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Software Eats Software Development as Andreessen Invests $10M in App Outsourcer

94 points by kevindeasis 11y ago

Tiquor 11y ago
Turning the creation of derivative apps into a unique business model. Which sounds great as long as people continue to desire creating derivative apps en masse.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  99% of apps is data entry + usable interface + communication with a rest interface (meaning, there isn't a lot of 'intelligence' within) Seems very replicable
  - sharemywin 11y ago
    especially when you use MIT graduates to do the actual work. lol...
    - gizzlon 11y ago
      What MIT grad want's this job..? My guess is that they exaggerate this quite a bit. The xyz graduates are probably the founders :)
      - morgante 11y ago
        Why wouldn't an MIT grad want to work flexible hours from anywhere in the world?
        dagw 11y ago
        If all you want to do is sit on a beach an hack on trivial CRUD apps why would you bother to go to MIT in the first place?
brianbreslin 11y ago
Can someone explain how their AI produces even remotely accurate quotes? Also what is the price range of these projects?
- scotty79 11y ago
  I can see no reason why asking developers (or whomever) would get any better estimates than AI does. Trick is that quotes are rarely ever even remotely accurate. You could probably get better estimates from written description with random number generator if tuned properly.
- tim333 11y ago
  Pricing page: https://gigster.com/pricing https://gigster.com/pricing It doesn't seem very AI really. I guess for something that doesn't fit their sliders a human has a look?
viach 11y ago
I need a simple program that would create startups + landing pages Andreessen would invest in
- neppo 11y ago
  there you go: http://tiffzhang.com/startup/index.html http://tiffzhang.com/startup/index.html keep reloading the url to get random startup landing pages.
  - viach 11y ago
    Nice. The next logical step would be to generate the ProductHunt listing
freshfey 11y ago
"Within two weeks of its launch in late July, Gigster already had $1 million in sales booked." Can someone walk me through how this is possible? As in, what does a company like Gigster focus on to reach sales so quickly?
- bitslayer 11y ago
  What does a company like Gigster focus on to reach sales so quickly? Andreessen.
- zupa-hu 11y ago
  fake it till you make it
- jevgeni 11y ago
  I'd double check what it is meant by "sales booked": is it any different to "sales executed"? If the product they are selling is paid in, say, instalments in the future, or if there is any contingency on the payments, there is a way to inflate your sales numbers by playing with your payment projections and assumptions.
  - chkuendig 11y ago
    "booked" means you sold something but haven't produced or delivered it yet. but in consulting/services you can't realize sales as "real" revenue until you actually delivered the services.
- allsmiles 11y ago
  This isn't Roger Dickey's first time starting a business so that certainly helps. Estimating the cost of their service to be around $5k, to reach $1 million in sales would mean 200 apps shipped. That seems like a reasonable feat as long as he plays his cards right.
  - woah 11y ago
    I don't think it even means apps delivered, started or even necessarily paid for. I'm guessing that a number of people who could optimistically be presumed to represent this amount of sales signed up.
alphadevx 11y ago
“project management is the place where the most human error happens.” Note sure about that. I mean PM's don't write bugs, right?
- benburton 11y ago
  When their requests lack clarity and specificity, they definitely do.
  - Agathos 11y ago
    And sometimes the requirements are clear, specific, and wrong.
- sean2 11y ago
  Nope, but in my last project, project management omitted integration and testing from the proposal. They didn't "write" our bugs, but we still give them credit.
codeshaman 11y ago
I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future where software developers are next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now. That is compound by the millions of youngsters who grew up with computers, have unlimited access to unlimited teaching materials and are entering the workforce each year.. The demand for software may be growing (although that should peak at some point too), but that doesn't necessarily mean that the demand for programmers will follow the same trend. Quite the opposite it seems...
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future. And that puts software developers next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now. I'm fairly sure that programmers will be employable for the foreseeable future but in a way this is fair play, we - the programmers - did this to an immense number of people it would seem that we ourselves should not be immune to becoming superfluous as well at some point. After all programmer is not some kind of protected status, if it's ok for programmers to automate away whole segments of the job market why should programmers expect that their jobs could never be automated away? If anything we should be more aware of such risks having been in the drivers seat on this one for the last 50 years.
  - aidos 11y ago
    More automation more of the time! The world needs to focus on how we collectively become more efficient while working less / relaxing more. Having said that, I think automation of software development has a long way to go before it's particularly effective. Though it's certainly going to be an interesting space to watch. It's somehow weird to imagine a future in which we disrupt ourselves.
    - ssharp 11y ago
      > The world needs to focus on how we collectively become more efficient while working less / relaxing more. The world doesn't reward working less. More automation might lead to lower average work hours, but the reduction comes from people losing their jobs and not finding new ones. So, yes, you get to work less, but you almost might go bankrupt, lose your house and car, and be reliant on government welfare, if you're "lucky" enough to live in country with a decent safety net.
ianstallings 11y ago
If I was younger, and cheaper, I'd consider working as a freelancer with these guys. Seems like a possible way to funnel in work while offloading a lot of the PM responsibilities. I will say one thing though - fixed pricing on projects is tricky. I would be interested to see how they set and meet expectations, while also not charging for overages. It seems like the developer might have to be the one to eat the costs if it goes over.
- iofj 11y ago
  Exactly, a lot of the freelancer workplaces used to work like this. Vworker.com comes to mind, but there's a lot of others. Arguing about work not done was a major hassle.
gexla 11y ago
The idea here seems to be that the value is in the management. Or owning the problem and delivering the solution rather than having to act as the manager of your project. Gigster places itself in two areas which independent developers often fall down. Selling their services and managing the project. What often ends up happening is that neither the client nor the developer are able to manage their parts and the gap in the middle is the disaster. In return for taking these spots, Gigster is removing the ability for the developers to build their own businesses. For many of the faceless contractors who compete with each other on Odesk and Elance, this might be a good thing. Even if this model were to blow up, it still doesn't touch the top X percent of agencies / developers who can manage the entire process, deliver and demonstrably contribute to the bottom line. If you are going to be an outsourcer, you need to keep your game moving. There are too many people out there who shouldn't even be landing gigs. Those of you who are solid, keep rolling.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  I know people who built up a business by freelancing on gig sites. It's tough, but by delivering quality results in a timely fashion, they found a few clients who were willing to engage them outside of the gig sites at higher rates. And once you have a few clients, you get more through referrals.
