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Which is a pretty good sign the market is viable. You only need to "be better". And here "better", means eveything on can think of, including NOT spending mon

Which is a pretty good sign the market is viable. You only need to "be better". And here "better", means eveything on can think of, including NOT spending money.

airstrike 2y ago
Sadly that often amounts to being more heavily marketed
- PedroBatista 2y ago
  That has been the game, money was "free" and VCs wanted that unicorn status. But that is also a huge liability. When the asteroid came, only the small mammals survived. Of course I'm talking about one way that could possibly lead to a sucessful business. There are many ways, nothing is garanteed but that also applies to failure.
echelon 2y ago
That means the TAM is fully owned and you have to work that much harder to grab a slice. "Competition is for losers." I suppose if you're really passionate about the space, go ahead, but it's incredibly crowded with dozens of players. Some are even owned by the fintech giants.
- morkalork 2y ago
  There's a whole ecosystem of adjacent services-for-SMBs providers in hosting, domains, online advertising etc. and all the companies are running the "commoditize their products complements" playbook. Anyone trying to enter the market is competing against prices that don't even make sense in isolation.
nraynaud 2y ago
I'm curious, have MBAs made anything better for the masses, ever?
- rchaud 2y ago
  Couldn't you ask the same of most programmers? One way or another, everybody is pushing paper or pixels. Is the adtech developer at Google, FB, Amazon somehow morally superior to a finance bro that takes a job at Carlyle Group?
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Depends on how you interpret what a programer's role and skin in the game is. by the Google/FB/Amazon level, the programmer is just another cog in the machine being told what to make by a director, who reports to/with some MBAs. For smaller companies, I'd say programmers have done their share of good and evil. the AI sector is in real time gray area with some very malicious actions not too long ago to try and be first to market.
toddmorey 2y ago
Better here usually means finding a path to lower cost of acquiring customers. Of course retention helps too but my gut is that Squarespace had reasonably low churn but increasingly elevated customer acquisition costs along with no real enterprise traction.

Which is a pretty good sign the market is viable. You only need to "be better". And here "better", means eveything on can think of, including NOT spending money.

airstrike 2y ago

Sadly that often amounts to being more heavily marketed

PedroBatista 2y ago
That has been the game, money was "free" and VCs wanted that unicorn status. But that is also a huge liability. When the asteroid came, only the small mammals survived. Of course I'm talking about one way that could possibly lead to a sucessful business. There are many ways, nothing is garanteed but that also applies to failure.

echelon 2y ago

That means the TAM is fully owned and you have to work that much harder to grab a slice. "Competition is for losers." I suppose if you're really passionate about the space, go ahead, but it's incredibly crowded with dozens of players. Some are even owned by the fintech giants.

morkalork 2y ago
There's a whole ecosystem of adjacent services-for-SMBs providers in hosting, domains, online advertising etc. and all the companies are running the "commoditize their products complements" playbook. Anyone trying to enter the market is competing against prices that don't even make sense in isolation.

nraynaud 2y ago

I'm curious, have MBAs made anything better for the masses, ever?

rchaud 2y ago
Couldn't you ask the same of most programmers? One way or another, everybody is pushing paper or pixels. Is the adtech developer at Google, FB, Amazon somehow morally superior to a finance bro that takes a job at Carlyle Group?
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Depends on how you interpret what a programer's role and skin in the game is. by the Google/FB/Amazon level, the programmer is just another cog in the machine being told what to make by a director, who reports to/with some MBAs. For smaller companies, I'd say programmers have done their share of good and evil. the AI sector is in real time gray area with some very malicious actions not too long ago to try and be first to market.

toddmorey 2y ago

Better here usually means finding a path to lower cost of acquiring customers. Of course retention helps too but my gut is that Squarespace had reasonably low churn but increasingly elevated customer acquisition costs along with no real enterprise traction.