31 ms·

Bleeding-edge tech will kill your startup

304 points by bmaho 6y ago

willio58 6y ago
You have to toe the line a bit in startups, you want to use proven technology but leave room for the employees to feel like they are contributing to something new and unique.
- bmaho 6y ago
  So true! Such a difficult toe :) Wondering how you have/are managing to do it?
- jrott 6y ago
  It's such a difficult line to toe. Especially because people like working with new technology and it does seem to help with recruiting even if it makes actually operating the business harder.
  - bmaho 6y ago
    Very much feel you there. Guess it's all about testing and trying to find the right balance
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    Some people like working with new tech; in my experience most do it not because they like it but because of their resume. I like how I can get really good, cheap and experienced devs for ‘non hip’ tech because they do not want to work with new tech, they want to improve their skill on what they know; java/spring, c#/asp, django etc with jquery/bootstrap. Resume driven/recruiting forces them into all the new stuff but they rather take a pay-cut to work with the stuff they know and are good at. I need stability in software and my teams over the years; the continues race for the latest and greatest helps me do nothing for my business (making profit that is), including recruiting. Quite the opposite in fact.
    - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
      > I like how I can get really good, cheap and experienced devs for ‘non hip’ tech > they rather take a pay-cut to work with the stuff they know and are good at. The question is, are your employees aware of this?
    - black3r 6y ago
      > they want to improve their skill on what they know for me it's quite the opposite.., after around two years of working with some tech I feel like I can do anything with it and it becomes boring for me making me want to try something new. but yeah my mindset always was being the jack of all trades, which is very good for small startups and not a good mindset for corporations which I avoid..
- manigandham 6y ago
  Why? I would advise finding better employees who respond to contributing to a solid business, and in return their own paychecks and bonuses.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Because working at a startup is a pretty big risk and people who enjoy taking risks tend to also enjoy working with unproven technology.
  - rgoulter 6y ago
    I'd think that one of the advantages of working at a startup compared to a more 'corporate' company is the increased autonomy. If you don't get more creativity over the solution, working in bigcorp surely has more advantages. I also think the "sense of ownership" part that comes with making decisions like that is important. With a startup, it's beneficial if contributors feel they're able to fix problems they see proactively. But, yes, I don't want to work with hype-driven or resume-driven coworkers. Yes, I want the choices to be pragmatic and well-considered.
- fulafel 6y ago
  There are still near infinite amount of good ideas outside of the mainstream that are new and exciting to most people, that are still well explored, have long histories and are mature.
bobwall 6y ago
But we have to use kubernetes. Jk. But yea, especially if your startup is not really high-tech, but merely a good business that needs tech.
- bmaho 6y ago
  Lol - true true!
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Kube is great. Abstracts away lots of problems. If you make a single kube cluster (which is trivial with eksctl) you can iterate on a number of startup ideas pretty quickly on it. The kube API (the pod/deployment/service/ingress structure) is where the magic is, imho. Sure you could just make an EC2 instance, and swap in your Rails, and redirect the ALB and fix your domain CNAME, but whatever man, you can do like 4 of those things in an instant in Kube.
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    You know what abstracts away all those problems but doesn't require hours a day of mucking with scripts? Google App Engine. Heroku. Elastic Beanstalk.
    - jordanthoms 6y ago
      Good at smaller scale, and Heroku can go pretty good at scale. But eventually you run into things that they make harder rather than easier if you need to do something which doesn't fit well with their model. Deploying onto Google Kubernetes Engine has a bit of boilerplate setup work, but after that it's not a huge management overhead considering everything it gives you.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Okay, yeah, for sure. I think they're better options for early iteration. I guess actions speak louder than words here since my preferred operational stack is Rails + Typescript + React + Redux + Heroku w/ Heroku Postgres. Yeah, definitely Heroku over k8s for idea validation. I think there's definitely room in the k8s-based space for slightly past that, though.
sontek 6y ago
We are still on RethinkDB but know we have to get off it eventually :(
- haggy 6y ago
  Oh wow I worked on a project over 5 years ago that insisted on RethinkDB. Man so many issues... Lol
  - lvturner 6y ago
    Me too - not least the rushed port job I was forced to do from MySQL to RethinkDB (which resulted in predictably shitty code) FWIW I actually really quite liked RethinkDB.
- sontek 6y ago
  We LOVE it... it’s been solid for the four years we’ve been on it. But we can’t stay on a dead product so we know we gotta make a migration plan
deckeraa 6y ago
There's a distinction to be made: - If your business doesn't rely on new technology, then avoid bleeding edge tech (examples: you retail co-working space, rent apartments, do food/grocery delivery, etc.) - If your business model does rely on new technology (examples: airlines in the early 20th century, railroads in the early days of the steam engine, e-commerce in the early 2000s) then you have to work out a way to deliver on bleeding-edge technology. That's where your competitive advantage lies and that's where the nice margins are. Though even in the latter scenario, it's still prudent to narrow the scope of your bleeding-edge tech as much as possible (e.g. if you're doing a cryptocurrency app, you probably shouldn't be trying to make your own NoSQL database at the same time).
- imposterr 6y ago
  >Though even in the latter scenario, it's still prudent to narrow the scope of your bleeding-edge tech as much as possible (e.g. if you're doing a cryptocurrency app, you probably shouldn't be trying to make your own NoSQL database at the same time). Nonsense, the database is the back up plan so you can pivot to a DB company if your main thing doesn't work out.
  - meowface 6y ago
    Or pivot to "we're a blockchain-based database". And when that fails, "we're a blockchain stored in a database". After that, you'll have to get creative with the neologisms: "we're the first ever datachain backed by a Baseblock".
    - throwawaynothx 6y ago
      BITCONNNEEEEEEEECCCCCCTTTTTTTTT
    - einpoklum 6y ago
      Hasn't the blockchain hype subsided a little by now?
      - 6y ago
aledalgrande 6y ago
More than bleeding edge tech issues, which also exist, the article describes the classic solution-in-search-of-a-problem situation.
marrone12 6y ago
I disagree. There is always a space for something bleeding edge. Your fatal flaw was not creating something "new" but the fact that you didn't actually build the product. A product that has no easy ability to integrate with a workflow is not a product, it's a proof of concept.
- holler 6y ago
  I tend to agree with this sentiment and it's what's driven me to build the mvp for https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im. At least for this type of app/product, I don't believe a simple poc would be enough. I needed to get a working mvp into peoples hands to even have a shot of conveying the idea. Some people close to me have challenged me on this topic, which is healthy, but we will see how it plays out.
MattGaiser 6y ago
A lot of the problems stem from just constantly changing the tech. I used to work for an organization that has a team of mostly Java developers. They want to move to Python, in part because the big guys (Google, Netflix, and NASA as cited by them) did it too. They are just building a run of the mill web app, but they are changing the entire stack for a new project that next to nobody on the team knows well.
sgtnoodle 6y ago
Lol. I'm an embedded engineer, and this week I'm getting my coworkers excited to upgrade part of our system to use bleeding edge technology from the mid 90's!
- Fordec 6y ago
  Just getting hardware upgraded from very early 2000s PICs to ARM chips has been a pretty big win for me
  - viraptor 6y ago
    That sounds like a huge jump! Now I'm curious what kind of solutions where PIC is viable isn't an overkill on Arm? (Or are there really tiny Arms?)
    - sgtnoodle 6y ago
      Low end cortex-m cores are pretty cheap these days. More modern designs and processes use silicon more efficiently, so you get more capability for the same raw material cost. Also, you can do a surprising amount with an 8-bit MCU. Lots of very capable 3D printers still run on AVR based controllers. Often times, you're limited by peripherals or memory size more than raw CPU speed. As a baseline, it's relatively easy to make an autonomous aircraft that follows GPS waypoints using an atmega328 and have CPU cycles to spare, even using software floating point math everywhere. All the open source drone firmwares recently dropped support for orders of magnitude more powerful cortex-m3 flight controllers, though, and are encouraging folk to migrate to cortex-m7 based controllers. That's crazy! Software tends to expand to fill up any available volume over time...