sharemywin 11y ago
Should be software eats project manager. the code is still done by people.
thewarrior 11y ago
Gigster + https://stamplay.com/ https://stamplay.com/ (Drag and Drop backends) + A front end automator is going to lead to the commoditization of the software developer.
- mattmanser 11y ago
  We've done this before, RAD tools in the early 2000s and then a few years after that it was workflows. It doesn't work. One of the skills of being a programmer is to change a business workflow, which are often very vague and even very inefficient and open to interpretation, into a logical workflow. Business people just don't have that skill, so what happens is that you need a bunch of programmers to operate the RAD tools. But the RAD tools have a bunch of restrictions and quirks and don't quite do what is wanted so the programmer is asked if he can just tweak it a bit. And soon those little 'tweaks' are taking longer than building the whole thing from scratch.
  - thewarrior 11y ago
    Wow I was just waiting to ask someone who's seen this stuff about this. I'm planning to create some tools ease CRUD workflows. I think my point was not properly conveyed. The goal is not to get the pointy haired boss programming your expense report app. But instead of paying someone with 4 years of experience , you just use a team of people you trained in 3 - 4 months to do most of the screens using such tools . Is that unrealistic ? PS : Yup any code generator needs to have a lot of extensible points so you can change it.
    - mattmanser 11y ago
      I haven't seen any modern ones, but back in the day it was generally a complete and utter disaster. And having extensible points doesn't work. The whole problem is that if they're complicated enough to actually encode a client's project, they're so complicated that they're really just a visual programming language. But that means all the code conditions are hidden in drop-downs and checkboxes. But in reality that's the logic, those options are the code, but you can't easily read the code. If you can't read the code, you can't understand the code. So increasingly no-one has a clue what the system is really doing and you have to test it like crazy. It also makes it very hard to know what has and hasn't changed and even if you can diff it somehow you often can't even understand what the change means. Other problems include the 'extensible points' not being atomic enough, or too atomic, or badly documented, or badly coded, or just plain insanely coded. And if there's a bug you've got to wait for the code generator to be fixed. And finally you are locked in to your vendor. Which becomes a big deal. What happens is that you'll start writing your own code to fix these problems, or edit the auto-generated output somehow (if you're lucky enough to be allowed to) and it'll rapidly turn in to a complete mess that only 1 or 2 people really understand what's going on and it takes a month to do changes that should take a day or two. ORMs are the closest we get to auto-code generation and there's a reason we stop there. We learnt from bitter experience. And even they can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Still, I guess we've got to try again every now and then, one day someone might nail it.
uptownfunk 11y ago
From a pure economic division-of-labor standpoint it makes sense. However I thought the modern business approach was to move away from strictly defined boxes of job roles and have everyone involved with everything (with some fuzzy focus on a particular role). With the hope that some cross pollination of ideas results in some synergistic result where the sum is greater than the individual parts. However the upshot of this seems to me that now people can focus on ideas and idea generation instead of having to worry about maintaining programmers. Like what cloud did for hardware/computing. What we need now is a simple program that takes normal human text and outputs a program. Input "write me a program that adds the numbers 1 to 100" and you would get a program that did that. Then what we need is to hook that up to an artificial neural network that takes human text and outputs new ideas for apps. Hey andreesen I'll be taking my $10mm check now. Thanks.
- lojack 11y ago
  > What we need now is a simple program that takes normal human text and outputs a program. Input "write me a program that adds the numbers 1 to 100" and you would get a program that did that. The problem is normal human text is ambiguous and flawed. Case in point: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=write+me+a+program+that+adds+the+numbers+1+to+100 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=write+me+a+program+that... Correct, but probably not quite what you intended.
  - tormeh 11y ago
    Yeah, but when the latency from description input to program output is in seconds, then you could iterate on the description quite fast. It would be like programming, except you don't need to know any algorithms and all the plumbing takes care of itself.
    - sean2 11y ago
      "Write me a web-site that allows users to login using Facebook and sign up for my mailing list." It's a program that I think can be written in an autonomous fashion, but I just wanted to point out that as soon as you start coding non-trivial programs, testing and debugging you're non-specific language is going to be hell. So bad that I think you are going to have to write thousands of sentences, and eventually decide you want a more specific language than English when you can't determine which of the thousands of words or grammatical elements you and the computer disagree on.
mbrutsch 11y ago
Now if someone would do this for the desktop...
kyllo 11y ago
Send Gigster your app idea and it sends you back that app. So you don't have to talk to developers and they know exactly what you want from your written description of your idea? What could possibly go wrong?
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  It also farms the code around a bunch of non-communicating developers. No, problems on the horizon, keep running towards that iceberg.
  - seivan 11y ago
    Or it could use a really good developer who also can design - on a contract basis. Several iOS developers can do that well enough to ship an MvP. Even more can also spin up a backend with an admin interface on Heroku in no time. Even without any background jobs. I think you guys my underestimate the concept here. I am just mad I didn't come up with it first :-/ The developer doesn't need to manage invoice, other peoples schedules and any questions. That's taken care of by the service in question. Specific ideas in. App Out. This would be great for a developer who wants to get an outlet for creative (design) ideas as well.
    - dagw 11y ago
      The problem is that there is often/always a disconnect between what a client says they want, what they think they want and what they actually want/need. What separates a great developer from a merely competent developer is being able to talk to clients and negotiate that disconnect. A company that simply takes a spec sheet and implements it as written will end up with many very unhappy clients.
      - kyllo 11y ago
        This is why outsourcing fails. Generally, outsourced developers will just implement exactly what the spec says to implement, no more and (hopefully) no less. You can't communicate with them synchronously and answer their questions in real time because they're located on the opposite side of the earth. Time is money and waiting for your answers would be too expensive, so they just don't ask questions, instead they make guesses and assumptions about anything you haven't clearly specified. Then you slowly realize that it takes about as much time and effort to write a comprehensive, detailed specification of the software, as it does to actually write the software itself.
