posts

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#341

Post by ASalazarMX »

RecycledEle wrote: post #339
xrd wrote: post #53

This is one of the saddest posts I've read in a long time. I love exercism. It's beautiful, works in the browser and from CLI. The lessons are really well designed. It's the perfect coding school environment. So, I'm sad it isn't viable. But, I think I am really saddened by the comments here, second guessing all the decisions they made. If I were to second guess the people behind most of the comments, I would assume…

When your Internet-site-based business can no longer afford to pay its bills, start charing and lock out everyone who does not pay. Maybe you can reopen a free tier later, but for now you are in panic mode.

"7,500 users, but a bit of money in the bank because the server bills are somewhat lower"

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#342

Post by belter »

smt88 wrote: post #162
insane_dreamer wrote: post #117

Congratulations on a very successful platform! (Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $). You've probably thought of this, but it might be easier to charge a very small amount -- say $1/month, which most people even students, could afford, rather than rely on donations. If you get 1% of users paying that, it's still $20K month which is more than you're getting now. (Of course managing the payments themselves…

> Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $ What? No. If a business isn't able to sustain itself with its revenue, it has failed and will need to shut down. That's the definition of failure. Lots of things can be "successful" by your metric by using unsustainable pricing.

You do know Twitter never made a profit, right? And Lyft is 14 years old and is not profitable...And GitLab does not make money...And Zillow is not profitable...And Snap is not profitable.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#343

Post by IshKebab »

Oras wrote: post #21

I'm just thinking out loud here, but for 2 million users learning to code and improving their skills, there is a chance they want to change jobs or are already looking for one. Have you thought of adding a hiring feature? Where people upload their CVs, and companies search (anonymously) for talent? There is a hiring model called PPA (Pay Per Application), or monthly fees to search CVs. Your unique selling point would…

Maybe, but as a company a place that appears to be designed to teach beginners how to code isn't where I'd want to look for candidates.

I would look to reduce server costs instead. $7k/month for 2 million users seems like a lot. Do they execute your code on their servers? I couldn't really tell from their website.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#344

Post by chrisandchris »

happyopossum wrote: post #328
xrd wrote: post #53

This is one of the saddest posts I've read in a long time. I love exercism. It's beautiful, works in the browser and from CLI. The lessons are really well designed. It's the perfect coding school environment. So, I'm sad it isn't viable. But, I think I am really saddened by the comments here, second guessing all the decisions they made. If I were to second guess the people behind most of the comments, I would assume…

> I would assume no one has ever run a business with payroll Or maybe they have and therefore know you can’t sustain a “business” without collecting money to pay for your expenses?

I think we passed the 2020s and in 2024, nobody asks "how will we sustain this" nd just hopes that a VC will give them x$ which ... will them just buy... time.

Yes, I have deep respect for the people building such a site for the better good, but asking the "how will we sustain this" from Day 1 is important (not even how to get rich, just how to get break-even).

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#345

Post by chrisandchris »

belter wrote: post #342
smt88 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $ What? No. If a business isn't able to sustain itself with its revenue, it has failed and will need to shut down. That's the definition of failure. Lots of things can be "successful" by your metric by using unsustainable pricing.

You do know Twitter never made a profit, right? And Lyft is 14 years old and is not profitable...And GitLab does not make money...And Zillow is not profitable...And Snap is not profitable.

And that does make it the correct approach somehow? How will this business continue to exist in 1, 2, 5 years?

Someone has to pay (paid) for this business a.k.a. is actively loosing money.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#346

Post by rospaya »

Lionga wrote: post #163
stavros wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to armchair ops your decisions, but maybe do consider moving to some dedicated Hetzner servers, at least for the runners. You can probably reduce that cost tenfold relatively simply.

Move everything to Hetzner (or the like) at double the capacity that AWS has on average and you still spend about 10% of what you spend on AWS. That is how stupid costly AWS is and 99% of people using AWS are wasting money like there is now tomorrow.

> 99% of people using AWS are wasting money like there is now tomorrow

Why do you think that is? Are that many people that dumb or are there other reasons they use managed cloud?

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#347

Post by Cpoll »

Lionga wrote: post #165
pico303 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $7500 jumped out at me, but for a different reason. This seems awfully high for a site with 2 million registered users. I feel like some backend optimization could get than number way down ($1000/mo?). What is all this computing power going towards?

It is going straight to Jeff Bezos pocket selling them servers at at 10 to 20 times markup then reasonable

> 10 to 20 times markup

I don't want to argue that AWS is cheap, but I call hyperbole here. Where can I find an m5.large (2 core 3.1GHz CPU, 8GiB RAM, 10Gbps network, $70/month) for $7 USD a month?

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#348

Post by intelVISA »

ihid wrote: post #71
xrd wrote: post #53

This is one of the saddest posts I've read in a long time. I love exercism. It's beautiful, works in the browser and from CLI. The lessons are really well designed. It's the perfect coding school environment. So, I'm sad it isn't viable. But, I think I am really saddened by the comments here, second guessing all the decisions they made. If I were to second guess the people behind most of the comments, I would assume…

Thank you for being so kind and supportive. I really appreciate your comment. I'm ok. I'm hopeful for the future. I believe there's lots of amazing stuff we can do and that Exercism has a great future. But right now it's in a hard, low place. The last few months have been pretty tough emotionally, but I think getting to this place is one of acceptance. The only direction now is up :)

You've built something great that 2M enjoy, remember that!

Fwiw moving away from AWS would probably get that bill from 7500 to 750pcm or lower. Cloud is very expensive if you've not made special arrangements or can burn VC money/free credits for your org.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#349

Post by mvkel »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #299
mvkel wrote: post #298

Adsense alone would more than cover this. Of the 2M users, guessing the MAU is much lower, which would render the ad model non viable. Still always sucks to see solid products rendered unsupportable

> Adsense alone would more than cover this. God please no. This is already dreadfully normalized and the web is utterly drowning in low-effort link spam, dick pills, cryptocurrency and hot Russian singles. I can't think of anything sadder than taking this lovely product and letting Google piss all over it.

> I can't think of anything sadder

I can

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#350

Post by NohatCoder »

Cpoll wrote: post #347
Lionga wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is going straight to Jeff Bezos pocket selling them servers at at 10 to 20 times markup then reasonable

> 10 to 20 times markup I don't want to argue that AWS is cheap, but I call hyperbole here. Where can I find an m5.large (2 core 3.1GHz CPU, 8GiB RAM, 10Gbps network, $70/month) for $7 USD a month?

The plain servers aren't that bad, but then they get some extra billing in. Traffic is pretty nuts, if you sustain sending on that 10 Gb/s link it will cost you approx $160000 per month.

Then there are all the services that ain't plain servers, those are generally priced at at least a 10x markup, some of them much more than that.

Post reply on HN