7 ms·

Why we’re building a boring business (and you should too)

145 points by aresant 15y ago

cheez 15y ago
Loading is fast and that's great, but I have 3-4 online meetings a week. I'm not really bothered with loading time. However, the Webex "join meeting" UI annoys me to no end. Tell me about screen sharing, audio and recording of both. That's what I really care about.
- aresant 15y ago
  "Tell me about screen sharing, audio and recording of both. That's what I really care about." That issue is so specific to the litany of using current solutions it's not even funny - something we definitely hated before building. We spent a LOT of time making sure audio integration and recording worked beautifully - we even built our own phone bridge system from the ground up so that when you click "record" you get audio from dial ins and from digital users all in one session. After post-processing the recording on server side you can one click to export to YouTube, lots more formats coming soon. In terms of screen sharing, beta accounts let you share with up to 50 (contact us if you need more), everything is cloud based (multiple cloud solutions for redundancy) so we're harnessing massive CPU power to deliver an experience that balances / beats the big boys on speed / quality. Give it a try - if you didn't follow the link in the post go to http://www.meetingburner.com/ http://www.meetingburner.com/ and enter beta code "boring" for instant access today. Also blog contains updates from the last two cycles that list more specific feature details.
  - cheez 15y ago
    Exactly, I couldn't find this on the main site. I will sign up.
Shenglong 15y ago
have you ever spent the first 10 minutes of your meeting answering technical questions from guests that are still trying to figure out how to log in? This isn't a function of how easy software is to use. Some of the stuff I use, I find extremely easy and intuitive. What I fail to remember, is that depending on who's in my group, they may not necessarily understand how to Google small problems they have, or how the internet works in general (yes, I had to explain that URL referred to the text input bar at the top of the browser). In one case, I actually wrote a PDF document with screenshots, on how to get a specific software working. As the meeting started, I received a call on my cell, with a member asking for help, in connecting. After diagnosing for a little while, I realized it was my fault - I had forgotten to write down that the software needs to be installed first. As for this: Plugins? Downloads? Port restrictions on certain computers? I haven't checked this out yet, but I appreciate the effort of making meetings easier... but I'd bet six pennies that someone will still manage to screw up.
- petervandijck 15y ago
  What you described is totally a function of how easy it is to use.
- rahoulb 15y ago
  Years ago my employer released a new version of their desktop app. Occasionally, under certain versions of Windows, it would complain and show a dialogue box during the installation process. We needed to hit a release date (yes, it was our own fault - we didn't have time to deal with the error message in the installer) so on the upgrade instructions, on our website, we added "you may see a box like this [screenshot] - just click the OK button, the box will close and installation will continue". A couple of days later we had a call from an exasperated customer - "I keep clicking OK but the box won't go away". After an hour of talking we finally figured out that he was clicking the OK button on the screenshot on the webpage and hadn't even started the upgrade process.
dy 15y ago
Very impressive and I like your message - solve real problems that people who have budgets are willing to pay for.
rglover 15y ago
This got me to sign up for the beta. Not to mention the fairly amusing demo video on their homepage. Interested to play with it and see if it lives up to it's own hype.
- rglover 15y ago
  Follow up. Signed up for the beta and got an invite in just a few minutes. I'm guessing they're keeping it open so if you want to play with it, use the invite code "instant." Hopefully that wasn't a secret P.S. It's a pretty great tool. Going to use this in the near future.
- nedwin 15y ago
  Me too. Hats off guys, this is a great sales pitch.
binxbolling 15y ago
How is this free?
- ibejoeb 15y ago
  From the privacy policy [1]: "...if you have a free account with MeetingBurner, then we will use the information gathered about you to share more information about our business in an attempt to convince you to make a purchase from us or our associated companies..." -- [1] https://www.meetingburner.com/policies/privacy https://www.meetingburner.com/policies/privacy
- aresant 15y ago
  a) See my other posts in this thread - we will be targeting enterprise eventually, see every free account user as a potential advocate / sharer of our brand. b) We've built patented tech around cloud which gives us a cost basis that is low and we're self funded with years of runway to build the brand and product the right way.
  - BenSS 15y ago
    As long as you don't pull a DimDim, axing the early users in favor of the enterprise.
    - aresant 15y ago
      Won't do it. We built this for us and for you, enterprise will pay the bills :)
ibejoeb 15y ago
