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This is why I will never build a company based around a free API from a for-profit company. I'd never be able to sleep well at night knowing that years of work

This is why I will never build a company based around a free API from a for-profit company. I'd never be able to sleep well at night knowing that years of work and all the employees/families that depend on the business is dependent on someone who could wake up one day and decide on a whim to end access.

npteljes 4y ago
I generally feel that if you like to sleep at night, business is not the way to go. I don't see how business people can just do one thing over a long time, and be sustainable. Rather, I see that successful business people (and I don't mean the outliers like Bill Gates) react to changes quickly and constantly adapt to new environments. The nature of their business always changes. So we enter Business Continuity Plans. The businesses either had that, or they were diverse enough so that one leg failing doesn't mean end of the business.
pjc50 4y ago
You should never build a company based around phone calls, because one day your phone might get cut off. You should never build a company around electricity, because one day your electricity might get cut off.
- xigoi 4y ago
  Phone and electricity are not a monopoly. You can get them from different providers.
warning26 4y ago
I think this every time there’s a “what cool thing should I build with OpenAI’s API?” post. A nice thought, but once OpenAI decides to pull the rug out from under you, it won’t matter what you built.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  > “It’s just an OpenAI/ChatGPT wrapper” is the new “It’s just an AWS wrapper” that would have made you miss a generation of cloud-native companies. https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1621204449959231493 https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1621204449959231493 People who build on top of them will have stacked cash in the meantime, even if the API does eventually get pulled.
- weberer 4y ago
  OpenAI already pulled the rug once by becoming closed source. Their company name is a complete misnomer now.
- senttoschool 4y ago
  It's a bit safer with OpenAI because they have paid plans. But you're right, it's still a bit risky. In the distant future, OpenAI can copy and vertically integrate features their API users have created or they can simply pull the plug on them.
  - nly 4y ago
    Well, that's exactly the business model of offering a free API.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      You can't replace Twitter's API (or any social network interface, as the network effects are the value). If you build on OpenAI, you can at least have a forward looking plan to swap out their API for your own ML system (or a competitor) once other systems reach parity (which, assuming current trajectories, they eventually will).
asdadsdad 4y ago
corollary: never build a company that depends on web scraping
- yreg 4y ago
  never build a company t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶d̶e̶p̶e̶n̶d̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶
dzhiurgis 4y ago
You can stop being drama queen and pass the cost onto your customers
clipsy 4y ago
By the same reasoning, one shouldn’t build a company based on any API, regardless of whether it’s free or paid; the existence of a paid API does not automatically guarantee any future pricing or even availability. One could build a company around a paid API only to have the pricing jacked up 10x or the API shut down or neutered in some critical way and end up in, functionally, the same situation.
- crabbone 4y ago
  Not OP, but this is definitely not how OP meant the word "free". In the context of Twitter, think about free analogy being newsgroups (if you are young enough not to have witnessed it, in the early days of Internet, your ISP would provide you with email box with some space attached to it and a newsgroup access). Newsgroups were functionally very similar to what Twitter does, i.e. they were designed to share news between multiple subscribers of those news. So, newsgroups weren't free in the sense that you had to pay your ISP to access them (not necessarily billed separately though, typically just a part of a package deal). But they were free in the sense that it was a distributed service provided by multiple (and by that I mean, hundreds) of independent providers, and it was an open standard: if you wanted to become a provider of the service, you wouldn't have to invest a lot into that, just set up yet another server with some freely available software and you are good to go. So, if for some reason your ISP wouldn't connect you to the newsgroups, you'd just go to another one who would (it didn't really matter back in the days and the feature didn't have as wide of an outreach as social networks have today, but, in principle, it would've worked that way). So, this kind of freedom would've offered better protections against single company deciding the fate of the important part of yours.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Then the OP definitely does not want anything like that, since they said that they hate the idea of building a business around a free API. I think you're mistaken here. The problem with building a business around a free API from a for-profit company is the rugpull. As a sibling comment mentions, even a paid API can get rugpulled. But I think that what the OP was trying to contrast a free API from a for-profit company with was actually an API from a non-profit company. A non-profit can run forever if it's just breaking even, and is sharing IP, so other people can jump up and replace it if they fail, and you might even be able to install it on your own servers. edit: I'm not a big Mastodon booster (or even liker), but if you build your business around it, it would be nuts because the customer base is of course tiny at this point, but you run very little management risk from the Mastodon project itself. Whereas your relationship with twitter can be changed on a day to day basis, unilaterally.

