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The golden era of being an open startup is gone

testimonial.to

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Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#61

Post by damechen »

schnebbau wrote: post #44
joelfried wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it matters when you attempt to use your own social backing to boost someone else. That you're a commenter who has been around since 2018 who is also an "an ambitious full-stack software engineer, with a deep passion for design, user interface and front-end engineering"[1] is definitely a point in your favor, though. What made you personally feel so strongly about the original author? Your reasoning is more…

Who are you to make those kinds of statements?

lol

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#62

Post by serf »

GuillaumeBrdet wrote: post #55
conductr wrote: post #52

> The main reason behind my decision is that I used to share the revenue to track my solo journey. Now with someone else on my team, it’s no longer my personal milestone anymore. I somehow have to be responsible for the whole team. Interesting how when revenue was likely equating to profit, they are open to sharing. When they have to pay someone else to help out, they want it to be a secret. I don't think the motivat…

Hey, G here, CMO at testimonial.to. There's still plenty of profits left each month, that's not the reason! In one sentence, he just no longer believes in sharing every core metrics but still plans to build in public.

>In one sentence, he just no longer believes in sharing every core metrics

...which seems to be for the reason the parent mentions?

"We're open until we're not." isn't "open".

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#63

Post by jratkevic »

I think the path in technology for open technology-based startups no longer looks like it used to for a lot of reasons - financial, maturity of online users, and more. We have really crossed a point where building a startup from scratch - without a strategic VC, ability to share customers with an established player in the market or ability to build on top of another company's technology/platform - is just not possible. The fabled guys in a garage inventing the next thing is gone.

Transparency is a tricky thing. Much information came from tribal knowledge. As rules have changed for private companies in the US, we saw some of the information being provided "as open" became the norm or required so there is less of a need to share it and there is not that "goodwill" factor. Most of what was being shared was available to some extent if you knew/know where to look.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#64

Post by serf »

widdershins wrote: post #32
pffft8888 wrote: post #26

It’s not being an Open Startup that kills your chances. If you have an insurrmountable business advantage (it’s who you know, not what you know) and you keep the how-to details of your solution hidden behind a generic description where the solution is really hard to pull off well, being open only helps you. Firstly, by using idiots who would steal your idea to create buzz in the market for you as they pitch their sil…

I personally find the lack of vaporware from Apple refreshing. With Apple, when you hear about the thing you can go out and buy the thing. From too many companies you hear about cool tech, only to find it disappointing or hobbled a year later when they actually get to release.

>I personally find the lack of vaporware from Apple refreshing.

They recently nixed their AR products that had been hinted at for forever, and the 'Apple Car' was 'right around the corner' sitting as a boogey-man juxtaposed to Tesla's efforts for years before being cancelled.

They're more reliable than most groups, but post-Jobs Apple loves to mention fantasy stuff that consumers will never see, it's part of their hype cycle.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#65

Post by mst »

UncleEntity wrote: post #48
ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've hit on some of the issues. One of the challenges is that it is hard to know what the company was getting out of being open. That is hard because there is what folks say, and there is what they really think, and in the startup business the gap between those two realities can be really big. Also, the most successful startup CEOs seem to be really good at crafting a narrative out of very cherry picked "fa…

> Of course a certain level of disclosure is required by the SEC if you want to be traded publicly… This is what I find confusing, there isn’t some magic switch that gets pulled when you are required to disclose financials which protects you from the downsides to being open. If your product can be trivially copied, like an AI email writer, I’m going to guess the problem wasn’t how open you were during the development…

"Do X with AI" is obviously going to be something where competition should be expected.

Cloning the UI and the launch tweet was still a bit much, though.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#66

Post by rileyphone »

jratkevic wrote: post #63

I think the path in technology for open technology-based startups no longer looks like it used to for a lot of reasons - financial, maturity of online users, and more. We have really crossed a point where building a startup from scratch - without a strategic VC, ability to share customers with an established player in the market or ability to build on top of another company's technology/platform - is just not possibl…

> The fabled guys in a garage inventing the next thing is gone

It’s exactly once people start saying this that it becomes the least true.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#67

Post by clintonb »

inasio wrote: post #42

A startup I knew had someone take professional-looking pictures of new employees, and add them to the Who Works Here page, with a nice blurb. After years of employees being poached by Big Tech the Who Works Here page is gone. To me this is also part of the loss of innocence.

I suspect recruiters used LinkedIn to initiate the conversations. Keep in mind it takes two to tango. The employees opted to talk to the recruiters, go through interviews, and change jobs. The absence/presence of a "Who Works Here" page doesn't change the fact that recruiters will contact employees, and employees may change jobs.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#68

Post by clintonb »

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #49
mbesto wrote: post #43

The trend outlined in the article is that startups tend to ditch openness once they mature. I think the explanation is pretty simple - it's no longer a marketing advantage to do so. If your'e selling to a startup audience then being open gets you eyeballs early on in your career. Once you start moving into more mature markets, this becomes less interesting to those audiences so why do it? It's hard enough to be open…

A reason to keep doing it is to maintain the value of openness within the internal culture through praxis. If it was only being done for marketing purposes, then it wasn't ever a value, but a strategy.

You maintain the value of openness within internal culture by being open with internal employees. Making the information public is a bonus for the public.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#69

Post by mikeg8 »

GuillaumeBrdet wrote: post #56
reidjs wrote: post #2

I don't really agree or maybe I have misunderstood the author's thesis here. Is he saying it's harder to grow a business by building in the open nowadays because so many people have already done it, so now consumers are weary of it? Or is he upset that many of these companies that were once open have stopped being open once they found success? Just because many established companies have stopped doing it, doesn't mea…

Hi Reid, G here, CMO at testimonial.to. In one sentence, Damon just no longer believes in sharing every core metric but still plans to build in public. It's been a core part of what he does and something I know he likes to do instead of building everything behind curtains with no feedback loop.

Feedback loops should be coming from customers, not outsiders. That would be noise, IMO.

And if that one core sentence is what he believes, I think the whole post could have been more clear and concise instead of making a grand claim that is based on his anecdotal experience.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#70

Post by shortstuffsushi »

GuillaumeBrdet wrote: post #57
shortstuffsushi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also a bit confused by some of what the author has said here. On the one hand he talks about not disclosing things because others are ripping off designs, etc, but in other places he's referring to things like employee salaries and run-rates, etc. Maybe I'm dumb and not connecting the dots, but why would sharing things like your costs allow others to steal your business? I genuinely don't understand this, so I t…

Hi, G here, CMO at testimonial.to. To clarify, Damon just no longer believes in sharing every core metric but still plans to build in public :)

This actually leaves me more confused; it seemed like building in public was the problem because it left potential for copying, sharing metrics doesn't seem like it would run a risk? That's the part of this movement in the other direction that doesn't make sense to me.
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