      - neltnerb 6y ago
        Really... I wonder what the spare cycles are doing, whether it's truly waste and bad coding or if it's doing some kind of sophisticated predictive algorithms that we're unaware of. I do try to assume engineers did something smart, maybe there's a good reason... I really hope the reason isn't "so we could run the mainline linux kernel" or "because we needed a RTOS" or something similarly bloated.
Sophistifunk 6y ago
Seems to be this article is about when your product is bleeding-edge tech, but people are commenting as if it were about building your product using bleeding-edge tech (in-house or otherwise). Definitely only do one of these at a time, tho :)
- rrrhys 6y ago
  Yes, the article is exclusively about the trade-offs when building bleeding-edge products, like how impossibly hard it is to sell in to customers who have no idea what the product is or why it exists. All of the comments for some reason are about not using latest-nosql-db-from-producthunt in prod.
  - sgtnoodle 6y ago
    I think the latter topic is generally more fun to commiserate about than the former. I have empathy for anyone that ernestly tries something ambitious and fails, and I'm glad the author found insight from the experience. Reading the article though, it sounds like the startup didn't really have a clear direction or momentum, tried to fix it by pivot ing to something technically "cool" without any business plan or realistic customer stories in mind, and then ultimately failed to create a sustainable business from that technology. A good lesson to learn from others rather than first hand, but not great subject matter to light heartedly banter about!
- meowface 6y ago
  Yeah, it's kind of like the classic "break one law at a time" rule. If you're hauling drugs, don't speed. Getting away with just the one thing is hard enough. I think Discord is one good example of this sort of trade-off. Single, pretty standard type of app that improves on its predecessors, with some bleeding-edge engineering: https://blog.discord.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to-rust-a190bbca2b1f https://blog.discord.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to... >Discord has never been afraid of embracing new technologies that look promising. For example, we were early adopters of Elixir, React, React Native, and Scylla. If a piece of technology is promising and gives us an advantage, we do not mind dealing with the inherent difficulties and instability of the bleeding edge. This is one of the ways we’ve quickly reached 250+ million users with less than 50 engineers. >Embracing the new async features in Rust nightly is another example of our willingness to embrace new, promising technology. As an engineering team, we decided it was worth using nightly Rust and we committed to running on nightly until async was fully supported on stable. Together we dealt with any problems that arose and at this point Rust stable supports asynchronous Rust. The bet paid off. (They also mention how they're careful to replace decoupled components incrementally, and only where it addresses a real need, rather than for the fun of it.)
jungletime 6y ago
Had a $4 mouse from the dollar store. Watched some youtube videos, and decided to splurge and bought the latest and greatest bleeding-edge Mx master 3, at $129 and 3225% more expensive. Despite all the great reviews and hype. I'm kind of hating it. Damn thing is so heavy. It feels like I'm moving a brick around. Was going to return it, but now I'm saving it for a protest.
- d-sc 6y ago
  I have $300+ in Apple mouse and trackpads connected to my computer but I still find myself using the $30 dell mouse that I got as a backup.
- felipemnoa 6y ago
  >>It feels like I'm moving a brick around. Was going to return it, but now I'm saving it for a protest. I thought it was still bumble bee tuna.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  The weight is something I love about MX Masters.
  - dheera 6y ago
    I love the weight too. However, the battery life sucked -- last time I had one, kept dying after a week needing a recharge. I then bought a Logitech Marathon mouse and I'm already going 2+ years wireless on a single set of AA batteries. That makes me happy. I like products I don't have to think about charging all the time. I wish they covered the mice in solar panels like the solar-powered wireless keyboard, or harvested kinetic energy though -- that keyboard is another great Logitech hit if your workspace is near a window -- you never have to charge it.
    - 6y ago
fuddle 6y ago
Looking at their homepage it's very hard to understand what they actually provide.
- rarirurero 6y ago
  Though the website's design is quite pretty, at least in my opinion
- chrisdbanks 6y ago
  On mobile it's impossible to understand what they do. Two words and then a screenshot that's impossible to read. Maybe that's why they've failed as a company. If you can't even make a reasonable homepage, what hope do you have in B2B sales.
- NickNaraghi 6y ago
  My understanding: I want the components in my design system (e.g. Figma) to match the components in my front-end codebase (e.g. React) exactly, this tool helps me understand the current diff between the two. From what I can see, the paradigm of component-based design has been growing in popularity since the tools like Figma have been improving rapidly. In that case, it's a product for a niche and growing audience. I think the website hits some of the main points pretty well.
  - donkeyd 6y ago
    > My understanding: I want the components in my design system (e.g. Figma) to match the components in my front-end codebase (e.g. React) exactly, this tool helps me understand the current diff between the two. This is what should be at the top of the the main page of their website if it's correct. Because endlessly scrolling hoping to find out what problem a product solves isn't a good way to sell a product.
josephcooney 6y ago
another excellent article on the same topic https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology
- matsemann 6y ago
  No, it's not the same topic. I know we're not supposed to ask if people read the article, but you are commenting based on the headline here.
vincnetas 6y ago
Has any of commenters read the article? Looks like everyone talks about using bleeding edge tech in startup and how its bad, but this article is about building a bleeding edge product and how difficult is to sell such product (probably because everyone know that using bleeding edge products is dangerous :) )
- soneca 6y ago
  Thanks for this comment! I usually read the comments before the article and though it would be a Captain Obvious advicicle with snarky comments as are the comments here. So I wasn’t even considering reading it. Glad someone took the time to read the damn article lol Interesting reading by the way.
  - guytv 6y ago
    I actually started reading the article, which sparked my interest at start, but then faded away. so I thought: "This is going to be one of these articles where the comments are more interesting than the piece itself" and came here, just to find the excellent: "did any of the commentators even read the article?"
- warent 6y ago
  Not even about bleeding edge products. It's a lengthy article about the pitfalls of entering a market with no market validation, which the author slapped lipstick on and gave this sexy title.
  - themmes 6y ago
    Exactly, its a classic we have a solution, but not a problem-to-solve let alone a product (yet). “But guess what, they had no idea how to use our tool or integrate it within their workflow. And to be honest, nor did we. Adoption was bleak and feedback was dry—silence in startups is not golden.”
  - yashap 6y ago
    That was my take too - they built something nobody wanted, and it failed.
deleted 6y ago
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l0b0 6y ago
Could also be summarized as "pivoting hard is almost certain death" – bleeding-edge tech just changed the number of problems from large N to N+1. You have to basically shift the mindset of an entire company, and everybody was hired with pre-pivot skills in mind.
wubbalerfa 6y ago
Easier said than done I know (although I work in a technical capacity in a company that did exactly that - entered a market with tooling/tools that didn't exist, and had to prove the product actually had any value) - but I didn't see the part where they got trial customers, delivered on their value prop, and made them into case studies on how much value they were delivering. If they were able to for example have a handful of customers who averaged (entirely theoretically) a 7% increase in profits at a cost of 1.5% of their operating profits, it would have been entirely possible for them to be on an upward trajectory.
CharlesMerriam2 6y ago
Sometimes I need to echo things back to understand. 1. Start-up decides to scrap their current, unhappy business to pivot into a totally different area for which they have no long passion. 2. Start-up develops a product for a small, small niche: companies making design systems that also drive product development decisions based on actual, as opposed to requested, client usage. And said development company cannot use log analytics, roll their own, nor existing companies like Teleric. 3. They create a solution to said possible problem, without a planned first customer nor existing application. 4. They are surprised when sales is difficult. I still don't understand.