+1 for "boring" products. I like making them; it's really a pretty decent gig. First, there are still interesting problems even in less juicy domains. That's not particularly relevant, though, because the juicy domains have those too. At least we're pretty even so far... The best part, for me, is that I get to make money solving some hard or tedious problems; clients happy to pay for that, and I'm happy to be in business. Then, I get to have actual fun with my "toy" projects rather than worry about finding some obscure way to monetize something that has very little intrinsic economic potential. I can afford to experiment, run a bunch of small operations, get other people involved, and see where they go. In being somewhat tightly bound one side, I have almost unlimited creative freedom on the other.
- diolpah 15y ago
  I would like to echo this sentiment. Although ecommerce was reasonably sexy in 1999, it is generally regarded by the current tech zeitgeist as stodgy and boring, despite the fact that there are often very interesting problems to solve in the domain. I still love what we do, and the environment still feels very startupy, even after a few years.
  - revorad 15y ago
    Wow, both ties.com and scarves.com have some of the best product photos I've seen on any ecommerce site. Great job!
    - diolpah 15y ago
      Thanks. We have our creative and photography departments mashed into one, so they tend to approach product photography as a part of design.
patio11 15y ago
Some additional reasons to solve boring problems for business: 1) People pay serious money for solutions. 2) Your competition is often clueless companies or, even better, clearly subpar manual processes or Excel spreadsheets. (Every Excel spreadsheet which has ever been emailed is a startup waiting to be born.) Nobody in the Valley will realize you exist, since they'll be too busy with mobisocialfotogames and other businesses attempting to separate jaded twenty-something's from money that they don't have and wouldn't spend if they did. 3) Most boring problems have a fascinating underbelly, if you're inclined to look for it. I knew a guy who did paper sales once. He was brimming with enthusiasm for it: he was an absolute magician who spoke the secret language of Paper. Every sheet had a character and a story, and he knew them all.
- chc 15y ago
  Patrick isn't joking about paper, by the way. Choice of paper stock can make a huge difference either consciously or subconsciously to how the message printed on it is perceived. Ask somebody at a paper company to show you sometime if you don't believe it.
  - ma2rten 15y ago
    My university's homepage used to have random quotes by scholars on it's homepage. One of them went something like: "Every topic can be facilitating if you dive into it deep enough". I think it is really insightful.
    - yesbabyyes 15y ago
      http://xkcd.com/915/ http://xkcd.com/915/
      - iphoneedbot 15y ago
        this describes a lot of HN'ers -- snobby connoisseurs of fine code -- HN'ers remind me of Hipsters of the computer world. LOL
  - 15y ago
brianbreslin 15y ago
Can you explain your business model? After beta, whats the price point?
- aresant 15y ago
  After beta we're going to target the enterprise / corp market for premium features that are more unique to that set - scale, security, archiving, API, etc. We'll always have a solution targeted at people holding meetings for 25 - 50 people, fully featured, and free. Advocacy from happy users and the viral nature of the product (everybody you meet with might need their own meeting solution) will power exposure to decision makers at the enterprise clients (who currently use GTM / WebEx) that can flip over 500 accounts at a time. More on all that in a future post - it's a very interesting market!
veastley 15y ago
"Boring" has become almost a requirement as I evaluate new software business ideas. The opposite of boring is often flash-in-the-pan fad ideas, and I run screaming from those. I want to build real products people use, not trendy solutions in search of problems.
smiler 15y ago
Why should I pick you over webex?
- bradleyland 15y ago
  I just registered for the beta a few minutes ago, and based on first impressions, I can give you one very, very good reason. This organization seems to actually give a shit about the design of their product. I'm talking the Steve Jobs definition of design: "design is how it works". To be clear, a products appearance is a huge part of how it works. The WebEx dashboard and meeting management tools are straight out of a 1997 enterprise intranet. Not only do they look terrible, but the layout is confusing, labels sometimes don't make sense, and finding settings is like digging for a proverbial needle in a haystack. The only reason WebEx stays on top is because their sharing client is top-notch. The ability to select and share specific apps is a huge plus. The current meeting burner sharing client is simplistic, but the ease with which participants can get logged in to a meeting is a big up side. I can't tell you how many times it's taken 10 minutes to walk users through all the "allow" prompts required by WebEx or GoToMeeting.
  - aresant 15y ago
    Your comment just made a team of worn out techies very happy, thanks for checking it out. We think it's at ~B level, working hard on getting it to A+
replicatorblog 15y ago
