3 ms·

But maybe a cloud "solution" costs too much.

by ape4 7y ago

hef19898 7y ago
Valid point. Depends on what solution you are looking at, so. One extreme would Office, nobody would develop word, excel or outlook by themselves if that wasn't the product to be sold.
- ratww 7y ago
  I wouldn't draw the line of writing software at "is software the product to be sold?", but rather at "does writing software gives us a true competitive advantage?". An example: I once worked for a company that was successful in the translation space. Most freelance translators were using Word with some expensive plugins, but the company made the choice to use an app made in-house tailored to translation and that gave them a competitive advantage (faster iteration, less mistakes), so they basically replaced Word with an in-house solution. And their "product" was still the translations, not their hidden software (Of course this was back when Translation Management SaaS weren't popular). Of course I've seen the opposite happen as well: I know a SaaS company that were in the business of selling blogs and CMS software. They had built their own blogging/CMS from scratch in the span of two years, but after six months launching, they pivoted to be a Wordpress host. Whoops, looks like customers just wanted a Wordpress anyway. They're doing ok now btw. (btw: I know that's a terrible example, since they turned out to be a service company rather than a software company). Point is, writing a WMS or TMS would make sense for a non-software company if (and only if) it had completely novel ideas that would put them ahead of the competition. Of course that's a rare thing but still a good space to be explored!
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Fair enough! Amazon is a good example for it in the logistics space.
  - juped 7y ago
    I would have written inhouse plugins for Word - it's actually pretty easy and I don't want to be in the business of writing a word processor.
    - ratww 7y ago
      Nobody in my story was in the business of writing a word processor. Interestingly, that's probably another lesson on mistakes that kills startups: thinking that the only thing able to replace X is an exact replica of X.

But maybe a cloud "solution" costs too much.

by ape4 7y ago

But maybe a cloud "solution" costs too much.

hef19898 7y ago

Valid point. Depends on what solution you are looking at, so. One extreme would Office, nobody would develop word, excel or outlook by themselves if that wasn't the product to be sold.

ratww 7y ago
I wouldn't draw the line of writing software at "is software the product to be sold?", but rather at "does writing software gives us a true competitive advantage?". An example: I once worked for a company that was successful in the translation space. Most freelance translators were using Word with some expensive plugins, but the company made the choice to use an app made in-house tailored to translation and that gave them a competitive advantage (faster iteration, less mistakes), so they basically replaced Word with an in-house solution. And their "product" was still the translations, not their hidden software (Of course this was back when Translation Management SaaS weren't popular). Of course I've seen the opposite happen as well: I know a SaaS company that were in the business of selling blogs and CMS software. They had built their own blogging/CMS from scratch in the span of two years, but after six months launching, they pivoted to be a Wordpress host. Whoops, looks like customers just wanted a Wordpress anyway. They're doing ok now btw. (btw: I know that's a terrible example, since they turned out to be a service company rather than a software company). Point is, writing a WMS or TMS would make sense for a non-software company if (and only if) it had completely novel ideas that would put them ahead of the competition. Of course that's a rare thing but still a good space to be explored!
- hef19898 7y ago
  Fair enough! Amazon is a good example for it in the logistics space.
- juped 7y ago
  I would have written inhouse plugins for Word - it's actually pretty easy and I don't want to be in the business of writing a word processor.
  - ratww 7y ago
    Nobody in my story was in the business of writing a word processor. Interestingly, that's probably another lesson on mistakes that kills startups: thinking that the only thing able to replace X is an exact replica of X.