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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

#41
Really confused by this.. $235K is not nearly enough to make even one of these apps. Unless they can get devs to work for free it's not happening.

Also Affinity exists, their suite has basically the same apps as they claim they will build, they have one-time very reasonably priced licenses. The only potential difference is that you need to pay for major version updates, from 1 to 2 took a bit under 10 years if I'm not mistaken.

Affinity has allowed me to not use Adobe for a long time, (until they bought Figma.. but well).

And it seems odd to me to clone very old software in a world that has evolved.

Anyway, always pro having more options, so good luck to them!

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

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> If You can't see that there is a middle ground between ... I can see a middle ground. Most people would probably name it as Europe. And you would have to go looking in Eastern Europe. And I think you would find, if you are lucky, that a competent European junior-ish developer would not get out of bed for less than 60k Euros (65k USD), a more senior developer would demand more. And you need more than one or two deve…

I'm not sure why you're comparing the cost of one SV dev with the cost of a while business unit in Europe.

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

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

I'll name it. You need at least 25000$ to hire a "decent" Software Dev and 50k for Senior Dev in India. They can produce much better output compared to US counterparts both in terms of Quantity and Quality. The hiring needs to be direct or else the "agency" will eat most of the money and give you 3000$/yr "senior" devs further perpetuating the stereotypes. With 235k, you can make an incredible 5 people team + cloud c…

do you expect a year of 5 stellar devs will be enough to re-implement photoshop?

I am doubtful.

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

#45
A lot of people continue to use Adobe, no matter how much they rip them off, because there is no alternative, for better or worse, and when someone somewhere says they are going to make apps that can compete with Adobe, I don't think professional quality apps will actually be developed.

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

#46
I get and appreciate the joke but...

- $235k is sweet FA

- Going after Goliath out of gate is a rookie mistake. Niche down as tight as possible. They should be looking for niche Adobe is missing and then continue for there. Don't compete with Adobe. Instead, move into a blue ocean with as little competition as possible.

It'll be interesting to watch but that funding needs a zero or two added to the end.

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

#47

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…

Well, no. If everything is open source, $235K is good for perks and incentives - and to ensure that the project is alive and active. People will do a whole lot when the incentive is not the paycheck.

It's not open source

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

#48
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…

> Something many other companies have failed to do with bigger teams and more funding.

Even well-established companies once Adobe decides it wants in.

Remember QuarkXPress ?

It was THE desktop publishing software. Anybody who was anybody would use it. They had the monopoly.

Then along came Adobe with InDesign ... Quark are still around, but a shadow of their former shelves.

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

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

I'll name it. You need at least 25000$ to hire a "decent" Software Dev and 50k for Senior Dev in India. They can produce much better output compared to US counterparts both in terms of Quantity and Quality. The hiring needs to be direct or else the "agency" will eat most of the money and give you 3000$/yr "senior" devs further perpetuating the stereotypes. With 235k, you can make an incredible 5 people team + cloud c…

Its not the skill of the developers thats the problem with offshoring. Its the communication breakdown and difficulty of specifying what you actually want built.

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

#50
post #2

Inkscape and Graphite have contributors...can the whole community be galvanized behind 'the one to rule them all'?

I haven't heard of Graphite. But yeah, Inkscape, Gimp, Dark Table, Blender, etc. World class programs. There's no need for this.
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