7 ms·

The article seems to imply Dollar Dhave Club succeeded with the help of AWS. I don't get it. These guys aren't Google. It's a simple static site with a few dyna

The article seems to imply Dollar Dhave Club succeeded with the help of AWS. I don't get it. These guys aren't Google. It's a simple static site with a few dynamic forms. Anyone could've built that easily in 1998, let alone 2006.

petra 10y ago
Maybe he means Amazon's fullfilment solutions ?
- wsc981 10y ago
  With "Amazon's fulfilment solutions", you're probably thinking along the lines of this: http://www.thechocolatelabapps.com/amazon-fba-va-virtual-assistant/ http://www.thechocolatelabapps.com/amazon-fba-va-virtual-ass... I thought the same when I read AWS in the article.
- giarc 10y ago
  I think the author implied that with AWS anyone could start a full blown web based business for cheap.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    Cheap web startups have been possible since at least the mid-90s. AWS makes it much less cheap, actually.
goldenkey 10y ago
I want to add: Linode, Slicehost, Rackspace, and other good hosts have been around way before AWS and offer very good VPS services that one can scale with ease. Auto scaling is not unique to Amazon. It isn't a cloud thing either. One could scale quite flexibly for at least 20 years now. Unfortunately all the misinformed boot camp coding hipsters don't know their history but love to be plenty opinionated about technology as an artistic movement. And you get these wide reaching grabs for whimsical awe, full of misinformation. Dollar Shave Club was nothing but a marketing success. The tech has absolutely nothing to do with it. Cute narrative attempt, I guess.
- sixhobbits 10y ago
  EC2 was released in 2006. Digital Ocean was founded in 2011.
  - goldenkey 10y ago
    Okay thanks. I will remove digital ocean, my mistake. Linode and Slicehost I have used for many many years though so I'm sure those are correct.
    - sixhobbits 10y ago
      I wasn't really in the cloud world in 2006, but AFAIK EC2 was pretty inventive/original/game changing in that it allowed anyone to immediately fire up and use VPS. Although there were (small) exiting services, these had enterprise entry level requirements, where you had to be approved as a customer before hand, provide all code that you wanted to run on their machines, and contact humans on the provider's end in order to up/down scale. Open to correction.
      - goldenkey 10y ago
        Linode and other hosts have had online billing since their inception. You could always launch a VPS on linode in seconds. Even shittier hosts like HostGator or Dreamhost never required human contact to launch new servers. EC2 was game changing for certain reasons but what you mention sbout 'enterprise' was never an issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linode https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linode
      - TylerE 10y ago
        I remember having VPS-like setup over 10 years ago for cheap, on FreeBSD using jails.
      - cookiecaper 10y ago
        No, AWS was not unique. It became well-known because a) Amazon had the money to pump into marketing it, and Amazon was already a strong brand and b) aggressive integration of additional non-hosting services like S3 and Route53 made it a simple one-stop shop. They had the brand credit to get enterprise clients on the hook. As the rest of this thread is stating wrt DSC, the success is really only slightly related to the technology.
akie 10y ago
It's not a "simple" static site, and I'd be very surprised if it was "static" either, because there is guaranteed to be a database backend (how else would you track orders?). The frontend is written in EmberJS, probably with some fancy javascript backend.
- AznHisoka 10y ago
  Ok, it's not static, as there's a database, but it's mostly CRUD and it's definitely simple, as compared to any technically sophisticated application.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- michaelcampbell 10y ago
  I can rewrite any actual static site in Ember. That doesn't give it some magical dynamic properties it didn't already have. I suspect what he meant was that it's not a site that requires or makes use of any client side wizardry. Even if it does, it certainly doesn't need to - it's a web fronted database; a CRUD app.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
mbesto 10y ago
> that can be bought on zero marginal cost websites and shipped to your home directly there is no reason to charge more The author's point about AWS was not really well articulated, but the above is his main point. All that's "changed" is the distribution model for retail - also known as E-Commerce.
ripberge 10y ago
Agreed regarding AWS being a non-factor. If any tech service gets credit here it's YouTube. They also leveraged ad-tech for precise targeting, re-targeting that was not possible in a pre-Internet era. Once they were doing very well online they were able to jump in with the big boys like P&G doing traditional media buys in TV, radio, etc. I think that is the key here, Internet media helped them disseminate their message very rapidly. I would also argue, easy access to capital was very important. Once that original video went viral, they had to really pour on the online ad-spend to acquire customers. Seeing as how their customer acquisition costs are high, the more customers they got, the more money they lost every month! Capital is key! They were wildly successful before they were on AWS. I believe they started off on magento, then drupal before writing their own software (once they were having a lot of success). They don't use Amazon for fulfillment. They used some other 3PL's and are now leasing and running their own distribution centers. In the beginning, Dubin was packing those razors up in his living room! Source: founder a close personal friend.
- saddestcatever 10y ago
  True. I guess the article wanted to name-drop "AWS". Say congrats to the team next time you see your friend!
- adrr 10y ago
  Drupal, then magento on Rackspace, then magento on AWS, then custom platform on AWS. DSC runs one of the most advanced ecommerce subscription platforms out there.