usr1106 6y ago
I don't think that is really true. Most start-ups fail, whether they build a bleeding edge product or try to compete on an existing market with smaller enhancements. After they fail if it's easy to pick the reason. Very few start-ups succeed whatever they do. Skype was pretty bleeding edge at the time, the internet speeds wheren't really there at the time. Spotify or Tesla didn't enter a market with real competitors. Before they succeed, it's difficult to say whether they took the correct risk. Someone has to be the first, chances are just not very good it will be your company.
- holler 6y ago
  Is that true with Spotify? Didn’t Pandora already exist and have considerable traction? rdio and a few others come to mind as well
  - usr1106 6y ago
    I had never even heard of Pandora. A quick check seems to suggest that they are America-only, Alexa rank 800, while Spotify is international, rank about 80. As a European I hope I am excused. Yes, Pandora seems to be older. How intense the competition was when it started I have no clue. I'd say it was bleeding edge in either case, in those days broadband internet was not so widespread, not to mention mobile data.
benjamaan 6y ago
This reminded me of the early days of launching SnapScan. Firstly, it was about the 4th time we had rebuilt and relaunched a payments app. Then, we launched it for online payments which got absolutely zero traction. Eventually we went and sat at weekend markets and coffee shops and spoke to customers and merchants one-by-one to explain to them everything about it: why we built it, who we were, how the security worked, where they could find us if we lost their money, how to download a mobile app, how to link a bank card to an app. We manually did this with probably over 1000 customers. And then we gave them R50 to use it, and for the first year gave merchants the product for free. This set us up for success. We deeply knew how customers perceived our app and using their phone to pay. We had also deeply educated a small army of people. And we had personal relationships with them, they had literally saved my number on their phone and could call me. This article was a great reminder of the mental strain that took.
deleted 6y ago
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numpad0 6y ago
A product generates revenue when its market value exceed cost to produce. If not,
brabel 6y ago
Just want to say this website is what I think a modern website should look like! Loads in under 1 second, has a simple but very cool design, no needlessly heavy JS framework in sight, due to the images it's a bit heavy at around 2.7MB, but still pretty good.
- spyke112 6y ago
  The blog part is fine, but the main page is janky as heck in Firefox.
royjacobs 6y ago
It's interesting that the author indicates other companies like AirTable and Notion aren't doing anything completely new, merely expanding on existing ideas. It seems to me that their product was essentially "usage metrics, but for component systems". Somewhat novel, sure, but I'd hardly call this _completely new_ as compared to aforementioned products.
bsubramaniam91 6y ago
Brilliant article. We went through a similar phase in the startup we built. Can totally relate to it. :)
aussieguy1234 6y ago
Will bleeding edge tech make you deliver faster? For https://expose.sh https://expose.sh I use TypeScript for the back end and the client so I get the benefit of one language for the whole service. TypeScript has been around for a few years but it is still pretty new compared to say Java. By using Docker for the dev environment of the PHP ecommerce platform, it saved me from having to build one myself.
NickNaraghi 6y ago
This isn't a new idea. And I think we already have better language in conventional wisdom to discuss it, i.e. New Market vs. Existing Market. > Market Type changes how you evaluate customer needs, customer adoption rate, how the customer understands his needs and how you should position the product to the customer. Market Type also affects the market size as well as how you launch the product into the market. [0] Incorrectly identifying market type can certainly kill your company, or make the process of working on it really painful. However, I do think building a new market is a different kind of bet. Much more uncertain, much riskier, and larger upside potential (but I think that upside is harder to capture, especially if you're early in the space). FWIW, I do like the pivot. We're using 1:1 component mapping between our designs in Figma and React front-end, it's something I can imagine using. [0] https://steveblank.com/2009/09/10/customer-development-manifesto-part-4/ https://steveblank.com/2009/09/10/customer-development-manif...
einpoklum 6y ago
> But guess what, they had no idea how to use our tool or integrate it within their workflow. And to be honest, nor did we. They developed a tool without developing working out how it would be used. Is this a problem of bleeding tech in itself, or more of a problem of (product/service) comprehensive development methodology?
switch11 6y ago
This is a very interesting article because it is talking about two things and their conclusion seems to be wrong on both * A) They say they failed because they had a bleeding edge product IN Reality: they are talking more about Product Market Fit not being there/not being properly tested B) They say that selling such a product is difficult, getting companies to implement it is difficult, and that the mental game is more difficult In Reality: They seem to not fully understand their own product, what their customers' needs are, and how their product matches those needs A few other points, with some overlap with the above Firstly, that product they discuss is not very bleeding edge. It's basically Analytics. It's not like they were trying to sell Virtualization or Nuclear Fusion Reactors It's Analytics/What Gets Measured Gets Managed/Pareto Principle -> We should build a tool that tells you the adoption rate of every component in your design system—across your product How is that bleeding edge? * Secondly, Winter 2018 to Summer 2020 That's 1.5 years Is that really time to tell if a product is a hit or not? Look at all the companies that are going IPO now. They are between 5 to 20 years of existence before IPO Outliers like Amazon and Facebook have really messed up lots of people's perceptions of what building a company should be like They think everything is going to come together in one or two years Thirdly, all their problems (sales is hard; companies adopting product is hard; mental game is hard) is basically A) Your product doesn't have Product Market Fit. If there is a good fit then NEW makes it sell faster because no one else has it B) Your mental game is weak. If you are going to give time to a product (even a not that significant 1.5 years of your life) you must make sure you give it your best shot C) It seems all your issues rise from you thinking SOMEONE ELSE is going to do stuff for you You have to sell You have to get the company to adopt the product You have to keep yourself focused and positive * Do you really understand what problem that product solves? Does your customer want that problem solved?
d--b 6y ago
> We should build a tool that tells you the adoption rate of every component in your design system—across your product How is that bleeding-edge? It's just "lint for design systems". What happened probably is that the number of people who actually use a "design system" is fairly small. And among them, those who understand what linting is are possibly rare...
k__ 6y ago
This. People will buy what they understand. Who can blame them? Your real bleeding edge tech company is outnumbered by snake oil companies 1:1000.
- donkeyd 6y ago
  That's bull. People bought the iPhone in spite of 'it has no physical keyboard', 'it has no copy paste', 'there's no place to put a stylus', et cetera. If people don't understand the product, you need to sell it in a way that they do understand. That's why marketing is still an expertise and not a side gig in most successful companies.
  - k__ 6y ago
    The iPhone wasn't successful because it was "bleeding-edge tech", it was successful because it was a bold and innovative remix of existing technology.
timwaagh 6y ago
too bad, it sounds like something that would have been useful at larger enterprises like banks and stuff. from the time i worked for one such business i know they were constantly obsessing over their 'house-style' meaning every product has to use the same components. I think they'd appreciate something like this. Of course i don't know how easy or hard it is to implement it. user friendlyness is key with such tools.
Pick-A-Hill2019 6y ago
" But guess what, they had no idea how to use our tool or integrate it within their workflow. And to be honest, nor did we. " Uhmm, think I spotted their problem right there. If they (as the creators) couldn't figure out how it would fit in to a prospective customers' workflow then that is both an incredibly difficult proposition to sell and also an incredible waste of time for the customers that did decide to try it out. Appologies if someone has already stated that (read the article , skimmed the commments)
- donkeyd 6y ago
