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I see quite a few people in this thread blaming the high cost of AWS. I don't understand, why is this a problem with AWS - isn't it a problem with freeloading?

I see quite a few people in this thread blaming the high cost of AWS. I don't understand, why is this a problem with AWS - isn't it a problem with freeloading? Yes, moving hosting may save you some bucks, but fundamentally isn't the problem the large number of freeloaders? If even 5% of the 6 million users paid $20 a year, Soup would have $6 million a year - more than enough to run a small company on. FInally, i'll point to my favorite post on the subject, Don't be a free user by idlewords: https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/

bilbo0s 6y ago
I agree. The AWS complaints don't address the fundamental issue with this "business" and other startups like it, lackluster revenue. I think sometimes in the tech industry all the freely flowing angel and VC money makes us a bit unrealistic about how things work out in the real world. Low marginal cost of distribution does not mean no marginal cost of distribution. There are no bandwidth fairies riding rainbow farting unicorns sprinkling hosting and bandwidth dust on startups. At some point, you have to get serious about what you're doing.
na85 6y ago
>Yes, moving hosting may save you some bucks, but fundamentally isn't the problem the large number of freeloaders? I find this viewpoint problematic. Are the users freeloaders, or is the product just not compelling enough to attract paying users? Self reflection is sometimes painful but there's a reason "lack of market fit" is a common startup story. Insulting the users by calling them freeloaders, when you are overtly offering them a free service, seems self-defeating.
- kd5bjo 6y ago
  > Are the users freeloaders, or is the product just not compelling enough to attract paying users? There’s no cognitive dissonance in believing both of these things at the same time. The non-paying users are freeloaders because they’re gaining value with no intention of paying for it. The service isn’t compelling enough because, despite all of the attention it’s getting, it can’t attract paying customers. They’re both causative to some degree, but from the entrepreneuer’s perspective, there’s nothing that can be done about human nature— you just have to account for it when designing your offerings.
  - na85 6y ago
    The dissonance I see is in blaming "freeloaders" when you're the one offering them the product for free in the first place.
    - ghufran_syed 6y ago
      Right, it's the business model that's at fault - if you give away dollar bills, you blame people for picking them up
Deimorz 6y ago
Also worth noting that according to Crunchbase, Soup received at least €80,000 in venture capital in 2007 and 2008: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/soup-io#section-funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/soup-io#section-fund... Yes, that's not a massive amount of money and it was a long time ago, but it should still mean that they're not totally in control of the company, and that there are investors that have been expecting a return out of it eventually. Just reaching a break-even/moderately-profitable state probably wouldn't have been good enough. I also see this article on TechCrunch talking about "soup.me" receiving $530,000 in VC in 2012: https://techcrunch.com/2012/02/14/soup-me-lands-530000-lets-you-aggregate-your-digital-life-or-something/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/02/14/soup-me-lands-530000-lets-... It specifically says that it's a "reboot service" of soup.io, but the soup.me site no longer exists, so I'm not certain. Their inactive Twitter account (https://twitter.com/soup_me https://twitter.com/soup_me) does have an identical logo and a location of Vienna (same as soup.io), so it's probably true that it's the same company. That's definitely a much larger amount of VC, and would make it even less possible for "sustainable" to be an acceptable end goal for the site.
- masukomi 6y ago
  it was 80k over 2 rounds. That means that they weren't able to raise even 80k at once. That's not "I'm investing money because I expect you to turn a profit for me money" that's "here, I'll float you a little because i like you / your idea and maybe... maybe it'll pan out and I'll get a nice return."
  - nacs 6y ago
    Outside of SV, thats plenty of money to bootstrap a company. Watch an episode of Shark tank -- there 'investments' typically are in the 100K to 200K for the bigger deals they do and many are less than 50K.
    - strombofulous 6y ago
      50k? Serious question from someone who's never tried: why not just get a loan? I've only watched one episode (I hated it, it reminded me way too much of black mirror's "15 million merits") but the deals they were cutting were... not good. Is it really that hard to get a loan for 50k as a business? Isn't that what small business loans are for?
reificator 6y ago
> FInally, i'll point to my favorite post on the subject, Don't be a free user by idlewords: https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/* https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/* I used to believe this. Now Google Play Music is dead despite my $20/month.
- nikanj 6y ago
  Google doesn’t need more money. It’s sometimes a blessing, as unprofitable projects face no pressure, but sometimes a curse because profits don’t motivate them to keep products alive
- topicseed 6y ago
  Dead? They just have two competing products, the older Google Play Music, and the more modern YouTube Music. The app is dead, but the Music Streaming Service by Google is still here, under a different name, and at a similar price.
  - BEEdwards 6y ago
    Youtube music isn't an equivalent product. Frankly it's garbage and when they finally pull the trigger and kill google music I'm going to stop paying them.
    - topicseed 6y ago
      Definitely a bit different but as a whole, it's performing the same task for me. Stream songs I like, and I get the ad-free YT perk! I actually switched to YT Music a year ago as I preferred the UX. But it's indeed subjective.
      - sli 6y ago
        > and I get the ad-free YT perk! GPM and YTM are identical subscriptions and always have been for as long as I can remember, if not forever, save for that short time when YouTube Red was inexplicably a few dollars more per month compared to GPM.
EdJiang 6y ago
Even if hosting costs weren’t a problem, doesn’t the complexity of maintaining Soup sound like a bigger one? > This is also the reason why we dropped the idea of open-sourcing soup. It's too complex to maintain and to hand-over.
- k__ 6y ago
  Isn't soup like 9gag or 4chan? I read that at least 4chan runs rather cheap.
  - EdJiang 6y ago
    Yes, but if a site constantly needs a dev to be oncall, I can see why you'd shut it down. Even with zero hosting costs, that's still a lot of work!
bilbopotter 6y ago
I think they've confused 6m users with 6m sign ups. Very different things. 6m active users to 1.5k revenue doesn't compute on a site with ads. The analytics for their site are 632.67K total visits in June. Interestingly 30% from Poland. Those aren't the figures of a site with 6m active users.
- oars 6y ago
  How did you view these analytics for a site that you don't own?
  - sct202 6y ago
    Similarweb has traffic estimates that I think are based off of browser extension tracking. There's some free data like raw top line numbers but people pay for the more detailed info to see their own performance vs competition.