This is completely true, I work in med devices/pharma and there are relatively small companies that generate more revenue that the entire music/video game industries. Pharma companies will lose $50B in revenue this year due to expiring patents. To put that in perspective imagine if every game and music company in the world went out of business simultaneously. Then double it. That is the scale of revenue loss in pharma and the industry will still be worth $720B. It is a "boring" industry from a software perspective, but its magnitude is amazing. Also, "Boring" is as much a perspective as a category. MailChimp has built a massive business in email marketing and are one of the cheekiest companies around. AirBNB helps people book hotel rooms. 37 Signals makes a close cousin of meeting software. At least that's what their SW does. I'm sure if you asked the owners of those co's they'd say they help organizations communicate with their members, people form real social networks, and entrepreneurs build their businesses. There is a Disney saying "Magic doesn't make it work, the way we work makes it Magic" Having the right perspective can add 80 IQ points!
- tectonic 15y ago
  Can you give us some examples of what sort of web-application-solvable problems this industry might have?
dotBen 15y ago
It all comes down to how much risk you want to take. (In general:) Consumer orientated startups have the potential to become ridiculously valuable companies - lets just define that as a valuation of $1bn+. Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare (soon), etc. But your chances of getting there are 0.001%. Business orientated apps that real solve a genuine problem are more likely to be 'successful' (say, valued at $100m+) but unlikely to become $1Bn businesses (on it's own - you might get acquired, or you could become a software behemoth like Atlassian with 100's of products - but these are not really 'startups' anymore) . As someone about to turn 30 and been in this business a few years, I see this as simply an example of someone with a matured aspiration for what they want to achieve. If you are in your 20's, it fits your profile to probably work on something consumer oriented, taking a risk and also have a lot of run (consumer apps tend to be more fun that business apps, just saying). If you are 30+ and not had that big win yet, it might be worth changing your expectation and working on something that has a higher chance of being moderately successful so that you are more likely to walk away from your career with something. This may or may not be what is going on with the founders of MeetingBurner, but it's precisely where my head is at as I turn 30.
- aresant 15y ago
  You may have missed your calling as a carnival age guesser :) MB founders ages : 31, 40, 37, 35, 31 Definitely truth in what you've outlined, but we've also had the experience building another couple of boring businesses that haven't made us billionaires, but left us free and able to cash flow this project with years of runway. It's hard as an entrepreneur not to jump into exciting, glad to see the response to the post today which was initially written as an email response to Noah ;)
- matwood 15y ago
  If you are 30+ and not had that big win yet, it might be worth changing your expectation and working on something that has a higher chance of being moderately successful so that you are more likely to walk away from your career with something. This may or may not be what is going on with the founders of MeetingBurner, but it's precisely where my head is at as I turn 30. Completely agree. The other part is that someone who is in their 30s is likely to have seen the inside of a few large companies and have a ton of ideas about nagging niche problems that can be solved.
Newky 15y ago
Surely a boring business is only good, if the actual area is of interest to you. A boring business will surely not keep you working as late or as hard, a boring business will not stay in your thoughts all day, or jump into your mind when you should really be enjoying a night off? A boring area, where your project is a more innovative solution and you are excited about the area in which you can carve out in this area I would consider a good business but one in which the sole reason for pursuing is that its a good business prospect makes no sense to me. I'm not saying you won't make money, but I want to do that while pursuing something which I then want to be able to explain to someone with wonder and obvious excitement. Also regarding the iPhone mention in the article, I could be wrong but as far as I know, the opening demonstration of the iPhone was met with a frosty representation.
georgieporgie 15y ago
I forget where it was (Gladwell? Levitt?) that I read about the guy who had become quite wealthy by selling bowling balls online. It turns out there's a larger market for it than you might think, and nobody was doing it at the time.
astrofinch 15y ago
I'm 20, and one thing I'd like to do at some point is to get a job as a management consultant so I can get a cross-section view of the economy and see what lots of industries look like from the inside. I'm hoping that this will give me enough domain knowledge in enough different industries to identify a boring but profitable business idea and then chase it. Can anyone older and wiser give me feedback on my plan? Is there an easier way to gain a lot of domain knowledge about how different industries work? I like the idea of working as a management consultant because (1) it pays well (2) my vague impression is that the job consists of having people give you the lowdown on the problems their business is encountering but I'm certainly open to trying something else if it seems like a better idea. Maybe instead of being a consultant, I should identify a single industry that seems both corrupt and profitable and take aim at it more directly? Any tips on finding such an industry?
- pitdesi 15y ago