  It doesn't have to be a waste of time. The thing is, you don't need to have all the answers if you just pick a potential customer and work with them. We had this exact same issue and we helped them integrate the product, while also learning about their processes, which helped us sell the product later. This is an investment however, it doesn't make you any money and that customer will probably be a net loss in the short term and you need to accept that.
justforyou 6y ago
Has nothing to do with bleeding edge. Problem is trivial to solve for anyone who actually needs to. It's not surprising a land grab to be an overcomplicated middleman service that is not needed and contributes zero value failed. What is astonishing is that after the fact someone is still trying to extract value from it by positioning obvious learnings as insights.
donkeyd 6y ago
I have to disagree with the premise of the article. I've built a 'bleeding-edge' product for a very traditional market (public affairs) and succeeded. It's not because of the tech that a startup fails (unless the tech just doesn't work). Yes, it's hard to sell something people don't understand, but that's marketing. So you figure out their needs and the needs that your product fills and you focus on that. Pricing? You look at the cost of not using your product and go from there. Are you automating a human task that a single person does an hour a day? Start with that. Is your product reducing failures? Find out what those failures are costing. Start with that. Are you competing with a different product? Undercut or make sure your product adds more value. Product? Get a couple of 'beta testers' and interact with them, often. Find out what they want for them to buy the product and focus on stuff you and other beta testers agree with. Mental? Yeah, it is. running a startup isn't easy and nobody said it was. It took us over a year to proof that we could to what we wanted and nearly another to get to something we could sell. I got burnt out and ended up leaving. Now, though, they started hiring and are getting more well-known in the PA community. Even PA firms are starting to lose customers to the tech I designed and built. It was never easy, it was very hard, but it wasn't because of the tech, it was because starting a business is bloody hard.
ablekh 6y ago
TL;DR: "Make something people want" (source: YC homepage).
nailer 6y ago
> As designers and engineers, we knew of a rather niche problem: if your company has a design system, it's practically impossible to know the adoption rate of those components in your product. Why would having design consistency prevent you from understanding whether users are using a given feature?
bobblywobbles 6y ago
Bleeding edge tech is not necessarily bad; not understanding demand, or communicating to your customer or having a market for your product is bad. This is ultimately what the post is about.
aazaa 6y ago
> As designers and engineers, we knew of a rather niche problem: if your company has a design system, it's practically impossible to know the adoption rate of those components in your product. Huzzah! we thought. We should build a tool that tells you the adoption rate of every component in your design system—across your product. Chefs kiss. This article has nothing to do with bleeding-edge tech. It's about launching a product around which zero validation work has been done. The quote above is the entire description of the alleged "bleeding-edge tech." I still don't know what the problem is. "Design system" is vague enough to me at least to be meaningless. There's a screenshot that looks like web analytics. Web analytics have been done to death. This isn't bleeding-edge tech. It's me-too products desperately fighting for market share by going ever deeper. Big difference. You've got to be an excellent communicator to play this game. Given the mismatched title and fluff in the article, I can see why the team had a hard time connecting with prospective customers.
- fastball 6y ago
  The entirety of this article (and their startup's failure) can be summed up by this one line: > prospects didn't know [...] the problem we were solving If "prospects" don't know what problem you're solving, 99% of the time that means they don't have the problem your product solves. And if that's true, they're not actually a prospect. Seems like a classic case of being a solution looking for a problem. Also the author's nonsensical "circle of death" reminds me of the "Conjoined Triangles of Success" from Silicon Valley[1]. Except Silicon Valley is a parody, and I don't think this article is meant to be. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB7dInljmO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB7dInljmO4
  - tootie 6y ago
    I think the relevant phrase here is a "solution in search of a problem". I understand exactly what their product was intended to do and have worked on a lot of design system projects before, but adoption rate has never really been a key metric of anything.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  A design system is a systematic approach to achieving consistent look-and-feel across the product(s) of a company. This is in contrast to the "non-systematic" approach, which is to have designers use apps like Photoshop to copy-paste design elements and then have developers eye-ball and eye-drop that into code. You may up with lots of redundant definitions for essentially the same visual intent, especially with larger teams. Most products start out with the non-systematic approach and then may later attempt a switch to a design system. Presumably, this is where this product could help you validate your progress. Whether integration of such a product is a valuable addition to your workflow or a distraction is up for debate.
rodolphoarruda 6y ago
One frequent exercise that I do with my colleagues who work with startups at ideation stage is to imagine how the value proposition could be challenged by a popular IM such as WhatsApp or WeChat. We would ask ourselves: "Could process A be replaced by WhatsApp in this or that way?" If the answer is Yes, then we would advise stakeholders to rethink that process or functionality to make it unchallengeable by the IM in the short run.
- sharemywin 6y ago
  could you give an example?
dustingetz 6y ago
The current global macro climate with 0% interest rates factors heavily into this observed outcome.
dasil003 6y ago
This is the kind of thing someone might be offhandedly curious about, but no leadership is going to sign off on paying for a solution. At best some IC in the right position will add some instrumentation in the right place for a quick win. No one is going to architect their systems around something like this. The juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. No shame in trying and failing at a cool idea, but I’m worried the author is taking the wrong lesson. It’s not about “bleeding edge” or being too early, it’s about target market and utility. No small company would ever need this, so you’re automatically moving into the enterprise space. However in the enterprise space you need to solve problems that decision-makers care about. That means going into sales mode day 1 and getting immediate feedback in order to land that first sale. You need a demo more than a product, and you need to listen more than you talk.
zuhayeer 6y ago
You always have to start with the underlying problem. The problems people have more or less remain the same. We can change the way we solve them, but you can’t ever make up the problem.
nwsm 6y ago
If OP is still not abandoning the project, they should add a Storybook addon as it does sound somewhat useful. My question would be how do we decide what adoption metrics we want. How do we identify places that a component could/should be used? The usage numbers alone don't seem incredibly useful, except to point out components that have low or no usage. Regardless, "Bleeding-edge tech will kill your startup" is not a good title for the article. The actual article title (maybe it was updated) is a bit better- "Bleeding edge tech means you'll bleed to death". But most people here are miffed that neither title makes it obvious that the article is about selling bleeding edge tech.
fsckboy 6y ago
somewhat tangentially to the main point of the article: > [this is your brain on drugs] "Firstly, makes no sense seeing everyone loves fried eggs. Secondly, this is how my brain looked when trying to start a "bleeding edge" tech company." but... you undermine your own point! you just said everybody loves fried eggs, so shouldn't your brain looking like that with bleeding edge tech be a good thing? you just said it's a good thing. I'm pointing it out because it's two of my pet peeves, (1) people attack the analogy, screaming "fallacy reeeee" when they disagree with the overarching point, then they embrace the analogy when they agree; it shouldn't be that way. The analogy is always a good thing, it's a metaphorical tool for conveying a point of understanding and it's not an argument in itself so it can't be a fallacy; and (2) people, young people especially, reflexively feel the need to endorse drug use and more broadly, decry any puritanical notion, to the extent of willing suspension of disbelief that porn, drugs, gambling, and addictions to dopamine might actually not be all that beneficial a use of your time. (I realize that's a complicated sentence; I'm trying to "weed out" the stoners)
jiveturkey 6y ago
> So how did this mentality fuck us? Well, I've come up with a rather clever framework I'm calling: oh god

