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What a hero — love how the story of Pinboard stacks up against the long-term unsustainability of VC-funded and overhyped startups. Quote from the 2011 article[0
by haywirez 6y ago
What a hero — love how the story of Pinboard stacks up against the long-term unsustainability of VC-funded and overhyped startups. Quote from the 2011 article[0]:
"My dream is to keep this a one-person project," says Ceglowski. "I am competing against billionaires like the YouTube guys running Delicious and I can hold my own. The tools I use have gotten so good and they are the same ones that Yahoo and Google use."
I hope to do the same one day with Soundcloud!
[0] http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2094921_2094923_2094924-2,00.html http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...
- neon_electro 6y agoDo you mean that you intend to buy Soundcloud's assets if they go under?
- randall 6y ago*when lol.
- cced 6y agoAnyone have any idea what he’s referring to when he brings up his use of tools?
- gonational 6y agoProbably WRT opensource tools (machine learning, databases, frameworks, etc.) that are now 80%[1] as good as what the biggest firms have access to. 1. entirely made-up number
- jacobsenscott 6y agoIt has been a while since I worked at a big firm, but my experience has always been that open source tools are always far superior.
- pedrosanta 6y agoHe has some (funny) info on Pinboard About page (https://pinboard.in/about https://pinboard.in/about) regarding 'the technology', perhaps he was mentioning that... > Pinboard is written in PHP and Perl. The site uses MySQL for data storage, Sphinx for search, Beanstalk as a message queue, and a combination of storage appliances and Amazon S3 to store backups. There is absolutely nothing interesting about the Pinboard architecture or implementation; I consider that a feature!
- SllX 6y agoThis is the kind of thing that made it easy for me to justify $39/year (for full page archives). Boring technology isn’t going to excite anyone, but it sure as hell will keep ticking along so long as someone’s at the wheel.
- idlewords 6y agoI mean vanilla stuff like MySQL and PHP. In the Old Times both were considered toy projects unworthy of running a production website, while now both have been patched and improved into complete stability.
- lcnmrn 6y agoI'm doing the same thing with Subreply against Facebook, Twitter, Gab, Mastodon. There are others like me: GoatCounter, Micro.blog, Midnight.pub, Lobste.rs, etc.
- technoplato 6y agoForgive me if I’m out of the loop but are we really considering gab and mastadon to be the “big players now”?
- andrewxhonson 6y agoI'm looking at Subreply, and notice you said it's English-only on the about page. Is that something you enforce? What's your reasoning if you don't mind my asking?
- duxup 6y agoIt does seem like there might be room out there for things that aren't unicorns, but are sustainable / good products that can operate, even at a profit, with small teams. I always think of / mention Gumroad when I think of that: https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting I worry in the rush to the tip top we lose some good products / services / economic activity that are billion dollar wins... but are still way good ideas.
- jonwalch 6y agoAFAICT Clerky is another example.
- chc4 6y agoitch.io fits that. It's still just a two person shop, afaik.
- a_band 6y agoAbsolutely! The notion that the only successful web business can be billion dollar unicorns is nuts. More small web businesses!
- dhosek 6y agoMy current project is a service for writers that at best might be able to provide me with a full-time income and at least will not lose money for me. Since it's something I want/need/use, I'm willing to donate my time to it as necessary and let it be what it'll be.
- wasdfff 6y agoCraigslist is a model company imo
- spieden 6y agoMy favorite is https://readwise.io https://readwise.io
- daguar 6y agoIs there any existing directory of similar products? Small team, sustainable. I ask because I know one of the big tradeoffs of bootstrapping is no growth "war chest" — but I would love to find and use more of these!
- flanbiscuit 6y agoYour Songsling project seems really interesting but not fully understanding how it works. Are you generating a site+server and uploading it to the "linked" domains? Is "linking" asking for some kind of upload/write access to their host? https://songsling.studio/ https://songsling.studio/
- haywirez 6y agoThanks! It works through DNS — you point your domain’s nameservers to Songsling, then it manages all the other necessary records automatically behind the scenes. Basically it points the domain at the generated site. It’s still early, rough around the edges, but slowly getting there. The new audio engine that’s in the works is on a whole another level, focusing mostly on that at the moment.
- chrisweekly 6y agoSoundcloud is awesome! Keep it up!
- techntoke 6y agoThere are a lot of room for open source improvements when it comes to bookmark management. I envision a CLI and web server that uses TOML, YAML and JSON like Hugo.