4 ms·

Part of the problem is that most of these startups simply have too much overhead to offer their product for free or cheap. Like I never understood why most of

by spaceman_2020 4y ago

Part of the problem is that most of these startups simply have too much overhead to offer their product for free or cheap. Like I never understood why most of these basic tools morph into 100+ people companies. A tool like Evernote can be built and maintained by under 20 people. Even at inflated salaries, your yearly burn would be under $10M. This is part of a broader trend of startup overhiring. Like Better.com had 10k employees at one point. What are those people even doing at a “startup”? This late in the startup cycle, you really need to ask why a 10k person company hasn’t IPOed and why is it still calling itself a “startup”

shafyy 4y ago
> Like I never understood why most of these basic tools morph into 100+ people companies. Simple answer: They've signed a deal with the devil (VC funding) and now need to grow to make a > 1 billion dollar exit.
- beej71 4y ago
  I've watched this happen too many times. Good companies destroyed.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  Vercel is going down this path now.
  - leaflets2 4y ago
    Interesting, they have 50? 60? open jobs: https://vercel.com/careers https://vercel.com/careers - I think that's a lot? Gatsby to maybe?
  - shafyy 4y ago
    Yeah I think Netlify and Shopify, too. A shame.
    - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
      Shopify is a public company. I think their pressures are different, brought upon by a whole new senior management team who are very poor at their jobs.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Happening in so many Indian startups right now. They lived off VC money for a decade with no profits in sight. Now they’re trying to monetize their users and finding out that most won’t pay or can’t pay.
ratww 4y ago
Sibling post is correct: I worked in a couple companies backed by Softbank and they specifically asked for engineering headcount increase. Investors and CEOs think they need massive numbers because they misunderstand how dev headcount scales and how much overhead it generates. Hiring warehouse workers, moderators and content editors scale, so they extrapolate that to devs and expect the same results. Also with lots of devs you need lots of designers, managers, product owners and other idea people, so there’s a lot of minor tasks being pushed trough, which would otherwise not be if it was a 20 dev product. Not to mention the extra need of support, QA and ops people, which in turn needs more coordination and management. Going back to 10 or 20 devs is borderline impossible, even if you reduce the scope, since the infrastructure needed to support 100 or 1000 has too much of an overhead in itself. I would love to see someone try, though. It is also cool to have 1000 devs in case of an acqui-hire. If your product sucks, you can still sell your team. Yay.
chrisandchris 4y ago
> Part of the problem is that most of these startups simply have too much overhead to offer their product for free or cheap. I think that is not the issue. The issue is having a physical product that is tied to a subscription which could also be a one-time fee. Like a subscription for your dorbell - just why?
- bdcravens 4y ago
  > Like a subscription for your dorbell - just why? Servers (and the staff to maintain them) have an ongoing cost. Human labor is also a pesky subscription.
  - chrisandchris 4y ago
    Sure, yes, I agree. But why design a thing that way? Is there really no other way? What if the company goes down, now you have a very expensive useless doorbell you even paid for a long time. And it's not like there's much new functionality one can put in a doorbell. I'm not sure the server really costs that much each month.
    - kurupt213 4y ago
      I remember reading here that a smarthome company has already failed, essentially turning the physical hardware into junk. The default option should be self hosted, with premium subscription for those who choose
      - rolph 4y ago
        that should perhaps be modified to easily or readily self hosted , AND compatible with normal internet protocols. one of the biggest problems is getting the information easily. i used to ask sales reps if a device requires subscriptions, or if it is stand alone no 3rd party server required, but i stopped doing that, since no one seems to be able to answer the question. There is a good portion of -not knowing what you are even selling, but the practice of playing dumb to make the sale is alive and well. I now make the blanket assumption that any new hardware will have this issue. consequently im in the habit of turning junk, into usable hardware, instead of buying new. I wish this would really catch on, but most people are sucked in by the apparent convienience vs the superfluous difficulties dangled around something that really is simple at its foundation.
soundnote 4y ago
Yeah. Roam's dev team is what, 3-6 people? Obsidian was 2, now 3. Alloy.dev who make Amplenote have 20. All provide rich content editors and sync backends. In Evernote's case, though, they did build things like inhouse OCR and a web clipper before the modern age (eg. Amplenote's OCR is just bought from Microsoft)
packetlost 4y ago
I always figured it was support staff that drove most of that, and I while I think that's still partially correct... it seems to be less so than I previously thought
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Part of the problem is that most of these startups simply have too much overhead to offer their product for free or cheap. The point of a startup is to make lots of money, to provide a large return to early investors; they definitely don't want to offer their product for free, and only want to offer it cheap if that's all the market will bear and they can get enormous numbers of sales by doing that. > Like I never understood why most of these basic tools morph into 100+ people companies. The giant company was the goal all the time. The basic tool was just a starting point.