304 points by bmaho 6y ago

You have to toe the line a bit in startups, you want to use proven technology but leave room for the employees to feel like they are contributing to something new and unique.

bmaho 6y ago
So true! Such a difficult toe :) Wondering how you have/are managing to do it?
jrott 6y ago
It's such a difficult line to toe. Especially because people like working with new technology and it does seem to help with recruiting even if it makes actually operating the business harder.
- bmaho 6y ago
  Very much feel you there. Guess it's all about testing and trying to find the right balance
- tluyben2 6y ago
  Some people like working with new tech; in my experience most do it not because they like it but because of their resume. I like how I can get really good, cheap and experienced devs for ‘non hip’ tech because they do not want to work with new tech, they want to improve their skill on what they know; java/spring, c#/asp, django etc with jquery/bootstrap. Resume driven/recruiting forces them into all the new stuff but they rather take a pay-cut to work with the stuff they know and are good at. I need stability in software and my teams over the years; the continues race for the latest and greatest helps me do nothing for my business (making profit that is), including recruiting. Quite the opposite in fact.
  - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
    > I like how I can get really good, cheap and experienced devs for ‘non hip’ tech > they rather take a pay-cut to work with the stuff they know and are good at. The question is, are your employees aware of this?
  - black3r 6y ago
    > they want to improve their skill on what they know for me it's quite the opposite.., after around two years of working with some tech I feel like I can do anything with it and it becomes boring for me making me want to try something new. but yeah my mindset always was being the jack of all trades, which is very good for small startups and not a good mindset for corporations which I avoid..
manigandham 6y ago
Why? I would advise finding better employees who respond to contributing to a solid business, and in return their own paychecks and bonuses.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- adrianN 6y ago
  Because working at a startup is a pretty big risk and people who enjoy taking risks tend to also enjoy working with unproven technology.
- rgoulter 6y ago
  I'd think that one of the advantages of working at a startup compared to a more 'corporate' company is the increased autonomy. If you don't get more creativity over the solution, working in bigcorp surely has more advantages. I also think the "sense of ownership" part that comes with making decisions like that is important. With a startup, it's beneficial if contributors feel they're able to fix problems they see proactively. But, yes, I don't want to work with hype-driven or resume-driven coworkers. Yes, I want the choices to be pragmatic and well-considered.
fulafel 6y ago
There are still near infinite amount of good ideas outside of the mainstream that are new and exciting to most people, that are still well explored, have long histories and are mature.

bobwall 6y ago

But we have to use kubernetes. Jk. But yea, especially if your startup is not really high-tech, but merely a good business that needs tech.

bmaho 6y ago
Lol - true true!
renewiltord 6y ago
Kube is great. Abstracts away lots of problems. If you make a single kube cluster (which is trivial with eksctl) you can iterate on a number of startup ideas pretty quickly on it. The kube API (the pod/deployment/service/ingress structure) is where the magic is, imho. Sure you could just make an EC2 instance, and swap in your Rails, and redirect the ALB and fix your domain CNAME, but whatever man, you can do like 4 of those things in an instant in Kube.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  You know what abstracts away all those problems but doesn't require hours a day of mucking with scripts? Google App Engine. Heroku. Elastic Beanstalk.
  - jordanthoms 6y ago
    Good at smaller scale, and Heroku can go pretty good at scale. But eventually you run into things that they make harder rather than easier if you need to do something which doesn't fit well with their model. Deploying onto Google Kubernetes Engine has a bit of boilerplate setup work, but after that it's not a huge management overhead considering everything it gives you.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Okay, yeah, for sure. I think they're better options for early iteration. I guess actions speak louder than words here since my preferred operational stack is Rails + Typescript + React + Redux + Heroku w/ Heroku Postgres. Yeah, definitely Heroku over k8s for idea validation. I think there's definitely room in the k8s-based space for slightly past that, though.

sontek 6y ago

We are still on RethinkDB but know we have to get off it eventually :(

haggy 6y ago
Oh wow I worked on a project over 5 years ago that insisted on RethinkDB. Man so many issues... Lol
- lvturner 6y ago
  Me too - not least the rushed port job I was forced to do from MySQL to RethinkDB (which resulted in predictably shitty code) FWIW I actually really quite liked RethinkDB.
sontek 6y ago
We LOVE it... it’s been solid for the four years we’ve been on it. But we can’t stay on a dead product so we know we gotta make a migration plan

deckeraa 6y ago

There's a distinction to be made: - If your business doesn't rely on new technology, then avoid bleeding edge tech (examples: you retail co-working space, rent apartments, do food/grocery delivery, etc.) - If your business model does rely on new technology (examples: airlines in the early 20th century, railroads in the early days of the steam engine, e-commerce in the early 2000s) then you have to work out a way to deliver on bleeding-edge technology. That's where your competitive advantage lies and that's where the nice margins are. Though even in the latter scenario, it's still prudent to narrow the scope of your bleeding-edge tech as much as possible (e.g. if you're doing a cryptocurrency app, you probably shouldn't be trying to make your own NoSQL database at the same time).

imposterr 6y ago
>Though even in the latter scenario, it's still prudent to narrow the scope of your bleeding-edge tech as much as possible (e.g. if you're doing a cryptocurrency app, you probably shouldn't be trying to make your own NoSQL database at the same time). Nonsense, the database is the back up plan so you can pivot to a DB company if your main thing doesn't work out.
- meowface 6y ago
  Or pivot to "we're a blockchain-based database". And when that fails, "we're a blockchain stored in a database". After that, you'll have to get creative with the neologisms: "we're the first ever datachain backed by a Baseblock".
  - throwawaynothx 6y ago
    BITCONNNEEEEEEEECCCCCCTTTTTTTTT
  - einpoklum 6y ago
    Hasn't the blockchain hype subsided a little by now?
    - 6y ago

aledalgrande 6y ago

More than bleeding edge tech issues, which also exist, the article describes the classic solution-in-search-of-a-problem situation.

marrone12 6y ago

I disagree. There is always a space for something bleeding edge. Your fatal flaw was not creating something "new" but the fact that you didn't actually build the product. A product that has no easy ability to integrate with a workflow is not a product, it's a proof of concept.

holler 6y ago
I tend to agree with this sentiment and it's what's driven me to build the mvp for https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im. At least for this type of app/product, I don't believe a simple poc would be enough. I needed to get a working mvp into peoples hands to even have a shot of conveying the idea. Some people close to me have challenged me on this topic, which is healthy, but we will see how it plays out.

MattGaiser 6y ago

A lot of the problems stem from just constantly changing the tech. I used to work for an organization that has a team of mostly Java developers. They want to move to Python, in part because the big guys (Google, Netflix, and NASA as cited by them) did it too. They are just building a run of the mill web app, but they are changing the entire stack for a new project that next to nobody on the team knows well.

sgtnoodle 6y ago

Lol. I'm an embedded engineer, and this week I'm getting my coworkers excited to upgrade part of our system to use bleeding edge technology from the mid 90's!

