10 ms·

All these "generic" apps like notes, photo, project management etc will all be bought once they become successful and be consumed by one of the existing giants

All these "generic" apps like notes, photo, project management etc will all be bought once they become successful and be consumed by one of the existing giants in the space. On one hand I would love to try out all the latest and greatest apps. On the other hand, I already know that they will either a) shutdown OR b) sell my data OR c) show ads or some such nonsense. Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? Is bootstrapping really so out of fashion? The startup agenda is either make a billion dollar company or go home. Nothing in between. Very sad (I even saw Sam in some video last week asking 'how do you become a monopoly'?) Why this obsession to grow massive?

deleted 9y ago
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tobltobs 9y ago
> Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? Because not enough users are willing to pay. The few which would pay won't even cover the increased support effort. But anyway if you come so far to learn this you already have been kind of successful, because usually it is impossible to get enough attention for your paid app anyway.
- tptacek 9y ago
  They're not willing to pay and further not willing to pay enough. People have a hard time intuiting opportunity cost, so they don't see that a person capable of building a truly useful note-taking application has 10 more lucrative opportunities bidding on their time.
  - et-al 9y ago
    Following up with this: 15-20 years ago, one would pay $40-60 for programs on your computer. Now, people gawk at even paying $4.99 for a mobile app.
    - candiodari 9y ago
      That's partly because it seems that the odds of ad shenanigans, abandonment and selling user data seems to increase with the price, rather than decrease.
      - vacri 9y ago
        People aren't conditioned to pay single-digit-dollars-if-that because of app-side shennanigans. They've been conditioned to pay that because of the vast array of free stuff out there. The difference between 'free' and 'a few dollars' is only a few dollars. The difference between 'free' and 'fifty dollars' is quite a bit.
      - tobltobs 9y ago
        Is there any (non anecdotal) evidence for your bold theory?
    - jakobegger 9y ago
      People still pay $40-60 for programs on their computer. Source: I sell a program for $40.
      - girvo 9y ago
        And thank you for it! Postico is phenomenal, and so worth the $40 I paid :)
    - notzorbo3 9y ago
      Personally, mobile apps are worth a lot less to me because basically everything on mobile is an "extra" on top of my normal PC. I can't get any meaningful work done on a mobile phone, so why invest money in apps on it? Especially since there are generally free versions available that are good enough. The only app which I ever paid money for is Locus Map pro, which happens to be an app that only really makes sense to have on mobile.
- Nition 9y ago
  Some of the best apps I use are one-off payments. Rainlendar Pro which I've been using for years. FreeFileSync which is donationware. I totally agree that when there's a free version and a paid/donation version hardly anyone is actually willing to pay though. The pay-once model is really good for the consumer... until the company goes out of business because they're not making any money. Which is why I also buy products that don't require an ongoing service!
  - tomaskafka 9y ago
    Are the authors living off the money from these apps? Bet they don't and can't. You like them, but you are an unsustainable customer.
jitl 9y ago
I think you're falsely equating "asking for money" with remaining independent in the long-term, I think Hackpad in this case was successful: I know of several companies that used their paid "enterprise" offering for years. At Airbnb we used Hackpad extensively as our wiki in the engineering team. In many ways Dropbox Paper is like Hackpad 2.0, but it has different branding. Hackpad continued to run long after Dropbox bought them - for 3 years! This is less of an "our incredible journey" then you think.
iagooar 9y ago
I guess that one reason bootstrapping is so tough is that it requires a lot of time, usually years, to even start to imagine one day living off of your company. Imagine you have this nice business idea, which you have been working on for countless hours after work to make it become an awesome product. You sacrife your free time and maybe even health or friendships. You start to feel bad for every day you don't work on your product, as you know it all depends on you, and maybe a couple of co-founders. You know your product is great and it could make many customers happy. Yet what you earn from your it is peanuts and you don't see how this will change any time soon. In that scenario, venture capital or a buy-out seem like a very appealing idea. After all, if you've come this far, it means that your product means a lot to you and you have more ideas than time. And suddenly knowing that you could get a decent amount of money to quit your "boring" daily job and make all these ideas come true gets even more interesting. That burning desire to make your "baby" succeed should not be underestimated. That's why so many startups try hard to get a decent funding. I can't blame them, because I've been there. Heck, if a "big player" came to my little startup and offered a good deal, I would probably more than consider taking it. In the end, life is short and you can only build so many valuable things in your life that might have an impact and make a difference. Still, I'm happy to have a fully bootstrapped startup that is not yet bringing enough money to quit my job. It is tough, it takes a lot of patience, and even more sacrifice every day. But also the prospect of making it profitable enough to have a small team that can work on your idea has a special kind of appeal. Not wanting to be the next Google or Facebook is a good thing in my opinion, but I understand that there is a lot of people who just burn with desire to push their ideas forward faster. Can't blame them for that.
- newsat13 9y ago
  Great comment. My frustration primarily comes from being a consumer of these startups. I understand why co-founders choose this approach. But it's taken me a while to realize that in this "system", I am not a consumer but I am the product. These companies think very differently than what I am used to as they measured by number of "active users" as the big companies of day like Google, Facebook, Dropbox use these metrics for acquisition. Google would rather buy a company with 1m free users than a company with 10k paid users paying 100usd each.
nsedlet 9y ago
