4 ms·

Ah Threema. Threema is a perfect example of why successful global startups can't happen in Switzerland today Apologies upfront to anyone at Threema reading thi

by harryf 6y ago

Ah Threema. Threema is a perfect example of why successful global startups can't happen in Switzerland today Apologies upfront to anyone at Threema reading this but I have rant a little (PS: I live in Switzerland although I have no connection to Threema)... Threema was launched in 2013 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threema#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threema#History ), 4 years after WhatsApp. Threema was always a paid app who's USP was security. After WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014, Threema dominated the paid iOS app listings in the the German speaking world (posted about that before here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18840587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18840587 ) showing a significant minority care about their privacy and are willing to pay for it. Given this strong signal from it's user, you'd think Threema would realise there's a huge opportunity to become a leading app in messaging... Sadly not. In fact Threema coasted, allowing Signal to launch an iOS app in 2014 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#History ) and basically come from "zero" to "the app" for people that care about their privacy. Meanwhile Threema seemed to decide enterprise was the future in 2016 ( https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/threema-for-organizations-threema-work https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/threema-for-organizations-t... ) ... perhaps inspired by Slack that had launched in 2013 and already had traction? Seen from a distance, Threema had every opportunity to become a major player in messaging but failed to do so. Why? I'm guessing because the founders lacked the experience or the right people to guide them from startup into massive growth. The market told them they had a product / market fit. The next stage was product / channel fit and them pour in the marketing dollars for real growth, but sadly Switzerland lacks the people with that kind of experience. There are few that even have the experience of growing a company from 10 to 100 employees... In the last 10 years Switzerland has become a great place to launch tech startups, with the ETH and EPFL plus Google and others having engineering offices here. But sadly from there what's lacking is people with the experience growing startups. That needs to change...

tom_mellior 6y ago
So what, concretely, should Threema have done?
- FreshFries 6y ago
  "Not start in Switzerland" is what I read. There is so much money here (I live in Switzerland too) that nobody blinks about a million more or less. The idea of "let's make a lot of money and let the tech drag behind while we're expanding our user base" is alien to the Swiss culture I know. Everything is done with eternity in mind. As the popular local saying goes: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, but we are prepared" (called Mueller's law). We're 3rd in the nobel prizes by country per capita race, and 2nd in the capita nominal GDP for countries. We do a lot of things very well, taking risks or bluffing is just not one of them. In my mind, what makes Switzerland not the ideal "secure software" country is the scandals with the phony frontends for crypto companies that are CIA owned, but Swiss branded.
  - tom_mellior 6y ago
    None of this is concrete. Assume they had started in location X, for X whatever choice is best in your opinion. How would this have prevented "allowing Signal to launch an iOS app" for example? The OP seems to have some violent anti-competitive fantasies, but I fail to see what they have to do with Switzerland.
    - baxtr 6y ago
      I think it is ok to rant a bit without being super concrete. There is value in the rant, too.
  - nix23 6y ago
    >In my mind, what makes Switzerland not the ideal "secure software" country is the scandals with the phony frontends for crypto companies that are CIA owned, but Swiss branded. Yes that! Swiss products are expensive, the only "pro" points where trust, quality and integrity. But with those two scandals those point are a thing of the past. Better don't brand your security related software-product as Swiss. BTW: Not just CIA but BND (the german one) too.
  - orbifold 6y ago
    You have also been number 1 in money laundering for African dictators, educated the current dictator of North Korea, never gave back the gold / assets that were stolen from murdered Jews, only granted voting rights to women in the 70s and have a history of fighting for whoever pays the most. Somehow none of these things have affected the Swiss Brand.
throwaway9d0291 6y ago
I think you're reaching about about Switzerland being the problem here. > Threema was launched in 2013 > WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014 So a year after Threema's launch, it was competing with a multi-billion dollar global corporation which already had a user count in the billions. > Signal to launch an iOS app in 2014 Signal is free (which a lot of casual users care about) and open-source (which a lot of privacy/security-conscious users care about). > Why? I'm guessing because the founders lacked the experience or the right people to guide them from startup into massive growth [...] sadly Switzerland lacks the people with that kind of experience. Can't the same be said of other European tech startups like Spotify and Skype? Plus, ProtonMail, another startup in a similar space, based in Switzerland, has managed to become basically "the" secure email provider. I think the real story here is much simpler: Threema is a small company and came into a competitive space where it had to compete on multiple fronts: tech giants on one, open-source on the other. As a paid _messaging_ app, it had a difficult future ahead of it whatever it did, no matter where it was based. And for Switzerland in general, remember that it's a small country that has fewer than 9M people. Don't take the absence of unicorns to indicate that they're impossible. EDIT: One more thing that occurred to me - what's the alternative? I'd suggest that a good part of the reason why Threema got the success it did in the German-speaking world was that it was from Switzerland. If it came from say the US, I suspect it wouldn't be trusted.
- splintercell 6y ago
  Can startups appreciate how amazing WhatsApp's monetization model was? - Free for first year. - Then $1 per year. The idea is, if you aren't using the app, then don't pay for it, but if you are, you will pay for it.
kohlerm 6y ago
as a matter of fact VC capital is just not thrown as much to startups as it is in the US (bay area). If you want to grow to become a de-facto monopolist then you usually need lots of money, because you have to survive a long phase of having to support a lot of users with almost no income.
sschueller 6y ago
Define successful startup? Threema is making money and growing albeit slowly. I would argue that many of the of these "successful" SV unicorns do more damage than any good. They make a few very rich very quickly and loot the rest of the population. Swiss people tend to value a good work/life balance and that may not work for SV type startups.
britishcolumb1a 6y ago
I don't see why this would be Switzerland's fault. Hypergrowth stories from SV are not typical for Europe instead businesses here are grown slowly and rather silently. That might be a problem if your business model is somewhat shady, but if you want to grow a healthy business it's perfectly fine.
bla3 6y ago
> Seen from a distance, Threema had every opportunity to become a major player in messaging but failed to do so. This is valley thinking. It's fine to be profitable, serve your user base really well, and to not have massive growth and all the problems that come with it. It's just a different mindset.
bitwize 6y ago
Maybe AGPLing these apps will make them a Netscape? I.e., their product lives on despite the company's failure?
- veddox 6y ago
  Talking about Threema‘s failure is rather premature... It may not be as big as it could have been, but it seems to have a stable income and a solid product. I‘d say it‘s doing fine as a company.