Fordec 6y ago
Just getting hardware upgraded from very early 2000s PICs to ARM chips has been a pretty big win for me
- viraptor 6y ago
  That sounds like a huge jump! Now I'm curious what kind of solutions where PIC is viable isn't an overkill on Arm? (Or are there really tiny Arms?)
  - sgtnoodle 6y ago
    Low end cortex-m cores are pretty cheap these days. More modern designs and processes use silicon more efficiently, so you get more capability for the same raw material cost. Also, you can do a surprising amount with an 8-bit MCU. Lots of very capable 3D printers still run on AVR based controllers. Often times, you're limited by peripherals or memory size more than raw CPU speed. As a baseline, it's relatively easy to make an autonomous aircraft that follows GPS waypoints using an atmega328 and have CPU cycles to spare, even using software floating point math everywhere. All the open source drone firmwares recently dropped support for orders of magnitude more powerful cortex-m3 flight controllers, though, and are encouraging folk to migrate to cortex-m7 based controllers. That's crazy! Software tends to expand to fill up any available volume over time...
    - neltnerb 6y ago
      Really... I wonder what the spare cycles are doing, whether it's truly waste and bad coding or if it's doing some kind of sophisticated predictive algorithms that we're unaware of. I do try to assume engineers did something smart, maybe there's a good reason... I really hope the reason isn't "so we could run the mainline linux kernel" or "because we needed a RTOS" or something similarly bloated.

Sophistifunk 6y ago

Seems to be this article is about when your product is bleeding-edge tech, but people are commenting as if it were about building your product using bleeding-edge tech (in-house or otherwise). Definitely only do one of these at a time, tho :)

rrrhys 6y ago
Yes, the article is exclusively about the trade-offs when building bleeding-edge products, like how impossibly hard it is to sell in to customers who have no idea what the product is or why it exists. All of the comments for some reason are about not using latest-nosql-db-from-producthunt in prod.
- sgtnoodle 6y ago
  I think the latter topic is generally more fun to commiserate about than the former. I have empathy for anyone that ernestly tries something ambitious and fails, and I'm glad the author found insight from the experience. Reading the article though, it sounds like the startup didn't really have a clear direction or momentum, tried to fix it by pivot ing to something technically "cool" without any business plan or realistic customer stories in mind, and then ultimately failed to create a sustainable business from that technology. A good lesson to learn from others rather than first hand, but not great subject matter to light heartedly banter about!
meowface 6y ago
Yeah, it's kind of like the classic "break one law at a time" rule. If you're hauling drugs, don't speed. Getting away with just the one thing is hard enough. I think Discord is one good example of this sort of trade-off. Single, pretty standard type of app that improves on its predecessors, with some bleeding-edge engineering: https://blog.discord.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to-rust-a190bbca2b1f https://blog.discord.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to... >Discord has never been afraid of embracing new technologies that look promising. For example, we were early adopters of Elixir, React, React Native, and Scylla. If a piece of technology is promising and gives us an advantage, we do not mind dealing with the inherent difficulties and instability of the bleeding edge. This is one of the ways we’ve quickly reached 250+ million users with less than 50 engineers. >Embracing the new async features in Rust nightly is another example of our willingness to embrace new, promising technology. As an engineering team, we decided it was worth using nightly Rust and we committed to running on nightly until async was fully supported on stable. Together we dealt with any problems that arose and at this point Rust stable supports asynchronous Rust. The bet paid off. (They also mention how they're careful to replace decoupled components incrementally, and only where it addresses a real need, rather than for the fun of it.)

jungletime 6y ago

Had a $4 mouse from the dollar store. Watched some youtube videos, and decided to splurge and bought the latest and greatest bleeding-edge Mx master 3, at $129 and 3225% more expensive. Despite all the great reviews and hype. I'm kind of hating it. Damn thing is so heavy. It feels like I'm moving a brick around. Was going to return it, but now I'm saving it for a protest.

d-sc 6y ago
I have $300+ in Apple mouse and trackpads connected to my computer but I still find myself using the $30 dell mouse that I got as a backup.
felipemnoa 6y ago
>>It feels like I'm moving a brick around. Was going to return it, but now I'm saving it for a protest. I thought it was still bumble bee tuna.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
The weight is something I love about MX Masters.
- dheera 6y ago
  I love the weight too. However, the battery life sucked -- last time I had one, kept dying after a week needing a recharge. I then bought a Logitech Marathon mouse and I'm already going 2+ years wireless on a single set of AA batteries. That makes me happy. I like products I don't have to think about charging all the time. I wish they covered the mice in solar panels like the solar-powered wireless keyboard, or harvested kinetic energy though -- that keyboard is another great Logitech hit if your workspace is near a window -- you never have to charge it.
  - 6y ago

fuddle 6y ago

Looking at their homepage it's very hard to understand what they actually provide.

rarirurero 6y ago
Though the website's design is quite pretty, at least in my opinion
chrisdbanks 6y ago
On mobile it's impossible to understand what they do. Two words and then a screenshot that's impossible to read. Maybe that's why they've failed as a company. If you can't even make a reasonable homepage, what hope do you have in B2B sales.
NickNaraghi 6y ago
My understanding: I want the components in my design system (e.g. Figma) to match the components in my front-end codebase (e.g. React) exactly, this tool helps me understand the current diff between the two. From what I can see, the paradigm of component-based design has been growing in popularity since the tools like Figma have been improving rapidly. In that case, it's a product for a niche and growing audience. I think the website hits some of the main points pretty well.
- donkeyd 6y ago
  > My understanding: I want the components in my design system (e.g. Figma) to match the components in my front-end codebase (e.g. React) exactly, this tool helps me understand the current diff between the two. This is what should be at the top of the the main page of their website if it's correct. Because endlessly scrolling hoping to find out what problem a product solves isn't a good way to sell a product.

josephcooney 6y ago

another excellent article on the same topic https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology

matsemann 6y ago
No, it's not the same topic. I know we're not supposed to ask if people read the article, but you are commenting based on the headline here.

vincnetas 6y ago

Has any of commenters read the article? Looks like everyone talks about using bleeding edge tech in startup and how its bad, but this article is about building a bleeding edge product and how difficult is to sell such product (probably because everyone know that using bleeding edge products is dangerous :) )

soneca 6y ago
Thanks for this comment! I usually read the comments before the article and though it would be a Captain Obvious advicicle with snarky comments as are the comments here. So I wasn’t even considering reading it. Glad someone took the time to read the damn article lol Interesting reading by the way.
- guytv 6y ago
  I actually started reading the article, which sparked my interest at start, but then faded away. so I thought: "This is going to be one of these articles where the comments are more interesting than the piece itself" and came here, just to find the excellent: "did any of the commentators even read the article?"
warent 6y ago
Not even about bleeding edge products. It's a lengthy article about the pitfalls of entering a market with no market validation, which the author slapped lipstick on and gave this sexy title.
- themmes 6y ago
  Exactly, its a classic we have a solution, but not a problem-to-solve let alone a product (yet). “But guess what, they had no idea how to use our tool or integrate it within their workflow. And to be honest, nor did we. Adoption was bleak and feedback was dry—silence in startups is not golden.”
- yashap 6y ago
  That was my take too - they built something nobody wanted, and it failed.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

l0b0 6y ago

Could also be summarized as "pivoting hard is almost certain death" – bleeding-edge tech just changed the number of problems from large N to N+1. You have to basically shift the mindset of an entire company, and everybody was hired with pre-pivot skills in mind.

wubbalerfa 6y ago

Easier said than done I know (although I work in a technical capacity in a company that did exactly that - entered a market with tooling/tools that didn't exist, and had to prove the product actually had any value) - but I didn't see the part where they got trial customers, delivered on their value prop, and made them into case studies on how much value they were delivering. If they were able to for example have a handful of customers who averaged (entirely theoretically) a 7% increase in profits at a cost of 1.5% of their operating profits, it would have been entirely possible for them to be on an upward trajectory.