stuartmalcolm 11y ago
The COBOL vision lives on..
cyrusradfar 11y ago
As much as I want to snark in this thread as well – it's an audacious goal. When I was in school at Georgia Tech, one of my professors talked a lot about SmallTalk and Alice. Both were ways to make coding more accessible to a larger audience. I can't help but think that the future is going to continue to make development more accessible to people. I definitely think Gigster has their work cut out for them; nevertheless, I'm one for the fact that it would be pretty awesome if I was never asked to 'build a webpage' again.
- mziel 11y ago
  Lots of tools make coding more accessible to large audience. IDE, higher-level languages, better tooling, libraries/frameworks/modules, stackoverflow. However this didn't result in less work for the programmers, on the contrary. Same thing may apply here. Just the pressure points will change.
onewaystreet 11y ago
The real problems with this idea (which isn't new) come after a project has been delivered: It looks nice but you find a bug. What now? What's the turnaround time for getting that bug fixed? What's the cost? What about adding new features? What about scaling? And if you ever want to hire your own developers they have to learn a codebase that you yourself don't even understand.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- seren 11y ago
  It is better suited for "throw away" app, for example, something linked to an event or conference. Or maybe a brick & mortar business that wants a very basic app, e.g. a bakery wants an easy way to take cakes order. It is not targeted to people who want to build a long lasting business primarily based on the app.
  - braythwayt 11y ago
    > It is not targeted to people who want to build a long lasting business primarily based on the app. This is a vast oversimplification, but the general idea in business is to _identify your core value and make that your core competency_. Whether the rest of the business can be outsourced, or staffed by a low-paid expendable grunts, or downloaded onto your vendors, is a question of tactics. If we buy that general idea, we buy that some businesses may have software, but its not their core value proposition, and therefore that it’s ok to outsource it. (I once met two founders who wanted to do a daily deal type business with high-end fashion items. I know nothing about this business, but I recall they were adamant that their “secret sauce” was sourcing the product to sell, not selling it. Thus, they were talking to consultants about building their deals site for them.)
- joeyspn 11y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking... what happens after project delivery? I see this site suited for small apps, or as a quick funcional beta/boilerplate generator for teams, which is not bad if you just need to test some idea in the market and/or you plan to take over the development.
cognivore 11y ago
People who want software built are usually (in my experience, almost always) incapable of describing what they want. But they know what they like or don't like when they see it, and then they get ideas for changes. Unless Gigster (really?) gets that part figured out all they'll be capable of creating is the next app that sits in the middle of the the app store charts that no one cares about.
- saiprashanth93 11y ago
  The first two lines of this comment should be written down on every wall of every dev shop in the planet.
joeyspn 11y ago
I wonder why you can't pick design related skills in the signup form... is this just for devs and PMs?
henrik_w 11y ago
Two quotes that I like and think are relevant to the discussion: "Much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification." -- Fred Brooks "If you don't understand precisely what you need to do, what makes you think you can tell a computer how to do it?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173640 For a highly standardized product, maybe the "specifying what you want" isn't a big problem, but in other cases I think it is.
roymurdock 11y ago
Discussion of Gigster (YC S15) "Prolancer" business model from 4 months ago - 188 comments, including responses from the founders: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931596
philfrasty 11y ago
I constantly have this Facebook-Ad for the last couple of weeks that says „We build your MVP for 5k“.
tatx 11y ago
They mention that the “the client base moved to enterprise” and I think that, if Gigster is ever reasonably successful, it will end up as a shop making niche products for enterprises who find it difficult to fit such development activities into their budgets and schedules. They will then be directly competing with consultants who today do not provide an 'end-to-end' solution, so to say, to the development problems plaguing these enterprise companies. But it is mighty difficult to do this kind of niche work because developers will then have to spend an inordinate amount of time acquiring relevant domain knowledge to implement these niche solutions. Hard earned knowledge that will be useless after the project is complete. And the effort of acquiring this domain knowledge will often be under-appreciated and underpaid, cause it is very very difficult to estimate this effort no matter how good an AI have you.
flipp3r 11y ago
Why invest 10M when he could've just asked Gigster to make a better Gigster?
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  10M is a pretty cheap singularity.
- kami8845 11y ago
  Submit your specs TODAY and our "top 1% engineers" will deliver in just 30 days!!
- sean2 11y ago
  Good question; I think you were going for funny, but you highlighted what they can and can't do there. They build apps. So I'm sure sell you 90% of their code, but they can't re-code their brand name, repeat costumers and the staff that they seem to take some pride in.
gizzlon 11y ago
Does anyone understand the pricing? : https://gigster.com/pricing https://gigster.com/pricing
- SimpleXYZ 11y ago
  Those are the prices to build clones of those sites (I think).
  - gizzlon 11y ago
    yeah, that's what I though at first as well, but Instagram on the Web > Facebook on the Web? =? Tinder > Facebook ??
    - tim333 11y ago
      I guess that's a pretty simplified Facebook rather than the 20m+ LOC actual
55555 11y ago
I think I get it. Look at their pricing: https://gigster.com/pricing https://gigster.com/pricing Most software development shops don't ever scale past a few dozen or a few hundred developers. As a result, they don't have much project overlap. If you were able to scale to handle tons of similar projects, and be picky about which projects you take on, you could re-use 90% of the code needed for each project without ever dropping prices, essentially charging over and over again for hours that were only actually worked once. All marketplace codebases are pretty similar, all dating apps are pretty similar, all daily deals sites are pretty similar, etc. I think all their talk of Artificial Intelligence is nonsense to throw people off their trail.
- mooreds 11y ago
  I read through their terms of service and you as a developer hand all rights to your work over to them. That's normal. But there's little mention of the rights of their client. So maybe they are trying to get a bunch of reusable ip on the backs of consulting engagements, like every consulting shop ever. But maybe doing it in a more scalable way.
- jboynyc 11y ago
  To me that looks like Samwer as a Service: Here's how much it will cost to clone <mainstream app>.
- mziel 11y ago
  Big chunk of consulting is this busines model, i.e. develop a solution and sell its integration in the vendor architecture. Is their solution that much different?
