4 ms·

If I was personally making thousands a month from a web app I made, I don't think I'd want to advertise that. Partially because it motivates competition, and pa

If I was personally making thousands a month from a web app I made, I don't think I'd want to advertise that. Partially because it motivates competition, and partially because I feel like public information about my income could later be used against me (no concrete examples other than alimony/child support). I wonder why these people aren't bothered by this.

harmegido 10y ago
I suspect most of the founders are extremely focused on growing their business. Anything that can help with that (free advertising in this case) is something they'll do. This is just a guess though - I'm not one of these founders.
cyberferret 10y ago
@harmegido is correct. I am one of the founders listed (HR Partner), and things like this go down as part of 'marketing' for me. I have already had hundreds of hits on my site this morning from the post in IndieHackers and the mention here, and a few sign ups, which is great. I normally hate divulging figures too, but these days I have given myself permission to do so. I realised that in the past, I was acting from a scarcity mentality and was afraid that people would steal my ideas and concepts. But of late, I have realised that this is simply not true. I am grateful that in my previous posts here on HN and on Reddit, when I have asked questions about marketing and sales, the most helpful answers have been from other developers of HR or Time and Attendance apps (Special shout out to the founders of StaffSquared and Tanda). We dance in the same space, but we all recognise the difficulties inherent and look out for each other, rather than steal from each other. In fact, I have actually referred some of my customers on to these competitors when I have realised that we don't fit their needs 100% and that someone else's solution will be a better match.
- formula_ninguna 10y ago
  >But of late, I have realised that this is simply not true. why not?
  - wwalser 10y ago
    The theory is that building something and turning it into a company are wildly divergent things. Yes, someone could copy your idea and implementation. But are they going to dedicate themselves to this full time for a year like it took you before you reached a poverty level income? Are they going to cold call 10 people per day for three months? Are they going to learn to write, nurture a following of people and provide content and value to those people in the hopes that <5% convert to customers? Anyone who starts by copying an idea probably doesn't have the same drive to make the idea successful. The actual trouble isn't that transparency invites competition. The trouble is competition that already exists somehow using the transparency against you. Numbers, to me, don't seem like the type of thing that an outsider could use against you. Effective marketing tactics and growth hacks on the other hand can be gold.
    - formula_ninguna 10y ago
      Interesting. What does "The trouble is competition that already exists somehow using the transparency against you." mean, how does it use the transparency against me?
      - wwalser 10y ago
        Yeah, sure thing: I've seen it happen a few times mostly with companies whose founders I listen to regularly on podcasts. It's almost always tactical growth advice, something that every startup struggles to find early on. Where are our customers hanging out, consuming content, how do we engender trust with them etc. Basically a founder says something like "We've recently discovered that paying a couple of talented designers to re-purpose our blog content as SlideShare presentations works surprisingly well for." Companies have tried SlideShare as a means of creating additional distribution around their content marketing. It works for some and doesn't for others. It's basically target market dependent. Some markets have bloggers/curators who will pick up the Slideshare content and embed it on their site. Other target markets don't attach to that kind of content. So, this founder shares this (and keep in mind Slideshare is just an example, it could be any marketing tactic) and the week after his podcast is released their largest competitor starts publishing content on Slideshare. Maybe their marketing team just decided to run an experiment? If the same thing happens three more times? Eventually that founder is going to start doing a cost-benefit analysis of this particular brand of transparency. He could continue sharing some stuff, their MRR and ARR seem like fair game to me but he probably wants to hold back on being specific about growth tactics.
bubu139 10y ago
I'd just reply to this even though it's probably too late, I hope you'll get notified in case you're interested. I've built Trackin (http://www.gotrackin.com http://www.gotrackin.com) then MobyDish (http://www.mobydish.com http://www.mobydish.com) powered by Trackin. First don't forget that the money doesn't get into OUR pocket, but to the company, then I'll have two reasons for me to share this info: 1- Having competitors is actually motivating, forces you to always do better and validate your market. 2- What matters the most is the execution. Google arrived after Yahoo, Apple took over Microsoft, etc. Nowadays, it's pretty "easy" to copy a software, but the way you'll deal with everything else (employees, customers, communication) is what will make you be the winner (on top of a product that people want... and some luck!) 3- (bonus answer) I'm not doing this for money anyway, mostly because I'm passionated about the delivery business and the food space and I believe it's lacking good tech. I started this as a full time job, and I'm still working more than everybody else in the company, while paying myself less than my employees. I believe most of the founders feel the same, and if you think of starting a project that you want to make full time, you shouldn't do it for money. But if you do want to work on a side project as a complementary of your income, then it's a totally different approach. But in any case, you shouldn't be scared about the competition, if they do better, then learn from them as well :)

harmegido 10y ago

I suspect most of the founders are extremely focused on growing their business. Anything that can help with that (free advertising in this case) is something they'll do. This is just a guess though - I'm not one of these founders.