npteljes 4y ago

I generally feel that if you like to sleep at night, business is not the way to go. I don't see how business people can just do one thing over a long time, and be sustainable. Rather, I see that successful business people (and I don't mean the outliers like Bill Gates) react to changes quickly and constantly adapt to new environments. The nature of their business always changes. So we enter Business Continuity Plans. The businesses either had that, or they were diverse enough so that one leg failing doesn't mean end of the business.

pjc50 4y ago

You should never build a company based around phone calls, because one day your phone might get cut off. You should never build a company around electricity, because one day your electricity might get cut off.

xigoi 4y ago
Phone and electricity are not a monopoly. You can get them from different providers.

warning26 4y ago

I think this every time there’s a “what cool thing should I build with OpenAI’s API?” post. A nice thought, but once OpenAI decides to pull the rug out from under you, it won’t matter what you built.

cercatrova 4y ago
> “It’s just an OpenAI/ChatGPT wrapper” is the new “It’s just an AWS wrapper” that would have made you miss a generation of cloud-native companies. https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1621204449959231493 https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1621204449959231493 People who build on top of them will have stacked cash in the meantime, even if the API does eventually get pulled.
weberer 4y ago
OpenAI already pulled the rug once by becoming closed source. Their company name is a complete misnomer now.
senttoschool 4y ago
It's a bit safer with OpenAI because they have paid plans. But you're right, it's still a bit risky. In the distant future, OpenAI can copy and vertically integrate features their API users have created or they can simply pull the plug on them.
- nly 4y ago
  Well, that's exactly the business model of offering a free API.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    You can't replace Twitter's API (or any social network interface, as the network effects are the value). If you build on OpenAI, you can at least have a forward looking plan to swap out their API for your own ML system (or a competitor) once other systems reach parity (which, assuming current trajectories, they eventually will).

asdadsdad 4y ago

corollary: never build a company that depends on web scraping

yreg 4y ago
never build a company t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶d̶e̶p̶e̶n̶d̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶

dzhiurgis 4y ago

You can stop being drama queen and pass the cost onto your customers

clipsy 4y ago

By the same reasoning, one shouldn’t build a company based on any API, regardless of whether it’s free or paid; the existence of a paid API does not automatically guarantee any future pricing or even availability. One could build a company around a paid API only to have the pricing jacked up 10x or the API shut down or neutered in some critical way and end up in, functionally, the same situation.

crabbone 4y ago
Not OP, but this is definitely not how OP meant the word "free". In the context of Twitter, think about free analogy being newsgroups (if you are young enough not to have witnessed it, in the early days of Internet, your ISP would provide you with email box with some space attached to it and a newsgroup access). Newsgroups were functionally very similar to what Twitter does, i.e. they were designed to share news between multiple subscribers of those news. So, newsgroups weren't free in the sense that you had to pay your ISP to access them (not necessarily billed separately though, typically just a part of a package deal). But they were free in the sense that it was a distributed service provided by multiple (and by that I mean, hundreds) of independent providers, and it was an open standard: if you wanted to become a provider of the service, you wouldn't have to invest a lot into that, just set up yet another server with some freely available software and you are good to go. So, if for some reason your ISP wouldn't connect you to the newsgroups, you'd just go to another one who would (it didn't really matter back in the days and the feature didn't have as wide of an outreach as social networks have today, but, in principle, it would've worked that way). So, this kind of freedom would've offered better protections against single company deciding the fate of the important part of yours.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Then the OP definitely does not want anything like that, since they said that they hate the idea of building a business around a free API. I think you're mistaken here. The problem with building a business around a free API from a for-profit company is the rugpull. As a sibling comment mentions, even a paid API can get rugpulled. But I think that what the OP was trying to contrast a free API from a for-profit company with was actually an API from a non-profit company. A non-profit can run forever if it's just breaking even, and is sharing IP, so other people can jump up and replace it if they fail, and you might even be able to install it on your own servers. edit: I'm not a big Mastodon booster (or even liker), but if you build your business around it, it would be nuts because the customer base is of course tiny at this point, but you run very little management risk from the Mastodon project itself. Whereas your relationship with twitter can be changed on a day to day basis, unilaterally.