orthoganol 11y ago
I wish the article's author wouldn't sound so naive - why wouldn't he discuss all the other similar attempts at automating app development, their shortcomings, and how Gigster is going to find a way to do better? People might think from reading his article that this hasn't been going on for a decade+.
Agathos 11y ago
Hasn't software been eating software development ever since the first compiler was written?
- tim333 11y ago
  Kinda. Things like compilers increase software produced per hour but the total quantity of software demanded is open ended.
srameshc 11y ago
Isn't this called outsourcing ? But still someone has to write the code.
BatFastard 11y ago
“He who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_software_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_software_engine... Maybe it IS different this time around. I can see for very simple apps this might be possible. But one of the first questions that often gets asked on projects that I am on is "Is this even possible?"
- bdcravens 11y ago
  Technology is filled with plenty of idea that have their second comings: consumer tablets, grocery delivery, etc.
  - BatFastard 11y ago
    Totally agree! I have seen VR be hyped 3 times now, lets hope thing on sticks. Personally I don't believe in computer estimation of anything but the simplest project
- raverbashing 11y ago
  A compiler is a CASE tool. Same thing for UML tools (some are pretty good)
- luisobo 11y ago
  If everyone followed that argument we would've missed so many interesting things, Facebook for instance. Time can create a better context for an idea to develop. Or maybe the people attempting to implement it the nth time are not idiots or, or, or...
Bjorkbat 11y ago
So, core technology is an AI system that, given a project, will automatically determine how long it will take and what sort of work will be required? Great, I'll buy a license and tell my buddies here in New Mexico about it so we can compete with Gigster at probably 25% of whatever they're charging for apps, because New Mexico is cheap as all hell yet still remarkably beautiful. Don't tell too many of your friends, we're trying to keep it that way. But seriously, this is nothing more than a development agency that happens to have a very cool piece of tech on hand that enables them to essentially productize development. That's cool. But eventually that same piece of tech will eventually be replicated and available to freelancers the world over, probably as a subscription-based service. It doesn't even have to be that smart.
w1ntermute 11y ago
> The company finds top-notch freelance developers, designers, and project managers with pedigrees from MIT, CalTech, Google, and Stripe, and only accepts 5% of applicants. Why would such individuals be willing to work as a contractor for this company in a great enough number and at a low enough rate to make this model scalable and profitable? Something doesn't add up here.
- myspace 11y ago
  I think they just will outsource everything to third world countries.
- gdilla 11y ago
  unless they have a secret pipeline of talented coders who don't want to be in an office, live in the woods or on the beach, work 3-4 hours a day, collaborate minimally, and never have to worry about finding new work or maintaining a pipeline. Actually, that sounds nice. But still, seems like there's not that many around from MIT, CalTech, Google and Stripe. People with that pedigree have huge opportunity costs; why would they work for below market enough to make this attractive to the clients?
- morgante 11y ago
  Take a look at the pricing page: https://gigster.com/pricing https://gigster.com/pricing Gigster is anything but cheap.
OpenDrapery 11y ago
interesting that this wasn't titled "Software Development Eats Itself"
simonswords82 11y ago
This type of progression in software development is inevitable. Groups of people writing individual lines of code for bespoke apps will one day go the same way looms in factories went after the industrial revolution. I run a software company, and we've actually moved away from fixed price projects and only provide development on a day rate. Fixed price/scope/timescale projects are incredibly risky, require massive amounts of project management resource, and can be insanely unprofitable if the specifications for the work are not watertight and the client isn't managed well. Knowing the industry very well, and having completed hundreds of bespoke projects for all sizes and types of clients I have so many questions about how the Gigster model works. Off the top of my head: * What language are the apps built in? This is important to me if I want to hire my own people to continue to build out and support the app going forward. I presume the mobile apps are native, so this question is probably more specific to the web development. * Do I own the intellectual property on the finished app? * What does the support and maintenance agreement look like and provide? And at what cost? * What does the contract for development look like? The devil will be in the detail here. For example, I'd be interested to know what happens if my project overruns and deadlines are missed. * What if I want something built that doesn't fit one of their various examples here https://gigster.com/pricing https://gigster.com/pricing? * Who writes the specification? Who creates the wireframes for the app? * Who performs quality assurance testing? What happens if the work I receive is excessively buggy? Bespoke development of software is hard and it's great to see somebody take this on. I wish Gigster luck but I fear for their sanity as they attempt to scale.
- cheez 11y ago
  > This type of progression in software development is inevitable. Groups of people writing individual lines of code for bespoke apps will one day go the same way looms in factories went after the industrial revolution. > I run a software company, and we've actually moved away from fixed price projects and only provide development on a day rate. Fixed price/scope/timescale projects are incredibly risky, require massive amounts of project management resource, and can be insanely unprofitable if the specifications for the work are not watertight and the client isn't managed well. These two sentences don't seem to make sense. On the one hand, you say it's inevitable. On the other hand, as someone who has RUN a software company, you say you couldn't figure it out. Is that correct?
throaway859028 11y ago
I've worked on gigster. Throwaway account to avoid this being linked to my account. A few thoughts: 1) The talk of an AI to price things marketing fluff. There is no magic AI that can price, for example, the fact that a client changes his mind, or that legacy code has unexpected bugs. 2) The reusable component stuff is not fully deployed yet. I think where it has potential is as app templates. A lot of apps have similar starting points, and it makes sense to encapsulate those starting points in project templates. I am doubtful that this will evolve into a magic solution that makes software engineering easy. 3) The big innovation, from my perspective, is that they are harnessing the spare work capacity of software engineers. It is very easy for a full time employed engineer to hop onto the platform and make some extra cash. I think this separates them from traditional outsourcing shops, or oDesk. 4) Another innovation is that they capture the reputation gains from their work. Traditionally a freelancer would build relationships with their clients, the freelancers reputation improves as he does good work. With gigster, you as a freelancer do not have an external reputation. Gigster gets the benefit of your good (or bad) work. Largely because of (4) I would be cautious as a freelancer on gigster. The pay is project based, not hourly, which means there is high variance/randomness to the hourly pay.
erikb 11y ago
It's the right track, but we haven't met the goal yet.