bilbo0s 6y ago

I agree. The AWS complaints don't address the fundamental issue with this "business" and other startups like it, lackluster revenue. I think sometimes in the tech industry all the freely flowing angel and VC money makes us a bit unrealistic about how things work out in the real world. Low marginal cost of distribution does not mean no marginal cost of distribution. There are no bandwidth fairies riding rainbow farting unicorns sprinkling hosting and bandwidth dust on startups. At some point, you have to get serious about what you're doing.

na85 6y ago

>Yes, moving hosting may save you some bucks, but fundamentally isn't the problem the large number of freeloaders? I find this viewpoint problematic. Are the users freeloaders, or is the product just not compelling enough to attract paying users? Self reflection is sometimes painful but there's a reason "lack of market fit" is a common startup story. Insulting the users by calling them freeloaders, when you are overtly offering them a free service, seems self-defeating.

kd5bjo 6y ago
> Are the users freeloaders, or is the product just not compelling enough to attract paying users? There’s no cognitive dissonance in believing both of these things at the same time. The non-paying users are freeloaders because they’re gaining value with no intention of paying for it. The service isn’t compelling enough because, despite all of the attention it’s getting, it can’t attract paying customers. They’re both causative to some degree, but from the entrepreneuer’s perspective, there’s nothing that can be done about human nature— you just have to account for it when designing your offerings.
- na85 6y ago
  The dissonance I see is in blaming "freeloaders" when you're the one offering them the product for free in the first place.
  - ghufran_syed 6y ago
    Right, it's the business model that's at fault - if you give away dollar bills, you blame people for picking them up

