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Does this concern come from experience? Or is it just your expectation of how the world works? I find it hard to believe that there are currently any hotshot

Does this concern come from experience? Or is it just your expectation of how the world works? I find it hard to believe that there are currently any hotshot VC-backed startups executing hard to crush a little $10k MRR market and push out the incumbent mom & pop SaaS currently occupying it. Every once in a while you'll see one of those shops get stepped on accidentally by a feature of a giant company. But I can't think of any examples of a "Show HN: My little bootstrapped thing that pays the rent" that was subsequently targeted for extermination.

jondubois 8y ago
It's from both personal experience and from discussions with others. It happened to me for every project that I've started. The first time was a drag-and-drop CMS; this industry quickly attracted several VC funded competitors and they were very fast in terms of development so I had no chance to compete on my own and so I gave up after 3 years. Second time was an open source project; a full stack Javascript framework. Competitors (MeteorJS and other smaller ones) also started spawning up and I was struggling to keep users so I extracted a small part of my project and spun it off as its own standalone open source product - That was maybe 1 or 2 years before MeteorJS decided to do something similar by spinning off Apollo. Thankfully MeteorJS spun off in a different direction than me so my project was able to survive and achieve linear growth year on year since. I have other stories from many colleagues I worked with over the years (as a contractor for many different companies) so I'm basically sure that what I'm saying is correct. I'm pretty sure that my social circle is an accurate representation of the 'typical developer/entrepreneur' as well; I'm pretty sure that this is the majority. Oh and trust me, a big company will take over this space eventually. Their product will do more and integrate better with other products.
- gammatrigono 8y ago
  Trying to compete against Dropbox/AWS/Box as a lone developer is like trying to build an international airline when all you have is a paper plane. Complaining about venture-backed companies beating you makes it seem like you aren't being realistic about what you can actually achieve.
  - jondubois 8y ago
    I don't think that's a fair comparison because the problem is not building the product. The problem is marketing.
    - gammatrigono 8y ago
      Can one person really handle development, feature improvement, security, system management, customer service, marketing, and sales by themselves? For some services, yes, but in a field like cloud storage you simply have to beat Dropbox et al on all counts or you're not going to get any customers.

jondubois 8y ago

It's from both personal experience and from discussions with others. It happened to me for every project that I've started. The first time was a drag-and-drop CMS; this industry quickly attracted several VC funded competitors and they were very fast in terms of development so I had no chance to compete on my own and so I gave up after 3 years. Second time was an open source project; a full stack Javascript framework. Competitors (MeteorJS and other smaller ones) also started spawning up and I was struggling to keep users so I extracted a small part of my project and spun it off as its own standalone open source product - That was maybe 1 or 2 years before MeteorJS decided to do something similar by spinning off Apollo. Thankfully MeteorJS spun off in a different direction than me so my project was able to survive and achieve linear growth year on year since. I have other stories from many colleagues I worked with over the years (as a contractor for many different companies) so I'm basically sure that what I'm saying is correct. I'm pretty sure that my social circle is an accurate representation of the 'typical developer/entrepreneur' as well; I'm pretty sure that this is the majority. Oh and trust me, a big company will take over this space eventually. Their product will do more and integrate better with other products.

gammatrigono 8y ago
Trying to compete against Dropbox/AWS/Box as a lone developer is like trying to build an international airline when all you have is a paper plane. Complaining about venture-backed companies beating you makes it seem like you aren't being realistic about what you can actually achieve.
- jondubois 8y ago
  I don't think that's a fair comparison because the problem is not building the product. The problem is marketing.
  - gammatrigono 8y ago
    Can one person really handle development, feature improvement, security, system management, customer service, marketing, and sales by themselves? For some services, yes, but in a field like cloud storage you simply have to beat Dropbox et al on all counts or you're not going to get any customers.