94 points by kevindeasis 11y ago

Turning the creation of derivative apps into a unique business model. Which sounds great as long as people continue to desire creating derivative apps en masse.

raverbashing 11y ago
99% of apps is data entry + usable interface + communication with a rest interface (meaning, there isn't a lot of 'intelligence' within) Seems very replicable
- sharemywin 11y ago
  especially when you use MIT graduates to do the actual work. lol...
  - gizzlon 11y ago
    What MIT grad want's this job..? My guess is that they exaggerate this quite a bit. The xyz graduates are probably the founders :)
    - morgante 11y ago
      Why wouldn't an MIT grad want to work flexible hours from anywhere in the world?
      - dagw 11y ago
        If all you want to do is sit on a beach an hack on trivial CRUD apps why would you bother to go to MIT in the first place?

brianbreslin 11y ago

Can someone explain how their AI produces even remotely accurate quotes? Also what is the price range of these projects?

scotty79 11y ago
I can see no reason why asking developers (or whomever) would get any better estimates than AI does. Trick is that quotes are rarely ever even remotely accurate. You could probably get better estimates from written description with random number generator if tuned properly.
tim333 11y ago
Pricing page: https://gigster.com/pricing https://gigster.com/pricing It doesn't seem very AI really. I guess for something that doesn't fit their sliders a human has a look?

viach 11y ago

I need a simple program that would create startups + landing pages Andreessen would invest in

neppo 11y ago
there you go: http://tiffzhang.com/startup/index.html http://tiffzhang.com/startup/index.html keep reloading the url to get random startup landing pages.
- viach 11y ago
  Nice. The next logical step would be to generate the ProductHunt listing

freshfey 11y ago

"Within two weeks of its launch in late July, Gigster already had $1 million in sales booked." Can someone walk me through how this is possible? As in, what does a company like Gigster focus on to reach sales so quickly?

bitslayer 11y ago
What does a company like Gigster focus on to reach sales so quickly? Andreessen.
zupa-hu 11y ago
fake it till you make it
jevgeni 11y ago
I'd double check what it is meant by "sales booked": is it any different to "sales executed"? If the product they are selling is paid in, say, instalments in the future, or if there is any contingency on the payments, there is a way to inflate your sales numbers by playing with your payment projections and assumptions.
- chkuendig 11y ago
  "booked" means you sold something but haven't produced or delivered it yet. but in consulting/services you can't realize sales as "real" revenue until you actually delivered the services.
allsmiles 11y ago
This isn't Roger Dickey's first time starting a business so that certainly helps. Estimating the cost of their service to be around $5k, to reach $1 million in sales would mean 200 apps shipped. That seems like a reasonable feat as long as he plays his cards right.
- woah 11y ago
  I don't think it even means apps delivered, started or even necessarily paid for. I'm guessing that a number of people who could optimistically be presumed to represent this amount of sales signed up.

alphadevx 11y ago

“project management is the place where the most human error happens.” Note sure about that. I mean PM's don't write bugs, right?

benburton 11y ago
When their requests lack clarity and specificity, they definitely do.
- Agathos 11y ago
  And sometimes the requirements are clear, specific, and wrong.
sean2 11y ago
Nope, but in my last project, project management omitted integration and testing from the proposal. They didn't "write" our bugs, but we still give them credit.

codeshaman 11y ago

I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future where software developers are next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now. That is compound by the millions of youngsters who grew up with computers, have unlimited access to unlimited teaching materials and are entering the workforce each year.. The demand for software may be growing (although that should peak at some point too), but that doesn't necessarily mean that the demand for programmers will follow the same trend. Quite the opposite it seems...

jacquesm 11y ago
> I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future. And that puts software developers next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now. I'm fairly sure that programmers will be employable for the foreseeable future but in a way this is fair play, we - the programmers - did this to an immense number of people it would seem that we ourselves should not be immune to becoming superfluous as well at some point. After all programmer is not some kind of protected status, if it's ok for programmers to automate away whole segments of the job market why should programmers expect that their jobs could never be automated away? If anything we should be more aware of such risks having been in the drivers seat on this one for the last 50 years.
- aidos 11y ago
  More automation more of the time! The world needs to focus on how we collectively become more efficient while working less / relaxing more. Having said that, I think automation of software development has a long way to go before it's particularly effective. Though it's certainly going to be an interesting space to watch. It's somehow weird to imagine a future in which we disrupt ourselves.
  - ssharp 11y ago
    > The world needs to focus on how we collectively become more efficient while working less / relaxing more. The world doesn't reward working less. More automation might lead to lower average work hours, but the reduction comes from people losing their jobs and not finding new ones. So, yes, you get to work less, but you almost might go bankrupt, lose your house and car, and be reliant on government welfare, if you're "lucky" enough to live in country with a decent safety net.

ianstallings 11y ago

If I was younger, and cheaper, I'd consider working as a freelancer with these guys. Seems like a possible way to funnel in work while offloading a lot of the PM responsibilities. I will say one thing though - fixed pricing on projects is tricky. I would be interested to see how they set and meet expectations, while also not charging for overages. It seems like the developer might have to be the one to eat the costs if it goes over.

iofj 11y ago
Exactly, a lot of the freelancer workplaces used to work like this. Vworker.com comes to mind, but there's a lot of others. Arguing about work not done was a major hassle.

gexla 11y ago

The idea here seems to be that the value is in the management. Or owning the problem and delivering the solution rather than having to act as the manager of your project. Gigster places itself in two areas which independent developers often fall down. Selling their services and managing the project. What often ends up happening is that neither the client nor the developer are able to manage their parts and the gap in the middle is the disaster. In return for taking these spots, Gigster is removing the ability for the developers to build their own businesses. For many of the faceless contractors who compete with each other on Odesk and Elance, this might be a good thing. Even if this model were to blow up, it still doesn't touch the top X percent of agencies / developers who can manage the entire process, deliver and demonstrably contribute to the bottom line. If you are going to be an outsourcer, you need to keep your game moving. There are too many people out there who shouldn't even be landing gigs. Those of you who are solid, keep rolling.