  People on HN will generally not agree, but I personally don't think it's a bad way to go. The problem is that you don't have a lot of control on what you do/where you go. 2 of us at FeeFighters worked at BCG immediately before joining FeeFighters full-time. We both did work in the banking/credit card industry there and had an insiders view on how f'd up the industry is, which definitely has helped out - I've even seen former clients at conferences and the like. That being said, there is a lot of luck involved on the types of projects and the types of industries you get to work on. If you can get a job at a top tier consulting firm out of undergrad, it sounds like it would be good for you. Given your background you can certainly make it happen and leave after a short amount of time with better contacts/perspective on business. For you, it would be like getting paid for business school.
- timtadh 15y ago
  take a look at Cigital or similar. Computer security consulting could give you the insight you are looking for and dole out some technical challenges along the way.
- ams6110 15y ago
  What exactly would you be consulting on, when by your own admission you don't seem to have much background in anything in particular?
pitdesi 15y ago
I love this post - it's exactly what we're doing... disrupting the boring world of credit card processing. Honestly sometimes it's a bit tough because a lot of people's (and reporters) eyes glaze over the second we mention what we do, and they don't care about the fact that we're solving a major pain point Consumer is super hot right now... as someone earlier said, it is more likely that you can start a billion dollar consumer business than a b2b play. Some consumer businesses get funded with very little product and no customers (Zaarly, Color, etc). I don't know of any b2b plays that do. Part of me thought I wanted to join a consumer facing company, but what I've realized is that businesses are consumers too. We get love mail from our customers all the time, from mom and pops to large public companies. It feels awesome and is so rewarding. Good luck on your journey!
demian 15y ago
37 Signals is the perfect example of how you don't have to be a static mass of grey goo in order to work on something else than mobisocialfotogames (as patio11 puts it). I believe there is a rising confidence in the corporate world about the way companies like Google and Facebook work, and that can be the key to enter markets controlled by bureaucrats. We need to call bullshit to those spreadsheeters and power pointers and start spreading.
brendino 15y ago
Here's some validation of the "boring" concept: http://techcrunch.com/enterprise/ http://techcrunch.com/enterprise/ It's amazing to see how these M&A transactions pale in comparison to what's going on in the consumer-oriented space.
feedus 15y ago
Ideal 'hacker news spam' post.
mannicken 15y ago
Clouds that cover part of the text when I'm trying to scroll down and don't go away? Seriously? Boring article about boring business with a screwed-up design. Sorry, not even bothering to read it.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
guiseppecalzone 15y ago
We're building a 'boring' business too (http://www.hellofax.com http://www.hellofax.com) and I love it. Document signing is a huge pain. Businesses feel the pain more than most, since they sign a lot of documents, and they're willing to pay for a solution. It's way better than the last startup I was at, where we had millions of users, but somehow couldn't make any money.
- revorad 15y ago
  Do you mind saying what your last startup was?
hkarthik 15y ago
Slightly off topic, but I tried tweeting this post and Bit.Ly reported it as a phishing site, you guys might want to look into that. Another person had the same problem. Here's the shrunk URLs: http://bit.ly/pvv11g http://bit.ly/pvv11g http://bit.ly/okHtiC http://bit.ly/okHtiC
lelele 15y ago
There aren't boring business. There are boring companies. There aren't boring problems. There are boring solutions.
- iphoneedbot 15y ago
  very good point... where have I heard this before?
mindcrime 15y ago
A lot of people consider enterprise software boring. Ok, great, I'll happily relieve a few customers of their money, selling them "boring" enterprise software. As jasonlbaptiste said here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447428 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447428 in the infamous "How to become a millionaire in three years" post. Charge for something- Building a consumer property dependent upon advertising has easily made many millionaires, but it isn't the surest path. It takes a lot of time and scale, which due to cashflow issues will require large outside investment probably before you are a millionaire. Build something that you can charge for. Besides, I reject the notion that enterprise software is boring. I mean, maybe it can be boring, depending on what you're doing. But the stuff we're working on at Fogbeam Labs is largely the same technologies people are using on consumer facing web apps... And on the back end, we're doing really exciting stuff with machine learning, AI, data mining, information retrieval, semantic web technology, etc. The one area where we'll probably always be forced to lag a little, is client-side technologies; if we find that many of our target customers are far off the leading edge on browsers. But whatever, we can live with that.
bflesch 15y ago
Meetingburner is a great product, but their website has very critical security flaws which may expose all user data. This could include all your beta signups. I've already contacted MB via twitter and mail, let's hope I can reach out to the right person to resolve these issues. It's been a some time since I've seen such vulnerabilities in a startup.

