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There are many counterexamples to this point. Temporal, Slack, Nango, Trello, GitHub, Jira, Intercom, AWS, basically every Terminal SaaS out there, Mailchimp, A

by lijok 3y ago

There are many counterexamples to this point. Temporal, Slack, Nango, Trello, GitHub, Jira, Intercom, AWS, basically every Terminal SaaS out there, Mailchimp, Asana, Zapier, Shopify, Hubspot, etc Does anyone know how the failure rate of startups based on internal tools, stacks up against the failure rate of startups at large?

kmdupree 3y ago
OP here with a friendly reminder that we should also look at the denominator when evaluating how useful the "internal tools make good startups" heuristic is. Also note that I'm not claiming they are never good ideas, so pointing out instances where they've panned out isn't very interesting. It'd be more interesting if you could show that the hit rate among these types of startups is better than I'm suggesting (for that we need to consider the denominator).
- lijok 3y ago
  Apologies, I was actually going to finish my comment with “does anyone know how the fail rate of such startups stacks against the fail rate of startups at large?” But I got carried away with trying to recall all the companies that started out as internal tools, that I forgot
- tobr 3y ago
  Could you give an example where “<category description> often make bad startup ideas” would be false?
  - yowlingcat 3y ago
    "Products where as a market representative buying persona I've tried to purchase a good product and found nothing good"
- NomDePlum 3y ago
  Was Twitter not an internal tool? Not sure hit rate is anywhere close to the statistic to measure startups by either. Successful ones are called Unicorns for a reason.
hiddencost 3y ago
Tailscale
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MajimasEyepatch 3y ago
AWS was never really an internal tool. The idea that Amazon had all this extra capacity and decided to open it up is a myth. AWS was always a deliberate strategy. Now, you could argue that it arose out of the expertise they acquired in building API-first infrastructure, but I think that’s different than a lot of these examples.
- bsdpufferfish 3y ago
  I think the software for managing servers was internal, not the massive build out of hardware.
- lijok 3y ago
  SQS, S3 and EC2 were all internal systems that they decided to start offering publicly at some point. That’s the widely understood history. I’d love to read anything contrary to that, sounds very interesting
  - fcsp 3y ago
    Do you have sources that confirm that this was the case? Otherwise, none of the counter proof that you demanded would be needed, saving everybody some research time
    - lijok 3y ago
      Woah, let me be clear, I am not demanding anything, nor are we looking for “counter proofs”, this is a simple discussion on some interesting AWS history and potentially myths surrounding it GP and myself are in agreement that the widely understood history is as I laid it out (given they said it was a myth). Happy to link to some info on the history of AWS, but its not the point of this thread I think
    - maximinus_thrax 3y ago
      https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-history-of-the-genesis-of-aws/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-history-... It's also on the Wikipedia page, with references to the appropriate articles/talks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Amazon_Web_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Amazon_Web_Service... This is not some secret or hidden piece of knowledge requiring extensive research..
akavi 3y ago
Pagerduty was explicitly modeled after an internal tool at Amazon
krallja 3y ago
Trello was built, from its inception, to make a marketing splash at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011. It didn’t start as an internal tool. Sure, we dogfooded (…dogfed?) it, but that was Fog Creek’s culture for every product we launched. FogBugz DID start as an internal tool, which was more profitable than Trello (pre-Atlassian), but it’s going to turn 25 this year. Don’t make business decisions based on software that could register as an antique, if it were a car.
zumu 3y ago
> Temporal They are well funded, but do they actually make money? Seems like the odd one out in your list.

by lijok 3y ago

kmdupree 3y ago

OP here with a friendly reminder that we should also look at the denominator when evaluating how useful the "internal tools make good startups" heuristic is. Also note that I'm not claiming they are never good ideas, so pointing out instances where they've panned out isn't very interesting. It'd be more interesting if you could show that the hit rate among these types of startups is better than I'm suggesting (for that we need to consider the denominator).

lijok 3y ago
Apologies, I was actually going to finish my comment with “does anyone know how the fail rate of such startups stacks against the fail rate of startups at large?” But I got carried away with trying to recall all the companies that started out as internal tools, that I forgot
tobr 3y ago
Could you give an example where “<category description> often make bad startup ideas” would be false?
- yowlingcat 3y ago
  "Products where as a market representative buying persona I've tried to purchase a good product and found nothing good"
NomDePlum 3y ago
Was Twitter not an internal tool? Not sure hit rate is anywhere close to the statistic to measure startups by either. Successful ones are called Unicorns for a reason.

hiddencost 3y ago

Tailscale

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

MajimasEyepatch 3y ago

AWS was never really an internal tool. The idea that Amazon had all this extra capacity and decided to open it up is a myth. AWS was always a deliberate strategy. Now, you could argue that it arose out of the expertise they acquired in building API-first infrastructure, but I think that’s different than a lot of these examples.

bsdpufferfish 3y ago
I think the software for managing servers was internal, not the massive build out of hardware.
lijok 3y ago
SQS, S3 and EC2 were all internal systems that they decided to start offering publicly at some point. That’s the widely understood history. I’d love to read anything contrary to that, sounds very interesting
- fcsp 3y ago
  Do you have sources that confirm that this was the case? Otherwise, none of the counter proof that you demanded would be needed, saving everybody some research time
  - lijok 3y ago
    Woah, let me be clear, I am not demanding anything, nor are we looking for “counter proofs”, this is a simple discussion on some interesting AWS history and potentially myths surrounding it GP and myself are in agreement that the widely understood history is as I laid it out (given they said it was a myth). Happy to link to some info on the history of AWS, but its not the point of this thread I think
  - maximinus_thrax 3y ago
    https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-history-of-the-genesis-of-aws/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-history-... It's also on the Wikipedia page, with references to the appropriate articles/talks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Amazon_Web_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Amazon_Web_Service... This is not some secret or hidden piece of knowledge requiring extensive research..

akavi 3y ago

Pagerduty was explicitly modeled after an internal tool at Amazon

krallja 3y ago

Trello was built, from its inception, to make a marketing splash at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011. It didn’t start as an internal tool. Sure, we dogfooded (…dogfed?) it, but that was Fog Creek’s culture for every product we launched. FogBugz DID start as an internal tool, which was more profitable than Trello (pre-Atlassian), but it’s going to turn 25 this year. Don’t make business decisions based on software that could register as an antique, if it were a car.

zumu 3y ago

> Temporal They are well funded, but do they actually make money? Seems like the odd one out in your list.