I think you're attacking a straw man - this situation is nothing like the typical pattern of "acquire company, shut down the product". Hackpad has been running for years since it was acquired (everyone in our company uses it regularly). Dropbox Paper is basically a newer, better version of Hackpad. Anyone using Hackpad can "upgrade" by moving all of their pads into Paper. We just moved over - it was easy and cost nothing.
- morganvachon 9y ago
  > Anyone using Hackpad can "upgrade" by moving all of their pads into Paper. I haven't touched Hackpad in a long time and wasn't aware of the acquisition until this HN post. That said, even if I was a regular user I'd pass on the "upgrade" as I stopped using Dropbox for privacy reasons. I'd consider moving (back) to Etherpad more of an upgrade at this point.
- mceoin 9y ago
  I wasn't aware Dropbox still offered a free plan?
- et-al 9y ago
  Given Dropbox's record with Mailbox and Carousel, I'm hesitant to use them other than for their core services.
- wslh 9y ago
  > Dropbox Paper is basically a newer, better version of Hackpad. How do you create cross links between pages in Paper?
  - qznc 9y ago
    Prefix +
    - wslh 9y ago
      Great! I have been waiting for a mobile personal wiki since the Palm Pilot.
iamatworknow 9y ago
>The startup agenda is either make a billion dollar company or go home. >Why this obsession to grow massive? It's not just startups. Every publicly traded company is focused on growth. You could have many billions of revenue and billions in profit, but if you aren't growing you're failing. I don't agree with this, but the stock market certainly does.
- zimablue 9y ago
  I'm not sure that's true, there are plenty of "value" firms who invest based on dividends not growth. Maybe there's a skew but there's an underlying rationality to investors where ultimately you add up the money a company can pay out in dividends etc and work out what they're worth. I'm far from an expert on this but there's even pressure in the opposite direction - for big companies, investors value a regular, predictable dividend, and can be wary of CEOs or directors with significant holdings who want to take risks and "empire build".
espadrine 9y ago
> Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? They can. You just don't hear about them. They tend to die fast. Apart from app.net. That one got good publicity before it too died.
mobitar 9y ago
This is my goal for Standard Notes[0]. To focus on longevity and sustainablity. It's not easy, but it feels the right way to go about it. [0]: https://standardnotes.org https://standardnotes.org
- yAnonymous 9y ago
  Really cool. Is there a way to get a systray icon in Ubuntu? I don't mind manually adding the app to a whitelist or something.
  - mobitar 9y ago
    Not familiar with the intricacies of Ubuntu interface tbh. I'm mostly on Mac.
jwr 9y ago
> Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? As the owner/founder/author of a bootstrapped SaaS app, I can answer that: People really, really, REALLY do not want to pay. Really. The dominating perception is that software should be free, or if not free, paid with a one-time purchase in the single-digit dollars. The aversion to paying is huge, you have to provide a "can't live without" feature for people to (grudgingly) pull out their wallets. Also, if you actually do the numbers as a business owner, it turns out that consumer SaaS apps are difficult to sustain financially. With a small number of customers, there just isn't enough money, and if your customer base grows, complexity and costs step in. My SaaS only has paid business tiers for now, starting at $39/month, because much as I try, I can't see how I can make anything cheaper work. It's easy to underestimate costs if you've never ran a business. I decided to stick with it, charge subscription fees, grow very slowly and see where it takes me, but that is a hard and slow path. I estimate it will take me another year (for an overall of 3 years) to get to a sustainable income stream.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  > People really, really, REALLY do not want to pay. Had a conversation with a fellow developer today, who charges clients $900/day, who baulked at the idea of paying $50 for Paw when Postman is free.
  - jakobegger 9y ago
    I recommend ignoring these kinds of people. No good will come from marketing to them. I recommend to focus on the people who value your work, and are happy to pay for your product.
    - dhimes 9y ago
      How do you find them?
      - educar 9y ago
        That is step 3) usually marked as '???'. Step 4 is profit.
smnscu 9y ago
I agree, I just wrote about this wrt email, since I'm working on something that plans to eschew the "free" plans nonsense. https://github.com/andreis/blog/blob/master/posts/2017-04-17-a-case-against-free-email.md https://github.com/andreis/blog/blob/master/posts/2017-04-17...
z3t4 9y ago
> Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? Asking for money is such an huge entry barrier. Even if it would only cost one cent, it would still stop 99.99% of the users from using it. I was kinda hoping for Bitcoin to fix this. But now it already cost a lot to make a transaction, and you can't instantly verify the payment. Paper money was a huge step, electronic payment was another huge step, lets take the next step!
- tommorris 9y ago
  Bitcoin doesn't solve the problem, because you then still need to solve the "how do you convince people to buy the Bitcoins when they can just use a credit/debit card" (you can get pre-paid MasterCards in convenience stores across the world) and the "how do you actually get people to buy the Bitcoins" problem - the answer to the latter currently seems to be (a) buying it off some slightly disreputable website that you find by asking on Reddit, or (b) localbitcoins, where you agree to meet some random person in a car park or shopping centre and exchange cash for BTC. Not shady at all. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency literally solves nothing in the app payment use case.
tomaskafka 9y ago
Without scale and access to users they are serving as a free user research/prototype for monopoly corporations. See eg. Sublime text and VS Code. Thank you, Sublime text for validating and educating the market, we'll take it from there with our better and free offering.
macspoofing 9y ago
>All these "generic" apps like notes, photo, project management etc will all be bought once they become successful and be consumed by one of the existing giants in the space. It's already happening. For example, the Microsoft Office365 cloud suite of apps is looking pretty comprehensive. >Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? They can. Why can't they? >The startup agenda is either make a billion dollar company or go home. A certain kind of start-up with a certain kind of investment model. Lots of startups grow to be medium sized business.
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago

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tobltobs 9y ago

> Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? Because not enough users are willing to pay. The few which would pay won't even cover the increased support effort. But anyway if you come so far to learn this you already have been kind of successful, because usually it is impossible to get enough attention for your paid app anyway.

tptacek 9y ago
They're not willing to pay and further not willing to pay enough. People have a hard time intuiting opportunity cost, so they don't see that a person capable of building a truly useful note-taking application has 10 more lucrative opportunities bidding on their time.
- et-al 9y ago
  Following up with this: 15-20 years ago, one would pay $40-60 for programs on your computer. Now, people gawk at even paying $4.99 for a mobile app.
  - candiodari 9y ago
    That's partly because it seems that the odds of ad shenanigans, abandonment and selling user data seems to increase with the price, rather than decrease.
    - vacri 9y ago
      People aren't conditioned to pay single-digit-dollars-if-that because of app-side shennanigans. They've been conditioned to pay that because of the vast array of free stuff out there. The difference between 'free' and 'a few dollars' is only a few dollars. The difference between 'free' and 'fifty dollars' is quite a bit.
    - tobltobs 9y ago
      Is there any (non anecdotal) evidence for your bold theory?
  - jakobegger 9y ago
    People still pay $40-60 for programs on their computer. Source: I sell a program for $40.
    - girvo 9y ago
      And thank you for it! Postico is phenomenal, and so worth the $40 I paid :)
  - notzorbo3 9y ago
    Personally, mobile apps are worth a lot less to me because basically everything on mobile is an "extra" on top of my normal PC. I can't get any meaningful work done on a mobile phone, so why invest money in apps on it? Especially since there are generally free versions available that are good enough. The only app which I ever paid money for is Locus Map pro, which happens to be an app that only really makes sense to have on mobile.
Nition 9y ago
Some of the best apps I use are one-off payments. Rainlendar Pro which I've been using for years. FreeFileSync which is donationware. I totally agree that when there's a free version and a paid/donation version hardly anyone is actually willing to pay though. The pay-once model is really good for the consumer... until the company goes out of business because they're not making any money. Which is why I also buy products that don't require an ongoing service!
- tomaskafka 9y ago
  Are the authors living off the money from these apps? Bet they don't and can't. You like them, but you are an unsustainable customer.

