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Exactly. Once you raise a bunch of VC money you've sold your actual business to vampires. From now on it's grow at any cost. Add bloat, feature creep, unrelated

Exactly. Once you raise a bunch of VC money you've sold your actual business to vampires. From now on it's grow at any cost. Add bloat, feature creep, unrelated projects, cost increases, and probably user data mining and sales on top of it. How was their rather expensive subscription fee and large subscriber base not sufficient to continue operating profitably?

cactusmatt 5y ago
I don't know. Greed? I've been following the 1Password Saga for a while (long time user), and how they responded to the electron pushback seemed like they lost their initial vision and what made them "in touch" with their users like me.
- nathanganser 5y ago
  What was the electron pushback? Link?
  - cactusmatt 5y ago
    With 1Password 8, they shared news that they were moving from native (mac) apps to an Electron UI/frontend with a Rust backend. They did an AMA on Reddit, but didn't show up for a while and got hammered by their users. Their refrain, until Dave Teare showed up, was "but it will be on Rust and the backend will be faster" and didn't acknowledge why users might be upset with the move from Native to Electron apps. https://www.reddit.com/r/1Password/comments/p2dmpt/all_aboard_1password_8_for_mac_is_now_in_early/ https://www.reddit.com/r/1Password/comments/p2dmpt/all_aboar...
    - Spivak 5y ago
      I think it was a mistake to even involve the online community. Of course nerds want you to build a high-quality native experience on every platform because they are heavily invested in their platform of choice. Listening to these kinds of users at all will drive your business to ruin. Honestly building on "tech stack power users hate" is probably the easiest way to fire all your worst, most needy, users.
- upbeat_general 5y ago
  Reading about it now, it feels like the electron move was a result of the VC money. With pressure to grow comes endless A/B tests, gimmicky features, etc and having too many different platforms means you need to split the work across more devs. Trying to match the extra functionality and have the same look is pretty difficult as a program grows. That being said I hate that 1Password needs that. It’s just a password manager at the end of the day.
akerl_ 5y ago
I’m amused by the large portion of the Hackernews userbase that seems to view venture capital as an absolute evil, given that this is YCombinator’s forum. Can you really not think of any examples where VC capital has improved a company, product, or service?
- arepublicadoceu 5y ago
  > Can you really not think of any examples where VC capital has improved a company, product, or service? I honestly can’t, do you mind sharing a few examples to prove your point? I have a long list of “stopped using because went to shit after VC was injected” 1. WhatsApp and Facebook relation 2. Twitter and the loss of control over my feed 3. Spotify and the podcasts shenanigans 4. Dropbox and their assholery against free users 5. Evernote and their assholery against free user, increasingly useless redesigns and lack of improvement on the basics Etc.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    Were any of these companies bootstrapped? Weren't they all investor-funded creations from the start?
  - absolutelymild 5y ago
    Twitter had a venture led Series A in July 2007 https://techcrunch.com/2007/07/29/more-information-on-that-secretive-twitter-financing/ https://techcrunch.com/2007/07/29/more-information-on-that-s...
  - mbesto 5y ago
    Survivor bias at its finest. Dropbox, Spotify, and Twitter all used VC money to launch/improve their product. Just because you don't specifically like the traunch of VC money that was used prior to IPO doesn't mean all VC is blood-sucking. There are countless examples of products people use that have had some form or shape. In fact, I'd argue there are rarely apps that anyone uses here on a regular basis that didn't have some form of VC money injected into them. The only one that comes to mind is (1) Basecamp (but technically they took money from Bezos) and (2) Atlassian pre IPO (now public).

cactusmatt 5y ago

I don't know. Greed? I've been following the 1Password Saga for a while (long time user), and how they responded to the electron pushback seemed like they lost their initial vision and what made them "in touch" with their users like me.

nathanganser 5y ago
What was the electron pushback? Link?
- cactusmatt 5y ago
  With 1Password 8, they shared news that they were moving from native (mac) apps to an Electron UI/frontend with a Rust backend. They did an AMA on Reddit, but didn't show up for a while and got hammered by their users. Their refrain, until Dave Teare showed up, was "but it will be on Rust and the backend will be faster" and didn't acknowledge why users might be upset with the move from Native to Electron apps. https://www.reddit.com/r/1Password/comments/p2dmpt/all_aboard_1password_8_for_mac_is_now_in_early/ https://www.reddit.com/r/1Password/comments/p2dmpt/all_aboar...
  - Spivak 5y ago
    I think it was a mistake to even involve the online community. Of course nerds want you to build a high-quality native experience on every platform because they are heavily invested in their platform of choice. Listening to these kinds of users at all will drive your business to ruin. Honestly building on "tech stack power users hate" is probably the easiest way to fire all your worst, most needy, users.
upbeat_general 5y ago
Reading about it now, it feels like the electron move was a result of the VC money. With pressure to grow comes endless A/B tests, gimmicky features, etc and having too many different platforms means you need to split the work across more devs. Trying to match the extra functionality and have the same look is pretty difficult as a program grows. That being said I hate that 1Password needs that. It’s just a password manager at the end of the day.

akerl_ 5y ago

I’m amused by the large portion of the Hackernews userbase that seems to view venture capital as an absolute evil, given that this is YCombinator’s forum. Can you really not think of any examples where VC capital has improved a company, product, or service?

arepublicadoceu 5y ago
> Can you really not think of any examples where VC capital has improved a company, product, or service? I honestly can’t, do you mind sharing a few examples to prove your point? I have a long list of “stopped using because went to shit after VC was injected” 1. WhatsApp and Facebook relation 2. Twitter and the loss of control over my feed 3. Spotify and the podcasts shenanigans 4. Dropbox and their assholery against free users 5. Evernote and their assholery against free user, increasingly useless redesigns and lack of improvement on the basics Etc.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  Were any of these companies bootstrapped? Weren't they all investor-funded creations from the start?
- absolutelymild 5y ago
  Twitter had a venture led Series A in July 2007 https://techcrunch.com/2007/07/29/more-information-on-that-secretive-twitter-financing/ https://techcrunch.com/2007/07/29/more-information-on-that-s...
- mbesto 5y ago
  Survivor bias at its finest. Dropbox, Spotify, and Twitter all used VC money to launch/improve their product. Just because you don't specifically like the traunch of VC money that was used prior to IPO doesn't mean all VC is blood-sucking. There are countless examples of products people use that have had some form or shape. In fact, I'd argue there are rarely apps that anyone uses here on a regular basis that didn't have some form of VC money injected into them. The only one that comes to mind is (1) Basecamp (but technically they took money from Bezos) and (2) Atlassian pre IPO (now public).