4 ms·

I think of it like this: would the business exist without the software they wrote in house to facilitate the business? If the business ceases to exist without t

I think of it like this: would the business exist without the software they wrote in house to facilitate the business? If the business ceases to exist without the software: it's a software company.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago
If that's the criteria, can you name any company that's not a software company in 2023? The local steel mill got hit with ransomware a few months ago. The Windows virus didn't touch the furnace controls, cranes, sand dispensers, or forklifts, but it shut down their custom software that lets them receive purchasing requests, queue work orders to the foreman, and eventually ship to and bill customers, and they were shut down for weeks. Is a steel mill a software company? I suppose the local Amish bakery/furniture store might continue to accept cash if their borrowed battery-powered POS terminal went offline, but every other business I can think of from Boeing to Wal-Mart relies on software to facilitate the business. And at various levels of scale, they all grow from purely running on an Office license to some custom spreadsheet logic to an in-house database server.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  I understood it as the company has to write the software in-house. The steel mill bought the software, so not a software company by that definition.
  - LeifCarrotson 3y ago
    The steel mill wrote the software, they've got a couple guys writing C# for an ASP.NET app that runs their custom CRM and pushes orders, CAD files around, keeping the workload consistent so that you don't end up with a bunch of parts in a row that all need the largest gantry crane at the same time, ensuring that patterns cut in-house are ready on time, making sure that the shop knows what color paint goes on each part, and so on. And that's not even getting to the custom automation software that runs on their PLCs and so on. Sure, in that specific example they only have about 5 out of a couple hundred employees who can write C#, and maybe 10 who can program PLCs, plus some contractors like myself. But your definition of "software company" was effectively "dependent on custom software to operate", and that's been true of every single one of hundreds of automotive/furniture/aerospace/heavy industrial manufacturing plants that I've been in throughout the past 10 years.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      > The steel mill wrote the software, they've got a couple guys writing C# for an ASP.NET app that runs their custom CRM and pushes orders, CAD files around, keeping the workload consistent so that you don't end up with a bunch of parts in a row that all need the largest gantry crane at the same time, ensuring that patterns cut in-house are ready on time, making sure that the shop knows what color paint goes on each part, and so on. And that's not even getting to the custom automation software that runs on their PLCs and so on. Then yes, they're at least partially a software company. (I personally tend to think it's a spectrum, with this steel company at the bottom and ex. Collabera at the top.)
mc32 3y ago
They're selling a service --that service runs on software. That software is their "secret sauce" --but like a capable CEO, the company is not in the business of a great CEO or great software, it's in the business of selling their services that are facilitated by their software --but that software could be internally developed or it could be a white-label software.. kind of like what we see in the malware biz.
mrweasel 3y ago
I do like that definition, but there's also the question of what kind of business would it be? There are companies that have to write their own software, because there isn't commercially available solution that will allow them to scale. Companies like energy trading companies, banks, hedge funds, ISPs and so on. They might buy some solutions, but build others. eBay also doesn't magically become an auction house, just because they decide to buy a platform, rather than develop one. Amazon (the webshop) isn't a software company... but they write a ton of software.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  I think that Grindr is pretty solidly a software company. Unlike most other dating apps (Tinder/OKCupid/Match/Bumble/etc.) there is no actual “matching” mechanism. You are just displayed a grid ordered by distance of the X closest people to you, which requires basically a chatbox and an app that can interact with location services.

I think of it like this: would the business exist without the software they wrote in house to facilitate the business? If the business ceases to exist without the software: it's a software company.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

If that's the criteria, can you name any company that's not a software company in 2023? The local steel mill got hit with ransomware a few months ago. The Windows virus didn't touch the furnace controls, cranes, sand dispensers, or forklifts, but it shut down their custom software that lets them receive purchasing requests, queue work orders to the foreman, and eventually ship to and bill customers, and they were shut down for weeks. Is a steel mill a software company? I suppose the local Amish bakery/furniture store might continue to accept cash if their borrowed battery-powered POS terminal went offline, but every other business I can think of from Boeing to Wal-Mart relies on software to facilitate the business. And at various levels of scale, they all grow from purely running on an Office license to some custom spreadsheet logic to an in-house database server.

mrweasel 3y ago
I understood it as the company has to write the software in-house. The steel mill bought the software, so not a software company by that definition.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  The steel mill wrote the software, they've got a couple guys writing C# for an ASP.NET app that runs their custom CRM and pushes orders, CAD files around, keeping the workload consistent so that you don't end up with a bunch of parts in a row that all need the largest gantry crane at the same time, ensuring that patterns cut in-house are ready on time, making sure that the shop knows what color paint goes on each part, and so on. And that's not even getting to the custom automation software that runs on their PLCs and so on. Sure, in that specific example they only have about 5 out of a couple hundred employees who can write C#, and maybe 10 who can program PLCs, plus some contractors like myself. But your definition of "software company" was effectively "dependent on custom software to operate", and that's been true of every single one of hundreds of automotive/furniture/aerospace/heavy industrial manufacturing plants that I've been in throughout the past 10 years.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    > The steel mill wrote the software, they've got a couple guys writing C# for an ASP.NET app that runs their custom CRM and pushes orders, CAD files around, keeping the workload consistent so that you don't end up with a bunch of parts in a row that all need the largest gantry crane at the same time, ensuring that patterns cut in-house are ready on time, making sure that the shop knows what color paint goes on each part, and so on. And that's not even getting to the custom automation software that runs on their PLCs and so on. Then yes, they're at least partially a software company. (I personally tend to think it's a spectrum, with this steel company at the bottom and ex. Collabera at the top.)

mc32 3y ago

They're selling a service --that service runs on software. That software is their "secret sauce" --but like a capable CEO, the company is not in the business of a great CEO or great software, it's in the business of selling their services that are facilitated by their software --but that software could be internally developed or it could be a white-label software.. kind of like what we see in the malware biz.

mrweasel 3y ago

I do like that definition, but there's also the question of what kind of business would it be? There are companies that have to write their own software, because there isn't commercially available solution that will allow them to scale. Companies like energy trading companies, banks, hedge funds, ISPs and so on. They might buy some solutions, but build others. eBay also doesn't magically become an auction house, just because they decide to buy a platform, rather than develop one. Amazon (the webshop) isn't a software company... but they write a ton of software.

bobthepanda 3y ago
I think that Grindr is pretty solidly a software company. Unlike most other dating apps (Tinder/OKCupid/Match/Bumble/etc.) there is no actual “matching” mechanism. You are just displayed a grid ordered by distance of the X closest people to you, which requires basically a chatbox and an app that can interact with location services.