145 points by aresant 15y ago

cheez 15y ago

Loading is fast and that's great, but I have 3-4 online meetings a week. I'm not really bothered with loading time. However, the Webex "join meeting" UI annoys me to no end. Tell me about screen sharing, audio and recording of both. That's what I really care about.

aresant 15y ago
"Tell me about screen sharing, audio and recording of both. That's what I really care about." That issue is so specific to the litany of using current solutions it's not even funny - something we definitely hated before building. We spent a LOT of time making sure audio integration and recording worked beautifully - we even built our own phone bridge system from the ground up so that when you click "record" you get audio from dial ins and from digital users all in one session. After post-processing the recording on server side you can one click to export to YouTube, lots more formats coming soon. In terms of screen sharing, beta accounts let you share with up to 50 (contact us if you need more), everything is cloud based (multiple cloud solutions for redundancy) so we're harnessing massive CPU power to deliver an experience that balances / beats the big boys on speed / quality. Give it a try - if you didn't follow the link in the post go to http://www.meetingburner.com/ http://www.meetingburner.com/ and enter beta code "boring" for instant access today. Also blog contains updates from the last two cycles that list more specific feature details.
- cheez 15y ago
  Exactly, I couldn't find this on the main site. I will sign up.

Shenglong 15y ago

have you ever spent the first 10 minutes of your meeting answering technical questions from guests that are still trying to figure out how to log in? This isn't a function of how easy software is to use. Some of the stuff I use, I find extremely easy and intuitive. What I fail to remember, is that depending on who's in my group, they may not necessarily understand how to Google small problems they have, or how the internet works in general (yes, I had to explain that URL referred to the text input bar at the top of the browser). In one case, I actually wrote a PDF document with screenshots, on how to get a specific software working. As the meeting started, I received a call on my cell, with a member asking for help, in connecting. After diagnosing for a little while, I realized it was my fault - I had forgotten to write down that the software needs to be installed first. As for this: Plugins? Downloads? Port restrictions on certain computers? I haven't checked this out yet, but I appreciate the effort of making meetings easier... but I'd bet six pennies that someone will still manage to screw up.

petervandijck 15y ago
What you described is totally a function of how easy it is to use.
rahoulb 15y ago
Years ago my employer released a new version of their desktop app. Occasionally, under certain versions of Windows, it would complain and show a dialogue box during the installation process. We needed to hit a release date (yes, it was our own fault - we didn't have time to deal with the error message in the installer) so on the upgrade instructions, on our website, we added "you may see a box like this [screenshot] - just click the OK button, the box will close and installation will continue". A couple of days later we had a call from an exasperated customer - "I keep clicking OK but the box won't go away". After an hour of talking we finally figured out that he was clicking the OK button on the screenshot on the webpage and hadn't even started the upgrade process.

dy 15y ago

Very impressive and I like your message - solve real problems that people who have budgets are willing to pay for.

rglover 15y ago

This got me to sign up for the beta. Not to mention the fairly amusing demo video on their homepage. Interested to play with it and see if it lives up to it's own hype.

rglover 15y ago
Follow up. Signed up for the beta and got an invite in just a few minutes. I'm guessing they're keeping it open so if you want to play with it, use the invite code "instant." Hopefully that wasn't a secret P.S. It's a pretty great tool. Going to use this in the near future.
nedwin 15y ago
Me too. Hats off guys, this is a great sales pitch.

binxbolling 15y ago

How is this free?

ibejoeb 15y ago
From the privacy policy [1]: "...if you have a free account with MeetingBurner, then we will use the information gathered about you to share more information about our business in an attempt to convince you to make a purchase from us or our associated companies..." -- [1] https://www.meetingburner.com/policies/privacy https://www.meetingburner.com/policies/privacy
aresant 15y ago
a) See my other posts in this thread - we will be targeting enterprise eventually, see every free account user as a potential advocate / sharer of our brand. b) We've built patented tech around cloud which gives us a cost basis that is low and we're self funded with years of runway to build the brand and product the right way.
- BenSS 15y ago
  As long as you don't pull a DimDim, axing the early users in favor of the enterprise.
  - aresant 15y ago
    Won't do it. We built this for us and for you, enterprise will pay the bills :)

ibejoeb 15y ago

+1 for "boring" products. I like making them; it's really a pretty decent gig. First, there are still interesting problems even in less juicy domains. That's not particularly relevant, though, because the juicy domains have those too. At least we're pretty even so far... The best part, for me, is that I get to make money solving some hard or tedious problems; clients happy to pay for that, and I'm happy to be in business. Then, I get to have actual fun with my "toy" projects rather than worry about finding some obscure way to monetize something that has very little intrinsic economic potential. I can afford to experiment, run a bunch of small operations, get other people involved, and see where they go. In being somewhat tightly bound one side, I have almost unlimited creative freedom on the other.