CharlesMerriam2 6y ago

Sometimes I need to echo things back to understand. 1. Start-up decides to scrap their current, unhappy business to pivot into a totally different area for which they have no long passion. 2. Start-up develops a product for a small, small niche: companies making design systems that also drive product development decisions based on actual, as opposed to requested, client usage. And said development company cannot use log analytics, roll their own, nor existing companies like Teleric. 3. They create a solution to said possible problem, without a planned first customer nor existing application. 4. They are surprised when sales is difficult. I still don't understand.

usr1106 6y ago

I don't think that is really true. Most start-ups fail, whether they build a bleeding edge product or try to compete on an existing market with smaller enhancements. After they fail if it's easy to pick the reason. Very few start-ups succeed whatever they do. Skype was pretty bleeding edge at the time, the internet speeds wheren't really there at the time. Spotify or Tesla didn't enter a market with real competitors. Before they succeed, it's difficult to say whether they took the correct risk. Someone has to be the first, chances are just not very good it will be your company.

holler 6y ago
Is that true with Spotify? Didn’t Pandora already exist and have considerable traction? rdio and a few others come to mind as well
- usr1106 6y ago
  I had never even heard of Pandora. A quick check seems to suggest that they are America-only, Alexa rank 800, while Spotify is international, rank about 80. As a European I hope I am excused. Yes, Pandora seems to be older. How intense the competition was when it started I have no clue. I'd say it was bleeding edge in either case, in those days broadband internet was not so widespread, not to mention mobile data.

benjamaan 6y ago

This reminded me of the early days of launching SnapScan. Firstly, it was about the 4th time we had rebuilt and relaunched a payments app. Then, we launched it for online payments which got absolutely zero traction. Eventually we went and sat at weekend markets and coffee shops and spoke to customers and merchants one-by-one to explain to them everything about it: why we built it, who we were, how the security worked, where they could find us if we lost their money, how to download a mobile app, how to link a bank card to an app. We manually did this with probably over 1000 customers. And then we gave them R50 to use it, and for the first year gave merchants the product for free. This set us up for success. We deeply knew how customers perceived our app and using their phone to pay. We had also deeply educated a small army of people. And we had personal relationships with them, they had literally saved my number on their phone and could call me. This article was a great reminder of the mental strain that took.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

numpad0 6y ago

A product generates revenue when its market value exceed cost to produce. If not,

brabel 6y ago

Just want to say this website is what I think a modern website should look like! Loads in under 1 second, has a simple but very cool design, no needlessly heavy JS framework in sight, due to the images it's a bit heavy at around 2.7MB, but still pretty good.

spyke112 6y ago
The blog part is fine, but the main page is janky as heck in Firefox.

royjacobs 6y ago

It's interesting that the author indicates other companies like AirTable and Notion aren't doing anything completely new, merely expanding on existing ideas. It seems to me that their product was essentially "usage metrics, but for component systems". Somewhat novel, sure, but I'd hardly call this _completely new_ as compared to aforementioned products.

bsubramaniam91 6y ago

Brilliant article. We went through a similar phase in the startup we built. Can totally relate to it. :)

aussieguy1234 6y ago

Will bleeding edge tech make you deliver faster? For https://expose.sh https://expose.sh I use TypeScript for the back end and the client so I get the benefit of one language for the whole service. TypeScript has been around for a few years but it is still pretty new compared to say Java. By using Docker for the dev environment of the PHP ecommerce platform, it saved me from having to build one myself.

NickNaraghi 6y ago

This isn't a new idea. And I think we already have better language in conventional wisdom to discuss it, i.e. New Market vs. Existing Market. > Market Type changes how you evaluate customer needs, customer adoption rate, how the customer understands his needs and how you should position the product to the customer. Market Type also affects the market size as well as how you launch the product into the market. [0] Incorrectly identifying market type can certainly kill your company, or make the process of working on it really painful. However, I do think building a new market is a different kind of bet. Much more uncertain, much riskier, and larger upside potential (but I think that upside is harder to capture, especially if you're early in the space). FWIW, I do like the pivot. We're using 1:1 component mapping between our designs in Figma and React front-end, it's something I can imagine using. [0] https://steveblank.com/2009/09/10/customer-development-manifesto-part-4/ https://steveblank.com/2009/09/10/customer-development-manif...

einpoklum 6y ago

> But guess what, they had no idea how to use our tool or integrate it within their workflow. And to be honest, nor did we. They developed a tool without developing working out how it would be used. Is this a problem of bleeding tech in itself, or more of a problem of (product/service) comprehensive development methodology?

switch11 6y ago

This is a very interesting article because it is talking about two things and their conclusion seems to be wrong on both * A) They say they failed because they had a bleeding edge product IN Reality: they are talking more about Product Market Fit not being there/not being properly tested B) They say that selling such a product is difficult, getting companies to implement it is difficult, and that the mental game is more difficult In Reality: They seem to not fully understand their own product, what their customers' needs are, and how their product matches those needs A few other points, with some overlap with the above Firstly, that product they discuss is not very bleeding edge. It's basically Analytics. It's not like they were trying to sell Virtualization or Nuclear Fusion Reactors It's Analytics/What Gets Measured Gets Managed/Pareto Principle -> We should build a tool that tells you the adoption rate of every component in your design system—across your product How is that bleeding edge? * Secondly, Winter 2018 to Summer 2020 That's 1.5 years Is that really time to tell if a product is a hit or not? Look at all the companies that are going IPO now. They are between 5 to 20 years of existence before IPO Outliers like Amazon and Facebook have really messed up lots of people's perceptions of what building a company should be like They think everything is going to come together in one or two years Thirdly, all their problems (sales is hard; companies adopting product is hard; mental game is hard) is basically A) Your product doesn't have Product Market Fit. If there is a good fit then NEW makes it sell faster because no one else has it B) Your mental game is weak. If you are going to give time to a product (even a not that significant 1.5 years of your life) you must make sure you give it your best shot C) It seems all your issues rise from you thinking SOMEONE ELSE is going to do stuff for you You have to sell You have to get the company to adopt the product You have to keep yourself focused and positive * Do you really understand what problem that product solves? Does your customer want that problem solved?

d--b 6y ago

> We should build a tool that tells you the adoption rate of every component in your design system—across your product How is that bleeding-edge? It's just "lint for design systems". What happened probably is that the number of people who actually use a "design system" is fairly small. And among them, those who understand what linting is are possibly rare...

k__ 6y ago

This. People will buy what they understand. Who can blame them? Your real bleeding edge tech company is outnumbered by snake oil companies 1:1000.

donkeyd 6y ago
That's bull. People bought the iPhone in spite of 'it has no physical keyboard', 'it has no copy paste', 'there's no place to put a stylus', et cetera. If people don't understand the product, you need to sell it in a way that they do understand. That's why marketing is still an expertise and not a side gig in most successful companies.
- k__ 6y ago
  The iPhone wasn't successful because it was "bleeding-edge tech", it was successful because it was a bold and innovative remix of existing technology.

timwaagh 6y ago

too bad, it sounds like something that would have been useful at larger enterprises like banks and stuff. from the time i worked for one such business i know they were constantly obsessing over their 'house-style' meaning every product has to use the same components. I think they'd appreciate something like this. Of course i don't know how easy or hard it is to implement it. user friendlyness is key with such tools.

