4 ms·

This is akin to everyone’s dream to start a cozy, atmospheric coffee shop. These types of coffee bars fold very quickly or at best give founders years of servit

This is akin to everyone’s dream to start a cozy, atmospheric coffee shop. These types of coffee bars fold very quickly or at best give founders years of servitude below minimum wage. The reason is that the type of behaviour this kind of establishment encourages - lounging, book reading, laptop work is exactly the opposite of the quick serve model that is conducive to high revenue. The customer loves this model, the owner hates it. Analogous to it, the nosql DB market is the exact wrong market to enter. Large companies willing to pay big bucks for enterprise features will pay established vendors for the stodgy but battle tested stuff like Oracle or DB2. The hipster startup market pays nobody for anything as there is a myriad of free choices in every common flavour and the few that will pay will mostly do so to purchase managed hosting. And that’s only if their PoC built on your new and untrusted database ever makes it to production. And then it’s probably your cheapest tier. Don’t be selling to paupers!

blacktriangle 6y ago
Interesting, I think this is why private clubs used to be a thing and may be the only way to get a sustainable cozy, atmospheric coffee shop. Because really that's what you're selling, not coffee, but atmosphere. And membership is a way to charge for your real product.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > private clubs used to be a thing They are absolutely still a thing in every major city.
- aembleton 6y ago
  Or charge for time, like Ziferblat do: https://ziferblat.co.uk/ https://ziferblat.co.uk/
  - blacktriangle 6y ago
    That place looks lovely.
  - alamortsubite 6y ago
    Also Moscow's Catbureau, which has more cats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikfbv1enCME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikfbv1enCME
jimbokun 6y ago
Offering open source software as a service with support seemed like a solution to this problem for a while. Hipsters use your stuff for free, but then pay for support and hosted offerings once they have more money than time. But AWS is killing this model by just offering popular open source products as a service themselves, cutting out the original developments.
ignoramous 6y ago
> The customer loves this model, the owner hates it. Only if the owner was trying to sell Coffee in the first place, which allegedly isn't Starbucks' main business: https://archive.is/9TZej https://archive.is/9TZej

blacktriangle 6y ago

Interesting, I think this is why private clubs used to be a thing and may be the only way to get a sustainable cozy, atmospheric coffee shop. Because really that's what you're selling, not coffee, but atmosphere. And membership is a way to charge for your real product.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> private clubs used to be a thing They are absolutely still a thing in every major city.
aembleton 6y ago
Or charge for time, like Ziferblat do: https://ziferblat.co.uk/ https://ziferblat.co.uk/
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  That place looks lovely.
- alamortsubite 6y ago
  Also Moscow's Catbureau, which has more cats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikfbv1enCME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikfbv1enCME

jimbokun 6y ago

Offering open source software as a service with support seemed like a solution to this problem for a while. Hipsters use your stuff for free, but then pay for support and hosted offerings once they have more money than time. But AWS is killing this model by just offering popular open source products as a service themselves, cutting out the original developments.

ignoramous 6y ago

> The customer loves this model, the owner hates it. Only if the owner was trying to sell Coffee in the first place, which allegedly isn't Starbucks' main business: https://archive.is/9TZej https://archive.is/9TZej