diolpah 15y ago
I would like to echo this sentiment. Although ecommerce was reasonably sexy in 1999, it is generally regarded by the current tech zeitgeist as stodgy and boring, despite the fact that there are often very interesting problems to solve in the domain. I still love what we do, and the environment still feels very startupy, even after a few years.
- revorad 15y ago
  Wow, both ties.com and scarves.com have some of the best product photos I've seen on any ecommerce site. Great job!
  - diolpah 15y ago
    Thanks. We have our creative and photography departments mashed into one, so they tend to approach product photography as a part of design.

patio11 15y ago

Some additional reasons to solve boring problems for business: 1) People pay serious money for solutions. 2) Your competition is often clueless companies or, even better, clearly subpar manual processes or Excel spreadsheets. (Every Excel spreadsheet which has ever been emailed is a startup waiting to be born.) Nobody in the Valley will realize you exist, since they'll be too busy with mobisocialfotogames and other businesses attempting to separate jaded twenty-something's from money that they don't have and wouldn't spend if they did. 3) Most boring problems have a fascinating underbelly, if you're inclined to look for it. I knew a guy who did paper sales once. He was brimming with enthusiasm for it: he was an absolute magician who spoke the secret language of Paper. Every sheet had a character and a story, and he knew them all.

chc 15y ago
Patrick isn't joking about paper, by the way. Choice of paper stock can make a huge difference either consciously or subconsciously to how the message printed on it is perceived. Ask somebody at a paper company to show you sometime if you don't believe it.
- ma2rten 15y ago
  My university's homepage used to have random quotes by scholars on it's homepage. One of them went something like: "Every topic can be facilitating if you dive into it deep enough". I think it is really insightful.
  - yesbabyyes 15y ago
    http://xkcd.com/915/ http://xkcd.com/915/
    - iphoneedbot 15y ago
      this describes a lot of HN'ers -- snobby connoisseurs of fine code -- HN'ers remind me of Hipsters of the computer world. LOL
- 15y ago

brianbreslin 15y ago

Can you explain your business model? After beta, whats the price point?

aresant 15y ago
After beta we're going to target the enterprise / corp market for premium features that are more unique to that set - scale, security, archiving, API, etc. We'll always have a solution targeted at people holding meetings for 25 - 50 people, fully featured, and free. Advocacy from happy users and the viral nature of the product (everybody you meet with might need their own meeting solution) will power exposure to decision makers at the enterprise clients (who currently use GTM / WebEx) that can flip over 500 accounts at a time. More on all that in a future post - it's a very interesting market!

veastley 15y ago

"Boring" has become almost a requirement as I evaluate new software business ideas. The opposite of boring is often flash-in-the-pan fad ideas, and I run screaming from those. I want to build real products people use, not trendy solutions in search of problems.

smiler 15y ago

Why should I pick you over webex?

bradleyland 15y ago
I just registered for the beta a few minutes ago, and based on first impressions, I can give you one very, very good reason. This organization seems to actually give a shit about the design of their product. I'm talking the Steve Jobs definition of design: "design is how it works". To be clear, a products appearance is a huge part of how it works. The WebEx dashboard and meeting management tools are straight out of a 1997 enterprise intranet. Not only do they look terrible, but the layout is confusing, labels sometimes don't make sense, and finding settings is like digging for a proverbial needle in a haystack. The only reason WebEx stays on top is because their sharing client is top-notch. The ability to select and share specific apps is a huge plus. The current meeting burner sharing client is simplistic, but the ease with which participants can get logged in to a meeting is a big up side. I can't tell you how many times it's taken 10 minutes to walk users through all the "allow" prompts required by WebEx or GoToMeeting.
- aresant 15y ago
  Your comment just made a team of worn out techies very happy, thanks for checking it out. We think it's at ~B level, working hard on getting it to A+