bryanlarsen 11y ago
I know people who built up a business by freelancing on gig sites. It's tough, but by delivering quality results in a timely fashion, they found a few clients who were willing to engage them outside of the gig sites at higher rates. And once you have a few clients, you get more through referrals.

sharemywin 11y ago

Should be software eats project manager. the code is still done by people.

thewarrior 11y ago

Gigster + https://stamplay.com/ https://stamplay.com/ (Drag and Drop backends) + A front end automator is going to lead to the commoditization of the software developer.

mattmanser 11y ago
We've done this before, RAD tools in the early 2000s and then a few years after that it was workflows. It doesn't work. One of the skills of being a programmer is to change a business workflow, which are often very vague and even very inefficient and open to interpretation, into a logical workflow. Business people just don't have that skill, so what happens is that you need a bunch of programmers to operate the RAD tools. But the RAD tools have a bunch of restrictions and quirks and don't quite do what is wanted so the programmer is asked if he can just tweak it a bit. And soon those little 'tweaks' are taking longer than building the whole thing from scratch.
- thewarrior 11y ago
  Wow I was just waiting to ask someone who's seen this stuff about this. I'm planning to create some tools ease CRUD workflows. I think my point was not properly conveyed. The goal is not to get the pointy haired boss programming your expense report app. But instead of paying someone with 4 years of experience , you just use a team of people you trained in 3 - 4 months to do most of the screens using such tools . Is that unrealistic ? PS : Yup any code generator needs to have a lot of extensible points so you can change it.
  - mattmanser 11y ago
    I haven't seen any modern ones, but back in the day it was generally a complete and utter disaster. And having extensible points doesn't work. The whole problem is that if they're complicated enough to actually encode a client's project, they're so complicated that they're really just a visual programming language. But that means all the code conditions are hidden in drop-downs and checkboxes. But in reality that's the logic, those options are the code, but you can't easily read the code. If you can't read the code, you can't understand the code. So increasingly no-one has a clue what the system is really doing and you have to test it like crazy. It also makes it very hard to know what has and hasn't changed and even if you can diff it somehow you often can't even understand what the change means. Other problems include the 'extensible points' not being atomic enough, or too atomic, or badly documented, or badly coded, or just plain insanely coded. And if there's a bug you've got to wait for the code generator to be fixed. And finally you are locked in to your vendor. Which becomes a big deal. What happens is that you'll start writing your own code to fix these problems, or edit the auto-generated output somehow (if you're lucky enough to be allowed to) and it'll rapidly turn in to a complete mess that only 1 or 2 people really understand what's going on and it takes a month to do changes that should take a day or two. ORMs are the closest we get to auto-code generation and there's a reason we stop there. We learnt from bitter experience. And even they can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Still, I guess we've got to try again every now and then, one day someone might nail it.

uptownfunk 11y ago

From a pure economic division-of-labor standpoint it makes sense. However I thought the modern business approach was to move away from strictly defined boxes of job roles and have everyone involved with everything (with some fuzzy focus on a particular role). With the hope that some cross pollination of ideas results in some synergistic result where the sum is greater than the individual parts. However the upshot of this seems to me that now people can focus on ideas and idea generation instead of having to worry about maintaining programmers. Like what cloud did for hardware/computing. What we need now is a simple program that takes normal human text and outputs a program. Input "write me a program that adds the numbers 1 to 100" and you would get a program that did that. Then what we need is to hook that up to an artificial neural network that takes human text and outputs new ideas for apps. Hey andreesen I'll be taking my $10mm check now. Thanks.

lojack 11y ago
> What we need now is a simple program that takes normal human text and outputs a program. Input "write me a program that adds the numbers 1 to 100" and you would get a program that did that. The problem is normal human text is ambiguous and flawed. Case in point: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=write+me+a+program+that+adds+the+numbers+1+to+100 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=write+me+a+program+that... Correct, but probably not quite what you intended.
- tormeh 11y ago
  Yeah, but when the latency from description input to program output is in seconds, then you could iterate on the description quite fast. It would be like programming, except you don't need to know any algorithms and all the plumbing takes care of itself.
  - sean2 11y ago
    "Write me a web-site that allows users to login using Facebook and sign up for my mailing list." It's a program that I think can be written in an autonomous fashion, but I just wanted to point out that as soon as you start coding non-trivial programs, testing and debugging you're non-specific language is going to be hell. So bad that I think you are going to have to write thousands of sentences, and eventually decide you want a more specific language than English when you can't determine which of the thousands of words or grammatical elements you and the computer disagree on.

mbrutsch 11y ago

Now if someone would do this for the desktop...

kyllo 11y ago

Send Gigster your app idea and it sends you back that app. So you don't have to talk to developers and they know exactly what you want from your written description of your idea? What could possibly go wrong?

marcosdumay 11y ago
It also farms the code around a bunch of non-communicating developers. No, problems on the horizon, keep running towards that iceberg.
- seivan 11y ago
  Or it could use a really good developer who also can design - on a contract basis. Several iOS developers can do that well enough to ship an MvP. Even more can also spin up a backend with an admin interface on Heroku in no time. Even without any background jobs. I think you guys my underestimate the concept here. I am just mad I didn't come up with it first :-/ The developer doesn't need to manage invoice, other peoples schedules and any questions. That's taken care of by the service in question. Specific ideas in. App Out. This would be great for a developer who wants to get an outlet for creative (design) ideas as well.
  - dagw 11y ago
    The problem is that there is often/always a disconnect between what a client says they want, what they think they want and what they actually want/need. What separates a great developer from a merely competent developer is being able to talk to clients and negotiate that disconnect. A company that simply takes a spec sheet and implements it as written will end up with many very unhappy clients.
    - kyllo 11y ago
      This is why outsourcing fails. Generally, outsourced developers will just implement exactly what the spec says to implement, no more and (hopefully) no less. You can't communicate with them synchronously and answer their questions in real time because they're located on the opposite side of the earth. Time is money and waiting for your answers would be too expensive, so they just don't ask questions, instead they make guesses and assumptions about anything you haven't clearly specified. Then you slowly realize that it takes about as much time and effort to write a comprehensive, detailed specification of the software, as it does to actually write the software itself.