Deimorz 6y ago

Also worth noting that according to Crunchbase, Soup received at least €80,000 in venture capital in 2007 and 2008: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/soup-io#section-funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/soup-io#section-fund... Yes, that's not a massive amount of money and it was a long time ago, but it should still mean that they're not totally in control of the company, and that there are investors that have been expecting a return out of it eventually. Just reaching a break-even/moderately-profitable state probably wouldn't have been good enough. I also see this article on TechCrunch talking about "soup.me" receiving $530,000 in VC in 2012: https://techcrunch.com/2012/02/14/soup-me-lands-530000-lets-you-aggregate-your-digital-life-or-something/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/02/14/soup-me-lands-530000-lets-... It specifically says that it's a "reboot service" of soup.io, but the soup.me site no longer exists, so I'm not certain. Their inactive Twitter account (https://twitter.com/soup_me https://twitter.com/soup_me) does have an identical logo and a location of Vienna (same as soup.io), so it's probably true that it's the same company. That's definitely a much larger amount of VC, and would make it even less possible for "sustainable" to be an acceptable end goal for the site.

masukomi 6y ago
it was 80k over 2 rounds. That means that they weren't able to raise even 80k at once. That's not "I'm investing money because I expect you to turn a profit for me money" that's "here, I'll float you a little because i like you / your idea and maybe... maybe it'll pan out and I'll get a nice return."
- nacs 6y ago
  Outside of SV, thats plenty of money to bootstrap a company. Watch an episode of Shark tank -- there 'investments' typically are in the 100K to 200K for the bigger deals they do and many are less than 50K.
  - strombofulous 6y ago
    50k? Serious question from someone who's never tried: why not just get a loan? I've only watched one episode (I hated it, it reminded me way too much of black mirror's "15 million merits") but the deals they were cutting were... not good. Is it really that hard to get a loan for 50k as a business? Isn't that what small business loans are for?

reificator 6y ago

> FInally, i'll point to my favorite post on the subject, Don't be a free user by idlewords: https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/* https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/* I used to believe this. Now Google Play Music is dead despite my $20/month.

nikanj 6y ago
Google doesn’t need more money. It’s sometimes a blessing, as unprofitable projects face no pressure, but sometimes a curse because profits don’t motivate them to keep products alive
topicseed 6y ago
Dead? They just have two competing products, the older Google Play Music, and the more modern YouTube Music. The app is dead, but the Music Streaming Service by Google is still here, under a different name, and at a similar price.
- BEEdwards 6y ago
  Youtube music isn't an equivalent product. Frankly it's garbage and when they finally pull the trigger and kill google music I'm going to stop paying them.
  - topicseed 6y ago
    Definitely a bit different but as a whole, it's performing the same task for me. Stream songs I like, and I get the ad-free YT perk! I actually switched to YT Music a year ago as I preferred the UX. But it's indeed subjective.
    - sli 6y ago
      > and I get the ad-free YT perk! GPM and YTM are identical subscriptions and always have been for as long as I can remember, if not forever, save for that short time when YouTube Red was inexplicably a few dollars more per month compared to GPM.

EdJiang 6y ago

Even if hosting costs weren’t a problem, doesn’t the complexity of maintaining Soup sound like a bigger one? > This is also the reason why we dropped the idea of open-sourcing soup. It's too complex to maintain and to hand-over.

k__ 6y ago
Isn't soup like 9gag or 4chan? I read that at least 4chan runs rather cheap.
- EdJiang 6y ago
  Yes, but if a site constantly needs a dev to be oncall, I can see why you'd shut it down. Even with zero hosting costs, that's still a lot of work!

bilbopotter 6y ago

I think they've confused 6m users with 6m sign ups. Very different things. 6m active users to 1.5k revenue doesn't compute on a site with ads. The analytics for their site are 632.67K total visits in June. Interestingly 30% from Poland. Those aren't the figures of a site with 6m active users.

oars 6y ago
How did you view these analytics for a site that you don't own?
- sct202 6y ago
  Similarweb has traffic estimates that I think are based off of browser extension tracking. There's some free data like raw top line numbers but people pay for the more detailed info to see their own performance vs competition.