replicatorblog 15y ago

This is completely true, I work in med devices/pharma and there are relatively small companies that generate more revenue that the entire music/video game industries. Pharma companies will lose $50B in revenue this year due to expiring patents. To put that in perspective imagine if every game and music company in the world went out of business simultaneously. Then double it. That is the scale of revenue loss in pharma and the industry will still be worth $720B. It is a "boring" industry from a software perspective, but its magnitude is amazing. Also, "Boring" is as much a perspective as a category. MailChimp has built a massive business in email marketing and are one of the cheekiest companies around. AirBNB helps people book hotel rooms. 37 Signals makes a close cousin of meeting software. At least that's what their SW does. I'm sure if you asked the owners of those co's they'd say they help organizations communicate with their members, people form real social networks, and entrepreneurs build their businesses. There is a Disney saying "Magic doesn't make it work, the way we work makes it Magic" Having the right perspective can add 80 IQ points!

tectonic 15y ago
Can you give us some examples of what sort of web-application-solvable problems this industry might have?

dotBen 15y ago

It all comes down to how much risk you want to take. (In general:) Consumer orientated startups have the potential to become ridiculously valuable companies - lets just define that as a valuation of $1bn+. Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare (soon), etc. But your chances of getting there are 0.001%. Business orientated apps that real solve a genuine problem are more likely to be 'successful' (say, valued at $100m+) but unlikely to become $1Bn businesses (on it's own - you might get acquired, or you could become a software behemoth like Atlassian with 100's of products - but these are not really 'startups' anymore) . As someone about to turn 30 and been in this business a few years, I see this as simply an example of someone with a matured aspiration for what they want to achieve. If you are in your 20's, it fits your profile to probably work on something consumer oriented, taking a risk and also have a lot of run (consumer apps tend to be more fun that business apps, just saying). If you are 30+ and not had that big win yet, it might be worth changing your expectation and working on something that has a higher chance of being moderately successful so that you are more likely to walk away from your career with something. This may or may not be what is going on with the founders of MeetingBurner, but it's precisely where my head is at as I turn 30.

aresant 15y ago
You may have missed your calling as a carnival age guesser :) MB founders ages : 31, 40, 37, 35, 31 Definitely truth in what you've outlined, but we've also had the experience building another couple of boring businesses that haven't made us billionaires, but left us free and able to cash flow this project with years of runway. It's hard as an entrepreneur not to jump into exciting, glad to see the response to the post today which was initially written as an email response to Noah ;)
matwood 15y ago
If you are 30+ and not had that big win yet, it might be worth changing your expectation and working on something that has a higher chance of being moderately successful so that you are more likely to walk away from your career with something. This may or may not be what is going on with the founders of MeetingBurner, but it's precisely where my head is at as I turn 30. Completely agree. The other part is that someone who is in their 30s is likely to have seen the inside of a few large companies and have a ton of ideas about nagging niche problems that can be solved.

Newky 15y ago

Surely a boring business is only good, if the actual area is of interest to you. A boring business will surely not keep you working as late or as hard, a boring business will not stay in your thoughts all day, or jump into your mind when you should really be enjoying a night off? A boring area, where your project is a more innovative solution and you are excited about the area in which you can carve out in this area I would consider a good business but one in which the sole reason for pursuing is that its a good business prospect makes no sense to me. I'm not saying you won't make money, but I want to do that while pursuing something which I then want to be able to explain to someone with wonder and obvious excitement. Also regarding the iPhone mention in the article, I could be wrong but as far as I know, the opening demonstration of the iPhone was met with a frosty representation.

georgieporgie 15y ago

I forget where it was (Gladwell? Levitt?) that I read about the guy who had become quite wealthy by selling bowling balls online. It turns out there's a larger market for it than you might think, and nobody was doing it at the time.

astrofinch 15y ago

I'm 20, and one thing I'd like to do at some point is to get a job as a management consultant so I can get a cross-section view of the economy and see what lots of industries look like from the inside. I'm hoping that this will give me enough domain knowledge in enough different industries to identify a boring but profitable business idea and then chase it. Can anyone older and wiser give me feedback on my plan? Is there an easier way to gain a lot of domain knowledge about how different industries work? I like the idea of working as a management consultant because (1) it pays well (2) my vague impression is that the job consists of having people give you the lowdown on the problems their business is encountering but I'm certainly open to trying something else if it seems like a better idea. Maybe instead of being a consultant, I should identify a single industry that seems both corrupt and profitable and take aim at it more directly? Any tips on finding such an industry?