stuartmalcolm 11y ago

The COBOL vision lives on..

cyrusradfar 11y ago

As much as I want to snark in this thread as well – it's an audacious goal. When I was in school at Georgia Tech, one of my professors talked a lot about SmallTalk and Alice. Both were ways to make coding more accessible to a larger audience. I can't help but think that the future is going to continue to make development more accessible to people. I definitely think Gigster has their work cut out for them; nevertheless, I'm one for the fact that it would be pretty awesome if I was never asked to 'build a webpage' again.

mziel 11y ago
Lots of tools make coding more accessible to large audience. IDE, higher-level languages, better tooling, libraries/frameworks/modules, stackoverflow. However this didn't result in less work for the programmers, on the contrary. Same thing may apply here. Just the pressure points will change.

onewaystreet 11y ago

The real problems with this idea (which isn't new) come after a project has been delivered: It looks nice but you find a bug. What now? What's the turnaround time for getting that bug fixed? What's the cost? What about adding new features? What about scaling? And if you ever want to hire your own developers they have to learn a codebase that you yourself don't even understand.

deleted 11y ago
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seren 11y ago
It is better suited for "throw away" app, for example, something linked to an event or conference. Or maybe a brick & mortar business that wants a very basic app, e.g. a bakery wants an easy way to take cakes order. It is not targeted to people who want to build a long lasting business primarily based on the app.
- braythwayt 11y ago
  > It is not targeted to people who want to build a long lasting business primarily based on the app. This is a vast oversimplification, but the general idea in business is to _identify your core value and make that your core competency_. Whether the rest of the business can be outsourced, or staffed by a low-paid expendable grunts, or downloaded onto your vendors, is a question of tactics. If we buy that general idea, we buy that some businesses may have software, but its not their core value proposition, and therefore that it’s ok to outsource it. (I once met two founders who wanted to do a daily deal type business with high-end fashion items. I know nothing about this business, but I recall they were adamant that their “secret sauce” was sourcing the product to sell, not selling it. Thus, they were talking to consultants about building their deals site for them.)
joeyspn 11y ago
Exactly what I was thinking... what happens after project delivery? I see this site suited for small apps, or as a quick funcional beta/boilerplate generator for teams, which is not bad if you just need to test some idea in the market and/or you plan to take over the development.

cognivore 11y ago

People who want software built are usually (in my experience, almost always) incapable of describing what they want. But they know what they like or don't like when they see it, and then they get ideas for changes. Unless Gigster (really?) gets that part figured out all they'll be capable of creating is the next app that sits in the middle of the the app store charts that no one cares about.

saiprashanth93 11y ago
The first two lines of this comment should be written down on every wall of every dev shop in the planet.

joeyspn 11y ago

I wonder why you can't pick design related skills in the signup form... is this just for devs and PMs?

henrik_w 11y ago

Two quotes that I like and think are relevant to the discussion: "Much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification." -- Fred Brooks "If you don't understand precisely what you need to do, what makes you think you can tell a computer how to do it?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173640 For a highly standardized product, maybe the "specifying what you want" isn't a big problem, but in other cases I think it is.

roymurdock 11y ago

Discussion of Gigster (YC S15) "Prolancer" business model from 4 months ago - 188 comments, including responses from the founders: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931596

philfrasty 11y ago

I constantly have this Facebook-Ad for the last couple of weeks that says „We build your MVP for 5k“.

tatx 11y ago

They mention that the “the client base moved to enterprise” and I think that, if Gigster is ever reasonably successful, it will end up as a shop making niche products for enterprises who find it difficult to fit such development activities into their budgets and schedules. They will then be directly competing with consultants who today do not provide an 'end-to-end' solution, so to say, to the development problems plaguing these enterprise companies. But it is mighty difficult to do this kind of niche work because developers will then have to spend an inordinate amount of time acquiring relevant domain knowledge to implement these niche solutions. Hard earned knowledge that will be useless after the project is complete. And the effort of acquiring this domain knowledge will often be under-appreciated and underpaid, cause it is very very difficult to estimate this effort no matter how good an AI have you.

flipp3r 11y ago

Why invest 10M when he could've just asked Gigster to make a better Gigster?

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
10M is a pretty cheap singularity.
kami8845 11y ago
Submit your specs TODAY and our "top 1% engineers" will deliver in just 30 days!!
sean2 11y ago
Good question; I think you were going for funny, but you highlighted what they can and can't do there. They build apps. So I'm sure sell you 90% of their code, but they can't re-code their brand name, repeat costumers and the staff that they seem to take some pride in.

gizzlon 11y ago

Does anyone understand the pricing? : https://gigster.com/pricing https://gigster.com/pricing

SimpleXYZ 11y ago
Those are the prices to build clones of those sites (I think).
- gizzlon 11y ago
  yeah, that's what I though at first as well, but Instagram on the Web > Facebook on the Web? =? Tinder > Facebook ??
  - tim333 11y ago
    I guess that's a pretty simplified Facebook rather than the 20m+ LOC actual

55555 11y ago

I think I get it. Look at their pricing: https://gigster.com/pricing https://gigster.com/pricing Most software development shops don't ever scale past a few dozen or a few hundred developers. As a result, they don't have much project overlap. If you were able to scale to handle tons of similar projects, and be picky about which projects you take on, you could re-use 90% of the code needed for each project without ever dropping prices, essentially charging over and over again for hours that were only actually worked once. All marketplace codebases are pretty similar, all dating apps are pretty similar, all daily deals sites are pretty similar, etc. I think all their talk of Artificial Intelligence is nonsense to throw people off their trail.

mooreds 11y ago
I read through their terms of service and you as a developer hand all rights to your work over to them. That's normal. But there's little mention of the rights of their client. So maybe they are trying to get a bunch of reusable ip on the backs of consulting engagements, like every consulting shop ever. But maybe doing it in a more scalable way.
jboynyc 11y ago
To me that looks like Samwer as a Service: Here's how much it will cost to clone <mainstream app>.
mziel 11y ago
Big chunk of consulting is this busines model, i.e. develop a solution and sell its integration in the vendor architecture. Is their solution that much different?

orthoganol 11y ago

I wish the article's author wouldn't sound so naive - why wouldn't he discuss all the other similar attempts at automating app development, their shortcomings, and how Gigster is going to find a way to do better? People might think from reading his article that this hasn't been going on for a decade+.