jitl 9y ago

I think you're falsely equating "asking for money" with remaining independent in the long-term, I think Hackpad in this case was successful: I know of several companies that used their paid "enterprise" offering for years. At Airbnb we used Hackpad extensively as our wiki in the engineering team. In many ways Dropbox Paper is like Hackpad 2.0, but it has different branding. Hackpad continued to run long after Dropbox bought them - for 3 years! This is less of an "our incredible journey" then you think.

iagooar 9y ago

I guess that one reason bootstrapping is so tough is that it requires a lot of time, usually years, to even start to imagine one day living off of your company. Imagine you have this nice business idea, which you have been working on for countless hours after work to make it become an awesome product. You sacrife your free time and maybe even health or friendships. You start to feel bad for every day you don't work on your product, as you know it all depends on you, and maybe a couple of co-founders. You know your product is great and it could make many customers happy. Yet what you earn from your it is peanuts and you don't see how this will change any time soon. In that scenario, venture capital or a buy-out seem like a very appealing idea. After all, if you've come this far, it means that your product means a lot to you and you have more ideas than time. And suddenly knowing that you could get a decent amount of money to quit your "boring" daily job and make all these ideas come true gets even more interesting. That burning desire to make your "baby" succeed should not be underestimated. That's why so many startups try hard to get a decent funding. I can't blame them, because I've been there. Heck, if a "big player" came to my little startup and offered a good deal, I would probably more than consider taking it. In the end, life is short and you can only build so many valuable things in your life that might have an impact and make a difference. Still, I'm happy to have a fully bootstrapped startup that is not yet bringing enough money to quit my job. It is tough, it takes a lot of patience, and even more sacrifice every day. But also the prospect of making it profitable enough to have a small team that can work on your idea has a special kind of appeal. Not wanting to be the next Google or Facebook is a good thing in my opinion, but I understand that there is a lot of people who just burn with desire to push their ideas forward faster. Can't blame them for that.

newsat13 9y ago
Great comment. My frustration primarily comes from being a consumer of these startups. I understand why co-founders choose this approach. But it's taken me a while to realize that in this "system", I am not a consumer but I am the product. These companies think very differently than what I am used to as they measured by number of "active users" as the big companies of day like Google, Facebook, Dropbox use these metrics for acquisition. Google would rather buy a company with 1m free users than a company with 10k paid users paying 100usd each.

nsedlet 9y ago

I think you're attacking a straw man - this situation is nothing like the typical pattern of "acquire company, shut down the product". Hackpad has been running for years since it was acquired (everyone in our company uses it regularly). Dropbox Paper is basically a newer, better version of Hackpad. Anyone using Hackpad can "upgrade" by moving all of their pads into Paper. We just moved over - it was easy and cost nothing.

morganvachon 9y ago
> Anyone using Hackpad can "upgrade" by moving all of their pads into Paper. I haven't touched Hackpad in a long time and wasn't aware of the acquisition until this HN post. That said, even if I was a regular user I'd pass on the "upgrade" as I stopped using Dropbox for privacy reasons. I'd consider moving (back) to Etherpad more of an upgrade at this point.
mceoin 9y ago
I wasn't aware Dropbox still offered a free plan?
et-al 9y ago
Given Dropbox's record with Mailbox and Carousel, I'm hesitant to use them other than for their core services.
wslh 9y ago
> Dropbox Paper is basically a newer, better version of Hackpad. How do you create cross links between pages in Paper?
- qznc 9y ago
  Prefix +
  - wslh 9y ago
    Great! I have been waiting for a mobile personal wiki since the Palm Pilot.

iamatworknow 9y ago

>The startup agenda is either make a billion dollar company or go home. >Why this obsession to grow massive? It's not just startups. Every publicly traded company is focused on growth. You could have many billions of revenue and billions in profit, but if you aren't growing you're failing. I don't agree with this, but the stock market certainly does.