by harryf 6y ago

tom_mellior 6y ago

So what, concretely, should Threema have done?

FreshFries 6y ago
"Not start in Switzerland" is what I read. There is so much money here (I live in Switzerland too) that nobody blinks about a million more or less. The idea of "let's make a lot of money and let the tech drag behind while we're expanding our user base" is alien to the Swiss culture I know. Everything is done with eternity in mind. As the popular local saying goes: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, but we are prepared" (called Mueller's law). We're 3rd in the nobel prizes by country per capita race, and 2nd in the capita nominal GDP for countries. We do a lot of things very well, taking risks or bluffing is just not one of them. In my mind, what makes Switzerland not the ideal "secure software" country is the scandals with the phony frontends for crypto companies that are CIA owned, but Swiss branded.
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  None of this is concrete. Assume they had started in location X, for X whatever choice is best in your opinion. How would this have prevented "allowing Signal to launch an iOS app" for example? The OP seems to have some violent anti-competitive fantasies, but I fail to see what they have to do with Switzerland.
  - baxtr 6y ago
    I think it is ok to rant a bit without being super concrete. There is value in the rant, too.
- nix23 6y ago
  >In my mind, what makes Switzerland not the ideal "secure software" country is the scandals with the phony frontends for crypto companies that are CIA owned, but Swiss branded. Yes that! Swiss products are expensive, the only "pro" points where trust, quality and integrity. But with those two scandals those point are a thing of the past. Better don't brand your security related software-product as Swiss. BTW: Not just CIA but BND (the german one) too.
- orbifold 6y ago
  You have also been number 1 in money laundering for African dictators, educated the current dictator of North Korea, never gave back the gold / assets that were stolen from murdered Jews, only granted voting rights to women in the 70s and have a history of fighting for whoever pays the most. Somehow none of these things have affected the Swiss Brand.

throwaway9d0291 6y ago

I think you're reaching about about Switzerland being the problem here. > Threema was launched in 2013 > WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014 So a year after Threema's launch, it was competing with a multi-billion dollar global corporation which already had a user count in the billions. > Signal to launch an iOS app in 2014 Signal is free (which a lot of casual users care about) and open-source (which a lot of privacy/security-conscious users care about). > Why? I'm guessing because the founders lacked the experience or the right people to guide them from startup into massive growth [...] sadly Switzerland lacks the people with that kind of experience. Can't the same be said of other European tech startups like Spotify and Skype? Plus, ProtonMail, another startup in a similar space, based in Switzerland, has managed to become basically "the" secure email provider. I think the real story here is much simpler: Threema is a small company and came into a competitive space where it had to compete on multiple fronts: tech giants on one, open-source on the other. As a paid _messaging_ app, it had a difficult future ahead of it whatever it did, no matter where it was based. And for Switzerland in general, remember that it's a small country that has fewer than 9M people. Don't take the absence of unicorns to indicate that they're impossible. EDIT: One more thing that occurred to me - what's the alternative? I'd suggest that a good part of the reason why Threema got the success it did in the German-speaking world was that it was from Switzerland. If it came from say the US, I suspect it wouldn't be trusted.

splintercell 6y ago
Can startups appreciate how amazing WhatsApp's monetization model was? - Free for first year. - Then $1 per year. The idea is, if you aren't using the app, then don't pay for it, but if you are, you will pay for it.

kohlerm 6y ago

as a matter of fact VC capital is just not thrown as much to startups as it is in the US (bay area). If you want to grow to become a de-facto monopolist then you usually need lots of money, because you have to survive a long phase of having to support a lot of users with almost no income.

sschueller 6y ago

Define successful startup? Threema is making money and growing albeit slowly. I would argue that many of the of these "successful" SV unicorns do more damage than any good. They make a few very rich very quickly and loot the rest of the population. Swiss people tend to value a good work/life balance and that may not work for SV type startups.

britishcolumb1a 6y ago

I don't see why this would be Switzerland's fault. Hypergrowth stories from SV are not typical for Europe instead businesses here are grown slowly and rather silently. That might be a problem if your business model is somewhat shady, but if you want to grow a healthy business it's perfectly fine.

bla3 6y ago

> Seen from a distance, Threema had every opportunity to become a major player in messaging but failed to do so. This is valley thinking. It's fine to be profitable, serve your user base really well, and to not have massive growth and all the problems that come with it. It's just a different mindset.

bitwize 6y ago

Maybe AGPLing these apps will make them a Netscape? I.e., their product lives on despite the company's failure?

veddox 6y ago
Talking about Threema‘s failure is rather premature... It may not be as big as it could have been, but it seems to have a stable income and a solid product. I‘d say it‘s doing fine as a company.