pitdesi 15y ago
People on HN will generally not agree, but I personally don't think it's a bad way to go. The problem is that you don't have a lot of control on what you do/where you go. 2 of us at FeeFighters worked at BCG immediately before joining FeeFighters full-time. We both did work in the banking/credit card industry there and had an insiders view on how f'd up the industry is, which definitely has helped out - I've even seen former clients at conferences and the like. That being said, there is a lot of luck involved on the types of projects and the types of industries you get to work on. If you can get a job at a top tier consulting firm out of undergrad, it sounds like it would be good for you. Given your background you can certainly make it happen and leave after a short amount of time with better contacts/perspective on business. For you, it would be like getting paid for business school.
timtadh 15y ago
take a look at Cigital or similar. Computer security consulting could give you the insight you are looking for and dole out some technical challenges along the way.
ams6110 15y ago
What exactly would you be consulting on, when by your own admission you don't seem to have much background in anything in particular?

pitdesi 15y ago

I love this post - it's exactly what we're doing... disrupting the boring world of credit card processing. Honestly sometimes it's a bit tough because a lot of people's (and reporters) eyes glaze over the second we mention what we do, and they don't care about the fact that we're solving a major pain point Consumer is super hot right now... as someone earlier said, it is more likely that you can start a billion dollar consumer business than a b2b play. Some consumer businesses get funded with very little product and no customers (Zaarly, Color, etc). I don't know of any b2b plays that do. Part of me thought I wanted to join a consumer facing company, but what I've realized is that businesses are consumers too. We get love mail from our customers all the time, from mom and pops to large public companies. It feels awesome and is so rewarding. Good luck on your journey!

demian 15y ago

37 Signals is the perfect example of how you don't have to be a static mass of grey goo in order to work on something else than mobisocialfotogames (as patio11 puts it). I believe there is a rising confidence in the corporate world about the way companies like Google and Facebook work, and that can be the key to enter markets controlled by bureaucrats. We need to call bullshit to those spreadsheeters and power pointers and start spreading.

brendino 15y ago

Here's some validation of the "boring" concept: http://techcrunch.com/enterprise/ http://techcrunch.com/enterprise/ It's amazing to see how these M&A transactions pale in comparison to what's going on in the consumer-oriented space.

feedus 15y ago

Ideal 'hacker news spam' post.

mannicken 15y ago

Clouds that cover part of the text when I'm trying to scroll down and don't go away? Seriously? Boring article about boring business with a screwed-up design. Sorry, not even bothering to read it.

deleted 15y ago

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guiseppecalzone 15y ago

We're building a 'boring' business too (http://www.hellofax.com http://www.hellofax.com) and I love it. Document signing is a huge pain. Businesses feel the pain more than most, since they sign a lot of documents, and they're willing to pay for a solution. It's way better than the last startup I was at, where we had millions of users, but somehow couldn't make any money.

revorad 15y ago
Do you mind saying what your last startup was?

hkarthik 15y ago

Slightly off topic, but I tried tweeting this post and Bit.Ly reported it as a phishing site, you guys might want to look into that. Another person had the same problem. Here's the shrunk URLs: http://bit.ly/pvv11g http://bit.ly/pvv11g http://bit.ly/okHtiC http://bit.ly/okHtiC

lelele 15y ago

There aren't boring business. There are boring companies. There aren't boring problems. There are boring solutions.

iphoneedbot 15y ago
very good point... where have I heard this before?

mindcrime 15y ago

A lot of people consider enterprise software boring. Ok, great, I'll happily relieve a few customers of their money, selling them "boring" enterprise software. As jasonlbaptiste said here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447428 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447428 in the infamous "How to become a millionaire in three years" post. Charge for something- Building a consumer property dependent upon advertising has easily made many millionaires, but it isn't the surest path. It takes a lot of time and scale, which due to cashflow issues will require large outside investment probably before you are a millionaire. Build something that you can charge for. Besides, I reject the notion that enterprise software is boring. I mean, maybe it can be boring, depending on what you're doing. But the stuff we're working on at Fogbeam Labs is largely the same technologies people are using on consumer facing web apps... And on the back end, we're doing really exciting stuff with machine learning, AI, data mining, information retrieval, semantic web technology, etc. The one area where we'll probably always be forced to lag a little, is client-side technologies; if we find that many of our target customers are far off the leading edge on browsers. But whatever, we can live with that.

bflesch 15y ago

Meetingburner is a great product, but their website has very critical security flaws which may expose all user data. This could include all your beta signups. I've already contacted MB via twitter and mail, let's hope I can reach out to the right person to resolve these issues. It's been a some time since I've seen such vulnerabilities in a startup.