cyberferret 10y ago

@harmegido is correct. I am one of the founders listed (HR Partner), and things like this go down as part of 'marketing' for me. I have already had hundreds of hits on my site this morning from the post in IndieHackers and the mention here, and a few sign ups, which is great. I normally hate divulging figures too, but these days I have given myself permission to do so. I realised that in the past, I was acting from a scarcity mentality and was afraid that people would steal my ideas and concepts. But of late, I have realised that this is simply not true. I am grateful that in my previous posts here on HN and on Reddit, when I have asked questions about marketing and sales, the most helpful answers have been from other developers of HR or Time and Attendance apps (Special shout out to the founders of StaffSquared and Tanda). We dance in the same space, but we all recognise the difficulties inherent and look out for each other, rather than steal from each other. In fact, I have actually referred some of my customers on to these competitors when I have realised that we don't fit their needs 100% and that someone else's solution will be a better match.

formula_ninguna 10y ago
>But of late, I have realised that this is simply not true. why not?
- wwalser 10y ago
  The theory is that building something and turning it into a company are wildly divergent things. Yes, someone could copy your idea and implementation. But are they going to dedicate themselves to this full time for a year like it took you before you reached a poverty level income? Are they going to cold call 10 people per day for three months? Are they going to learn to write, nurture a following of people and provide content and value to those people in the hopes that <5% convert to customers? Anyone who starts by copying an idea probably doesn't have the same drive to make the idea successful. The actual trouble isn't that transparency invites competition. The trouble is competition that already exists somehow using the transparency against you. Numbers, to me, don't seem like the type of thing that an outsider could use against you. Effective marketing tactics and growth hacks on the other hand can be gold.
  - formula_ninguna 10y ago
    Interesting. What does "The trouble is competition that already exists somehow using the transparency against you." mean, how does it use the transparency against me?
    - wwalser 10y ago
      Yeah, sure thing: I've seen it happen a few times mostly with companies whose founders I listen to regularly on podcasts. It's almost always tactical growth advice, something that every startup struggles to find early on. Where are our customers hanging out, consuming content, how do we engender trust with them etc. Basically a founder says something like "We've recently discovered that paying a couple of talented designers to re-purpose our blog content as SlideShare presentations works surprisingly well for." Companies have tried SlideShare as a means of creating additional distribution around their content marketing. It works for some and doesn't for others. It's basically target market dependent. Some markets have bloggers/curators who will pick up the Slideshare content and embed it on their site. Other target markets don't attach to that kind of content. So, this founder shares this (and keep in mind Slideshare is just an example, it could be any marketing tactic) and the week after his podcast is released their largest competitor starts publishing content on Slideshare. Maybe their marketing team just decided to run an experiment? If the same thing happens three more times? Eventually that founder is going to start doing a cost-benefit analysis of this particular brand of transparency. He could continue sharing some stuff, their MRR and ARR seem like fair game to me but he probably wants to hold back on being specific about growth tactics.

bubu139 10y ago

I'd just reply to this even though it's probably too late, I hope you'll get notified in case you're interested. I've built Trackin (http://www.gotrackin.com http://www.gotrackin.com) then MobyDish (http://www.mobydish.com http://www.mobydish.com) powered by Trackin. First don't forget that the money doesn't get into OUR pocket, but to the company, then I'll have two reasons for me to share this info: 1- Having competitors is actually motivating, forces you to always do better and validate your market. 2- What matters the most is the execution. Google arrived after Yahoo, Apple took over Microsoft, etc. Nowadays, it's pretty "easy" to copy a software, but the way you'll deal with everything else (employees, customers, communication) is what will make you be the winner (on top of a product that people want... and some luck!) 3- (bonus answer) I'm not doing this for money anyway, mostly because I'm passionated about the delivery business and the food space and I believe it's lacking good tech. I started this as a full time job, and I'm still working more than everybody else in the company, while paying myself less than my employees. I believe most of the founders feel the same, and if you think of starting a project that you want to make full time, you shouldn't do it for money. But if you do want to work on a side project as a complementary of your income, then it's a totally different approach. But in any case, you shouldn't be scared about the competition, if they do better, then learn from them as well :)