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I counted 57 different tools or apis across all the different functions, not included the deprecated stuff. All of this justifiably used by just Jake, who is do

I counted 57 different tools or apis across all the different functions, not included the deprecated stuff. All of this justifiably used by just Jake, who is doing it all. On one hand, that's awesome and inspiring, and on the other that seems like of knowhow to acquire and to maintain. What kind of overhead goes into one person maintaining an operating environment that complex? I imagine installs, configuration, and and upgrades all need to just work. I imagine as well it pays to keep your usage of whatever pretty vanilla and simple. I don't see simpler ways to do stuff. I guess I just wonder what a bad day in the office looks like.

cj 6y ago
And that's to say nothing of figuring out things like accounting, bookkeeping, GDPR / regulations... And when you hire employee(s)... payroll, HR systems, G Suite (it's a monster, but you must master it), recruiting / hiring platforms, And once you raise money... cap table management software, contracts galore, investor relations, boards meetings, etc. (On a completely unrelated note: all of the above is the reason YC and others usually have a bias against funding solo founders. Simply put, there's a lot that goes in to running even a small startup, beyond just building product.)
jakelazaroff 6y ago
I think it looks scarier than it is! I tried to be as comprehensive as possible, but a lot of these don't have much mental overhead at all. For example, I've forgotten and rediscovered squoosh multiple times when looking up how to compress images — and the extent of my use is basically dragging an image into the browser and maybe fiddling with the settings a bit. On the other hand, maybe this is a testament to how many moving parts there really are in an app like this. I do try to keep things as simple as possible, but there's definitely a minimum possible complexity — every web app will need a DNS provider, a web host, a database, etc.

cj 6y ago

And that's to say nothing of figuring out things like accounting, bookkeeping, GDPR / regulations... And when you hire employee(s)... payroll, HR systems, G Suite (it's a monster, but you must master it), recruiting / hiring platforms, And once you raise money... cap table management software, contracts galore, investor relations, boards meetings, etc. (On a completely unrelated note: all of the above is the reason YC and others usually have a bias against funding solo founders. Simply put, there's a lot that goes in to running even a small startup, beyond just building product.)

jakelazaroff 6y ago

I think it looks scarier than it is! I tried to be as comprehensive as possible, but a lot of these don't have much mental overhead at all. For example, I've forgotten and rediscovered squoosh multiple times when looking up how to compress images — and the extent of my use is basically dragging an image into the browser and maybe fiddling with the settings a bit. On the other hand, maybe this is a testament to how many moving parts there really are in an app like this. I do try to keep things as simple as possible, but there's definitely a minimum possible complexity — every web app will need a DNS provider, a web host, a database, etc.