Agathos 11y ago

Hasn't software been eating software development ever since the first compiler was written?

tim333 11y ago
Kinda. Things like compilers increase software produced per hour but the total quantity of software demanded is open ended.

srameshc 11y ago

Isn't this called outsourcing ? But still someone has to write the code.

BatFastard 11y ago

“He who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_software_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_software_engine... Maybe it IS different this time around. I can see for very simple apps this might be possible. But one of the first questions that often gets asked on projects that I am on is "Is this even possible?"

bdcravens 11y ago
Technology is filled with plenty of idea that have their second comings: consumer tablets, grocery delivery, etc.
- BatFastard 11y ago
  Totally agree! I have seen VR be hyped 3 times now, lets hope thing on sticks. Personally I don't believe in computer estimation of anything but the simplest project
raverbashing 11y ago
A compiler is a CASE tool. Same thing for UML tools (some are pretty good)
luisobo 11y ago
If everyone followed that argument we would've missed so many interesting things, Facebook for instance. Time can create a better context for an idea to develop. Or maybe the people attempting to implement it the nth time are not idiots or, or, or...

Bjorkbat 11y ago

So, core technology is an AI system that, given a project, will automatically determine how long it will take and what sort of work will be required? Great, I'll buy a license and tell my buddies here in New Mexico about it so we can compete with Gigster at probably 25% of whatever they're charging for apps, because New Mexico is cheap as all hell yet still remarkably beautiful. Don't tell too many of your friends, we're trying to keep it that way. But seriously, this is nothing more than a development agency that happens to have a very cool piece of tech on hand that enables them to essentially productize development. That's cool. But eventually that same piece of tech will eventually be replicated and available to freelancers the world over, probably as a subscription-based service. It doesn't even have to be that smart.

w1ntermute 11y ago

> The company finds top-notch freelance developers, designers, and project managers with pedigrees from MIT, CalTech, Google, and Stripe, and only accepts 5% of applicants. Why would such individuals be willing to work as a contractor for this company in a great enough number and at a low enough rate to make this model scalable and profitable? Something doesn't add up here.

myspace 11y ago
I think they just will outsource everything to third world countries.
gdilla 11y ago
unless they have a secret pipeline of talented coders who don't want to be in an office, live in the woods or on the beach, work 3-4 hours a day, collaborate minimally, and never have to worry about finding new work or maintaining a pipeline. Actually, that sounds nice. But still, seems like there's not that many around from MIT, CalTech, Google and Stripe. People with that pedigree have huge opportunity costs; why would they work for below market enough to make this attractive to the clients?
morgante 11y ago
Take a look at the pricing page: https://gigster.com/pricing https://gigster.com/pricing Gigster is anything but cheap.

OpenDrapery 11y ago

interesting that this wasn't titled "Software Development Eats Itself"

simonswords82 11y ago

This type of progression in software development is inevitable. Groups of people writing individual lines of code for bespoke apps will one day go the same way looms in factories went after the industrial revolution. I run a software company, and we've actually moved away from fixed price projects and only provide development on a day rate. Fixed price/scope/timescale projects are incredibly risky, require massive amounts of project management resource, and can be insanely unprofitable if the specifications for the work are not watertight and the client isn't managed well. Knowing the industry very well, and having completed hundreds of bespoke projects for all sizes and types of clients I have so many questions about how the Gigster model works. Off the top of my head: * What language are the apps built in? This is important to me if I want to hire my own people to continue to build out and support the app going forward. I presume the mobile apps are native, so this question is probably more specific to the web development. * Do I own the intellectual property on the finished app? * What does the support and maintenance agreement look like and provide? And at what cost? * What does the contract for development look like? The devil will be in the detail here. For example, I'd be interested to know what happens if my project overruns and deadlines are missed. * What if I want something built that doesn't fit one of their various examples here https://gigster.com/pricing https://gigster.com/pricing? * Who writes the specification? Who creates the wireframes for the app? * Who performs quality assurance testing? What happens if the work I receive is excessively buggy? Bespoke development of software is hard and it's great to see somebody take this on. I wish Gigster luck but I fear for their sanity as they attempt to scale.

cheez 11y ago
> This type of progression in software development is inevitable. Groups of people writing individual lines of code for bespoke apps will one day go the same way looms in factories went after the industrial revolution. > I run a software company, and we've actually moved away from fixed price projects and only provide development on a day rate. Fixed price/scope/timescale projects are incredibly risky, require massive amounts of project management resource, and can be insanely unprofitable if the specifications for the work are not watertight and the client isn't managed well. These two sentences don't seem to make sense. On the one hand, you say it's inevitable. On the other hand, as someone who has RUN a software company, you say you couldn't figure it out. Is that correct?

throaway859028 11y ago

I've worked on gigster. Throwaway account to avoid this being linked to my account. A few thoughts: 1) The talk of an AI to price things marketing fluff. There is no magic AI that can price, for example, the fact that a client changes his mind, or that legacy code has unexpected bugs. 2) The reusable component stuff is not fully deployed yet. I think where it has potential is as app templates. A lot of apps have similar starting points, and it makes sense to encapsulate those starting points in project templates. I am doubtful that this will evolve into a magic solution that makes software engineering easy. 3) The big innovation, from my perspective, is that they are harnessing the spare work capacity of software engineers. It is very easy for a full time employed engineer to hop onto the platform and make some extra cash. I think this separates them from traditional outsourcing shops, or oDesk. 4) Another innovation is that they capture the reputation gains from their work. Traditionally a freelancer would build relationships with their clients, the freelancers reputation improves as he does good work. With gigster, you as a freelancer do not have an external reputation. Gigster gets the benefit of your good (or bad) work. Largely because of (4) I would be cautious as a freelancer on gigster. The pay is project based, not hourly, which means there is high variance/randomness to the hourly pay.

erikb 11y ago

It's the right track, but we haven't met the goal yet.