shafyy 4y ago

> Like I never understood why most of these basic tools morph into 100+ people companies. Simple answer: They've signed a deal with the devil (VC funding) and now need to grow to make a > 1 billion dollar exit.

beej71 4y ago
I've watched this happen too many times. Good companies destroyed.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Vercel is going down this path now.
- leaflets2 4y ago
  Interesting, they have 50? 60? open jobs: https://vercel.com/careers https://vercel.com/careers - I think that's a lot? Gatsby to maybe?
- shafyy 4y ago
  Yeah I think Netlify and Shopify, too. A shame.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
    Shopify is a public company. I think their pressures are different, brought upon by a whole new senior management team who are very poor at their jobs.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Happening in so many Indian startups right now. They lived off VC money for a decade with no profits in sight. Now they’re trying to monetize their users and finding out that most won’t pay or can’t pay.

ratww 4y ago

Sibling post is correct: I worked in a couple companies backed by Softbank and they specifically asked for engineering headcount increase. Investors and CEOs think they need massive numbers because they misunderstand how dev headcount scales and how much overhead it generates. Hiring warehouse workers, moderators and content editors scale, so they extrapolate that to devs and expect the same results. Also with lots of devs you need lots of designers, managers, product owners and other idea people, so there’s a lot of minor tasks being pushed trough, which would otherwise not be if it was a 20 dev product. Not to mention the extra need of support, QA and ops people, which in turn needs more coordination and management. Going back to 10 or 20 devs is borderline impossible, even if you reduce the scope, since the infrastructure needed to support 100 or 1000 has too much of an overhead in itself. I would love to see someone try, though. It is also cool to have 1000 devs in case of an acqui-hire. If your product sucks, you can still sell your team. Yay.

chrisandchris 4y ago

> Part of the problem is that most of these startups simply have too much overhead to offer their product for free or cheap. I think that is not the issue. The issue is having a physical product that is tied to a subscription which could also be a one-time fee. Like a subscription for your dorbell - just why?

bdcravens 4y ago
> Like a subscription for your dorbell - just why? Servers (and the staff to maintain them) have an ongoing cost. Human labor is also a pesky subscription.
- chrisandchris 4y ago
  Sure, yes, I agree. But why design a thing that way? Is there really no other way? What if the company goes down, now you have a very expensive useless doorbell you even paid for a long time. And it's not like there's much new functionality one can put in a doorbell. I'm not sure the server really costs that much each month.
  - kurupt213 4y ago
    I remember reading here that a smarthome company has already failed, essentially turning the physical hardware into junk. The default option should be self hosted, with premium subscription for those who choose
    - rolph 4y ago
      that should perhaps be modified to easily or readily self hosted , AND compatible with normal internet protocols. one of the biggest problems is getting the information easily. i used to ask sales reps if a device requires subscriptions, or if it is stand alone no 3rd party server required, but i stopped doing that, since no one seems to be able to answer the question. There is a good portion of -not knowing what you are even selling, but the practice of playing dumb to make the sale is alive and well. I now make the blanket assumption that any new hardware will have this issue. consequently im in the habit of turning junk, into usable hardware, instead of buying new. I wish this would really catch on, but most people are sucked in by the apparent convienience vs the superfluous difficulties dangled around something that really is simple at its foundation.

soundnote 4y ago

Yeah. Roam's dev team is what, 3-6 people? Obsidian was 2, now 3. Alloy.dev who make Amplenote have 20. All provide rich content editors and sync backends. In Evernote's case, though, they did build things like inhouse OCR and a web clipper before the modern age (eg. Amplenote's OCR is just bought from Microsoft)

packetlost 4y ago

I always figured it was support staff that drove most of that, and I while I think that's still partially correct... it seems to be less so than I previously thought

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Part of the problem is that most of these startups simply have too much overhead to offer their product for free or cheap. The point of a startup is to make lots of money, to provide a large return to early investors; they definitely don't want to offer their product for free, and only want to offer it cheap if that's all the market will bear and they can get enormous numbers of sales by doing that. > Like I never understood why most of these basic tools morph into 100+ people companies. The giant company was the goal all the time. The basic tool was just a starting point.