Pick-A-Hill2019 6y ago

" But guess what, they had no idea how to use our tool or integrate it within their workflow. And to be honest, nor did we. " Uhmm, think I spotted their problem right there. If they (as the creators) couldn't figure out how it would fit in to a prospective customers' workflow then that is both an incredibly difficult proposition to sell and also an incredible waste of time for the customers that did decide to try it out. Appologies if someone has already stated that (read the article , skimmed the commments)

donkeyd 6y ago
It doesn't have to be a waste of time. The thing is, you don't need to have all the answers if you just pick a potential customer and work with them. We had this exact same issue and we helped them integrate the product, while also learning about their processes, which helped us sell the product later. This is an investment however, it doesn't make you any money and that customer will probably be a net loss in the short term and you need to accept that.

justforyou 6y ago

Has nothing to do with bleeding edge. Problem is trivial to solve for anyone who actually needs to. It's not surprising a land grab to be an overcomplicated middleman service that is not needed and contributes zero value failed. What is astonishing is that after the fact someone is still trying to extract value from it by positioning obvious learnings as insights.

donkeyd 6y ago

I have to disagree with the premise of the article. I've built a 'bleeding-edge' product for a very traditional market (public affairs) and succeeded. It's not because of the tech that a startup fails (unless the tech just doesn't work). Yes, it's hard to sell something people don't understand, but that's marketing. So you figure out their needs and the needs that your product fills and you focus on that. Pricing? You look at the cost of not using your product and go from there. Are you automating a human task that a single person does an hour a day? Start with that. Is your product reducing failures? Find out what those failures are costing. Start with that. Are you competing with a different product? Undercut or make sure your product adds more value. Product? Get a couple of 'beta testers' and interact with them, often. Find out what they want for them to buy the product and focus on stuff you and other beta testers agree with. Mental? Yeah, it is. running a startup isn't easy and nobody said it was. It took us over a year to proof that we could to what we wanted and nearly another to get to something we could sell. I got burnt out and ended up leaving. Now, though, they started hiring and are getting more well-known in the PA community. Even PA firms are starting to lose customers to the tech I designed and built. It was never easy, it was very hard, but it wasn't because of the tech, it was because starting a business is bloody hard.

ablekh 6y ago

TL;DR: "Make something people want" (source: YC homepage).

nailer 6y ago

bobblywobbles 6y ago

Bleeding edge tech is not necessarily bad; not understanding demand, or communicating to your customer or having a market for your product is bad. This is ultimately what the post is about.

aazaa 6y ago

> As designers and engineers, we knew of a rather niche problem: if your company has a design system, it's practically impossible to know the adoption rate of those components in your product. Huzzah! we thought. We should build a tool that tells you the adoption rate of every component in your design system—across your product. Chefs kiss. This article has nothing to do with bleeding-edge tech. It's about launching a product around which zero validation work has been done. The quote above is the entire description of the alleged "bleeding-edge tech." I still don't know what the problem is. "Design system" is vague enough to me at least to be meaningless. There's a screenshot that looks like web analytics. Web analytics have been done to death. This isn't bleeding-edge tech. It's me-too products desperately fighting for market share by going ever deeper. Big difference. You've got to be an excellent communicator to play this game. Given the mismatched title and fluff in the article, I can see why the team had a hard time connecting with prospective customers.

fastball 6y ago
The entirety of this article (and their startup's failure) can be summed up by this one line: > prospects didn't know [...] the problem we were solving If "prospects" don't know what problem you're solving, 99% of the time that means they don't have the problem your product solves. And if that's true, they're not actually a prospect. Seems like a classic case of being a solution looking for a problem. Also the author's nonsensical "circle of death" reminds me of the "Conjoined Triangles of Success" from Silicon Valley[1]. Except Silicon Valley is a parody, and I don't think this article is meant to be. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB7dInljmO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB7dInljmO4
- tootie 6y ago
  I think the relevant phrase here is a "solution in search of a problem". I understand exactly what their product was intended to do and have worked on a lot of design system projects before, but adoption rate has never really been a key metric of anything.
gridlockd 6y ago
A design system is a systematic approach to achieving consistent look-and-feel across the product(s) of a company. This is in contrast to the "non-systematic" approach, which is to have designers use apps like Photoshop to copy-paste design elements and then have developers eye-ball and eye-drop that into code. You may up with lots of redundant definitions for essentially the same visual intent, especially with larger teams. Most products start out with the non-systematic approach and then may later attempt a switch to a design system. Presumably, this is where this product could help you validate your progress. Whether integration of such a product is a valuable addition to your workflow or a distraction is up for debate.

rodolphoarruda 6y ago

One frequent exercise that I do with my colleagues who work with startups at ideation stage is to imagine how the value proposition could be challenged by a popular IM such as WhatsApp or WeChat. We would ask ourselves: "Could process A be replaced by WhatsApp in this or that way?" If the answer is Yes, then we would advise stakeholders to rethink that process or functionality to make it unchallengeable by the IM in the short run.

sharemywin 6y ago
could you give an example?

dustingetz 6y ago

The current global macro climate with 0% interest rates factors heavily into this observed outcome.

dasil003 6y ago

This is the kind of thing someone might be offhandedly curious about, but no leadership is going to sign off on paying for a solution. At best some IC in the right position will add some instrumentation in the right place for a quick win. No one is going to architect their systems around something like this. The juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. No shame in trying and failing at a cool idea, but I’m worried the author is taking the wrong lesson. It’s not about “bleeding edge” or being too early, it’s about target market and utility. No small company would ever need this, so you’re automatically moving into the enterprise space. However in the enterprise space you need to solve problems that decision-makers care about. That means going into sales mode day 1 and getting immediate feedback in order to land that first sale. You need a demo more than a product, and you need to listen more than you talk.

zuhayeer 6y ago

You always have to start with the underlying problem. The problems people have more or less remain the same. We can change the way we solve them, but you can’t ever make up the problem.

nwsm 6y ago

If OP is still not abandoning the project, they should add a Storybook addon as it does sound somewhat useful. My question would be how do we decide what adoption metrics we want. How do we identify places that a component could/should be used? The usage numbers alone don't seem incredibly useful, except to point out components that have low or no usage. Regardless, "Bleeding-edge tech will kill your startup" is not a good title for the article. The actual article title (maybe it was updated) is a bit better- "Bleeding edge tech means you'll bleed to death". But most people here are miffed that neither title makes it obvious that the article is about selling bleeding edge tech.

fsckboy 6y ago

somewhat tangentially to the main point of the article: > [this is your brain on drugs] "Firstly, makes no sense seeing everyone loves fried eggs. Secondly, this is how my brain looked when trying to start a "bleeding edge" tech company." but... you undermine your own point! you just said everybody loves fried eggs, so shouldn't your brain looking like that with bleeding edge tech be a good thing? you just said it's a good thing. I'm pointing it out because it's two of my pet peeves, (1) people attack the analogy, screaming "fallacy reeeee" when they disagree with the overarching point, then they embrace the analogy when they agree; it shouldn't be that way. The analogy is always a good thing, it's a metaphorical tool for conveying a point of understanding and it's not an argument in itself so it can't be a fallacy; and (2) people, young people especially, reflexively feel the need to endorse drug use and more broadly, decry any puritanical notion, to the extent of willing suspension of disbelief that porn, drugs, gambling, and addictions to dopamine might actually not be all that beneficial a use of your time. (I realize that's a complicated sentence; I'm trying to "weed out" the stoners)

jiveturkey 6y ago

> So how did this mentality fuck us? Well, I've come up with a rather clever framework I'm calling: oh god