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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

#51

Important: This is not VC funding. This is a Kickstarter project [1]. Honestly, this feels like a scam. Their logo and name is stupidly similar to Adobe which would obviously result in trademark lawsuit. I think they are just scrounging up money from the Kickstarter and will just disappear after a while. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/culturehustle/abode-a-s...

You could have read the whole article, then you wouldn't have missed this paragraph:

"The other, perhaps more urgent issue is the threat of Adobe’s legal department. The marketing and branding of the software looked a little too on the nose for the multi-billion dollar company to ignore. Semple says he’s ready should Adobe decide to flex its legal muscle.

“I have lawyers, and I’ve taken advice. We have solid plans in place. I would also point out that nobody has seen the final branding and no software that infringes on any of Adobe’s trademarks has been produced,” he says.

Examples of the software icons Abode displayed on its Kickstarter. “I have successfully challenged IP owned by Tiffany and Co, Pantone, Mattel, and others over the years. I feel we have a good and thorough understanding of where the legal line is and an ability to get as close to that as possible without overstepping it.”"

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

#52

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…

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.

If that dev can't even put a dollar sign in the right place, then I'm not sure the quality is everything you claim.

Attention to detail matters. Especially in coding.

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

#53
> WHO’S BEHIND IT?

> I’m Stuart Semple, I’m an artist and an activist. I come from the contemporary art world and have had several exhibitions around the world.

> More relevant to this is the fact I’ve been working with technology my whole life. I studied advanced art and design, and I have been using well-known software tools since the 90s.

> I’ve found an amazingly passionate team of geeks

> To make amazing word class software costs money. There’s no point doing this unless it’s really really good. The geeks are being extremely generous but they will need to be paid. So your pledge is going to be used to make sure they can live whilst they do the work.

> You can expect:

> ONdesign - a familiar and fully featured Desktop publishing application > illustrateIT - a vector drawing and illustration package, with all the bits you love using > photoPOP - photo editing > Impress - super-fast mobile app, full of templates.

I don't think the artist/activist with no business experience, programming ability, who has found "a team of geeks" will succeed in building a full replacement of the Adobe suite.

The extent of this endeavor seems to be the thought "I feel like Adobe products should be cheaper than they are. They must only be expensive because of capitalism" and then the creation of a kickstarter grift.

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

#54
post #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.

but the guy who started this kickstarter obviously does not feel that Gimp, Inkscape, Paint.net... are good enough, or he would not plan to build new tools.

So a zillion people working on gimp could not do it, while a handful with 250k in funding can?

This is performance art, not a project.

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

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. If that dev can't even put a dollar sign in the right place, then I'm not sure the quality is everything you claim. Attention to detail matters. Especially in coding.

Different conventions exist. Personally, I put the unit after the quantity without exception.

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

#56
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck taking on Adobe with 2 engineers.

Well Figma started eating their lunch in 2015 having started with a 4 millions seed round and 15 employees for two years so it’s clearly is doable to take on Adobe with far less money that they themselves spend provided your offer is good.

Please man, use your brain at least a little bit.

$235k and 2 engineers is completely different to $4M and 15 employees. Not to mention that it was 5-7yrs before Figma had any revenue.

"While Figma was founded in 2011, the first five years were spent trying to get to product. The company printed its first dollar in revenue in 2017 and will hit $400 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2022"

https://futurumgroup.com/insights/adobes-stock-got-slammed-f...

Figma is an outlier. "it's clearly doable to take on Adobe with far less money", he says about one of the fastest growing decacorn startups in history.

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

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. If that dev can't even put a dollar sign in the right place, then I'm not sure the quality is everything you claim. Attention to detail matters. Especially in coding.

Different conventions exist. Personally, I put the unit after the quantity without exception.

Yeah, I always found this to be an utterly strange convention. Do you say, "that'll be dollars one hundred", when you tell someone a price? Would you write, "I'm lbs200"?

I suppose it does give away the cultural difference, but this is one where the Indians (and a lot of others) get it right.

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

#58

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…

Meh. You can get a good developer for 50-150k without lobster. You can't force them to all live in san francisco but I could hire two devs and have some marketing money left over with 235k with a year and a half ramp.

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

#59

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.…

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

[deleted]

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

#60

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…

> 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.

That's a very much extreme statement I think you confabulated. Take this developer median data from back in 2020 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1222324/developers-media... and reanalyze your statement.

And also compared to https://www.reinisfischer.com/average-monthly-salary-europea... where 60k euros a year tends to be above the average monthly salary in many EU countries. And if a junior doesn't get out of bed for less than that, well I have some bad news for them and their expectations.

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