zimablue 9y ago
I'm not sure that's true, there are plenty of "value" firms who invest based on dividends not growth. Maybe there's a skew but there's an underlying rationality to investors where ultimately you add up the money a company can pay out in dividends etc and work out what they're worth. I'm far from an expert on this but there's even pressure in the opposite direction - for big companies, investors value a regular, predictable dividend, and can be wary of CEOs or directors with significant holdings who want to take risks and "empire build".

espadrine 9y ago

> Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? They can. You just don't hear about them. They tend to die fast. Apart from app.net. That one got good publicity before it too died.

mobitar 9y ago

This is my goal for Standard Notes[0]. To focus on longevity and sustainablity. It's not easy, but it feels the right way to go about it. [0]: https://standardnotes.org https://standardnotes.org

yAnonymous 9y ago
Really cool. Is there a way to get a systray icon in Ubuntu? I don't mind manually adding the app to a whitelist or something.
- mobitar 9y ago
  Not familiar with the intricacies of Ubuntu interface tbh. I'm mostly on Mac.

jwr 9y ago

> Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? As the owner/founder/author of a bootstrapped SaaS app, I can answer that: People really, really, REALLY do not want to pay. Really. The dominating perception is that software should be free, or if not free, paid with a one-time purchase in the single-digit dollars. The aversion to paying is huge, you have to provide a "can't live without" feature for people to (grudgingly) pull out their wallets. Also, if you actually do the numbers as a business owner, it turns out that consumer SaaS apps are difficult to sustain financially. With a small number of customers, there just isn't enough money, and if your customer base grows, complexity and costs step in. My SaaS only has paid business tiers for now, starting at $39/month, because much as I try, I can't see how I can make anything cheaper work. It's easy to underestimate costs if you've never ran a business. I decided to stick with it, charge subscription fees, grow very slowly and see where it takes me, but that is a hard and slow path. I estimate it will take me another year (for an overall of 3 years) to get to a sustainable income stream.

madeofpalk 9y ago
> People really, really, REALLY do not want to pay. Had a conversation with a fellow developer today, who charges clients $900/day, who baulked at the idea of paying $50 for Paw when Postman is free.
- jakobegger 9y ago
  I recommend ignoring these kinds of people. No good will come from marketing to them. I recommend to focus on the people who value your work, and are happy to pay for your product.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    How do you find them?
    - educar 9y ago
      That is step 3) usually marked as '???'. Step 4 is profit.

smnscu 9y ago

I agree, I just wrote about this wrt email, since I'm working on something that plans to eschew the "free" plans nonsense. https://github.com/andreis/blog/blob/master/posts/2017-04-17-a-case-against-free-email.md https://github.com/andreis/blog/blob/master/posts/2017-04-17...

z3t4 9y ago

> Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? Asking for money is such an huge entry barrier. Even if it would only cost one cent, it would still stop 99.99% of the users from using it. I was kinda hoping for Bitcoin to fix this. But now it already cost a lot to make a transaction, and you can't instantly verify the payment. Paper money was a huge step, electronic payment was another huge step, lets take the next step!

tommorris 9y ago
Bitcoin doesn't solve the problem, because you then still need to solve the "how do you convince people to buy the Bitcoins when they can just use a credit/debit card" (you can get pre-paid MasterCards in convenience stores across the world) and the "how do you actually get people to buy the Bitcoins" problem - the answer to the latter currently seems to be (a) buying it off some slightly disreputable website that you find by asking on Reddit, or (b) localbitcoins, where you agree to meet some random person in a car park or shopping centre and exchange cash for BTC. Not shady at all. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency literally solves nothing in the app payment use case.

tomaskafka 9y ago

Without scale and access to users they are serving as a free user research/prototype for monopoly corporations. See eg. Sublime text and VS Code. Thank you, Sublime text for validating and educating the market, we'll take it from there with our better and free offering.

macspoofing 9y ago

>All these "generic" apps like notes, photo, project management etc will all be bought once they become successful and be consumed by one of the existing giants in the space. It's already happening. For example, the Microsoft Office365 cloud suite of apps is looking pretty comprehensive. >Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? They can. Why can't they? >The startup agenda is either make a billion dollar company or go home. A certain kind of start-up with a certain kind of investment model. Lots of startups grow to be medium sized business.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]