petra 10y ago

Maybe he means Amazon's fullfilment solutions ?

wsc981 10y ago
With "Amazon's fulfilment solutions", you're probably thinking along the lines of this: http://www.thechocolatelabapps.com/amazon-fba-va-virtual-assistant/ http://www.thechocolatelabapps.com/amazon-fba-va-virtual-ass... I thought the same when I read AWS in the article.
giarc 10y ago
I think the author implied that with AWS anyone could start a full blown web based business for cheap.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Cheap web startups have been possible since at least the mid-90s. AWS makes it much less cheap, actually.

goldenkey 10y ago

I want to add: Linode, Slicehost, Rackspace, and other good hosts have been around way before AWS and offer very good VPS services that one can scale with ease. Auto scaling is not unique to Amazon. It isn't a cloud thing either. One could scale quite flexibly for at least 20 years now. Unfortunately all the misinformed boot camp coding hipsters don't know their history but love to be plenty opinionated about technology as an artistic movement. And you get these wide reaching grabs for whimsical awe, full of misinformation. Dollar Shave Club was nothing but a marketing success. The tech has absolutely nothing to do with it. Cute narrative attempt, I guess.

sixhobbits 10y ago
EC2 was released in 2006. Digital Ocean was founded in 2011.
- goldenkey 10y ago
  Okay thanks. I will remove digital ocean, my mistake. Linode and Slicehost I have used for many many years though so I'm sure those are correct.
  - sixhobbits 10y ago
    I wasn't really in the cloud world in 2006, but AFAIK EC2 was pretty inventive/original/game changing in that it allowed anyone to immediately fire up and use VPS. Although there were (small) exiting services, these had enterprise entry level requirements, where you had to be approved as a customer before hand, provide all code that you wanted to run on their machines, and contact humans on the provider's end in order to up/down scale. Open to correction.
    - goldenkey 10y ago
      Linode and other hosts have had online billing since their inception. You could always launch a VPS on linode in seconds. Even shittier hosts like HostGator or Dreamhost never required human contact to launch new servers. EC2 was game changing for certain reasons but what you mention sbout 'enterprise' was never an issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linode https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linode
    - TylerE 10y ago
      I remember having VPS-like setup over 10 years ago for cheap, on FreeBSD using jails.
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      No, AWS was not unique. It became well-known because a) Amazon had the money to pump into marketing it, and Amazon was already a strong brand and b) aggressive integration of additional non-hosting services like S3 and Route53 made it a simple one-stop shop. They had the brand credit to get enterprise clients on the hook. As the rest of this thread is stating wrt DSC, the success is really only slightly related to the technology.

akie 10y ago

It's not a "simple" static site, and I'd be very surprised if it was "static" either, because there is guaranteed to be a database backend (how else would you track orders?). The frontend is written in EmberJS, probably with some fancy javascript backend.

AznHisoka 10y ago
Ok, it's not static, as there's a database, but it's mostly CRUD and it's definitely simple, as compared to any technically sophisticated application.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
michaelcampbell 10y ago
I can rewrite any actual static site in Ember. That doesn't give it some magical dynamic properties it didn't already have. I suspect what he meant was that it's not a site that requires or makes use of any client side wizardry. Even if it does, it certainly doesn't need to - it's a web fronted database; a CRUD app.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

mbesto 10y ago

> that can be bought on zero marginal cost websites and shipped to your home directly there is no reason to charge more The author's point about AWS was not really well articulated, but the above is his main point. All that's "changed" is the distribution model for retail - also known as E-Commerce.

ripberge 10y ago

Agreed regarding AWS being a non-factor. If any tech service gets credit here it's YouTube. They also leveraged ad-tech for precise targeting, re-targeting that was not possible in a pre-Internet era. Once they were doing very well online they were able to jump in with the big boys like P&G doing traditional media buys in TV, radio, etc. I think that is the key here, Internet media helped them disseminate their message very rapidly. I would also argue, easy access to capital was very important. Once that original video went viral, they had to really pour on the online ad-spend to acquire customers. Seeing as how their customer acquisition costs are high, the more customers they got, the more money they lost every month! Capital is key! They were wildly successful before they were on AWS. I believe they started off on magento, then drupal before writing their own software (once they were having a lot of success). They don't use Amazon for fulfillment. They used some other 3PL's and are now leasing and running their own distribution centers. In the beginning, Dubin was packing those razors up in his living room! Source: founder a close personal friend.

saddestcatever 10y ago
True. I guess the article wanted to name-drop "AWS". Say congrats to the team next time you see your friend!
adrr 10y ago
Drupal, then magento on Rackspace, then magento on AWS, then custom platform on AWS. DSC runs one of the most advanced ecommerce subscription platforms out there.