8 ms·

Four years of running a SaaS in a competitive market

269 points by mtlynch 1y ago

mtlynch 1y ago
This is one of the best articles about running a bootstrapped business that I've ever read. These are all great tips that obviously come from years of hard work and introspection. > When I started, I integrated with standard SaaS product analytics software that most big SaaS products use. They tend to have features like session recording, where you can see exactly where their mouse moves in your product, and funnel tracking for working out how many users make it the whole way through from landing page to using your product. I had the same experience. When I started out, I'd see people talk about complicated views in their analytics with cohort analysis and A/B testing. I'd think those people were succeeding because of their analytics, so I kept trying to build complicated views in Google Analytics or investigate expensive alternative analytics platforms. And I eventually just landed on going even simpler than Google Analytics and not checking it unless I had a specific question I wanted to answer. > People will suggest you should build particular features to improve your product. They'll never use those features. I've experienced this as well. Early on, prospective customers would tell me that they'd definitely buy if I had X feature, and I'd spend a week implementing it, and then the customer would disappear or say they couldn't purchase for some other reason. > When a user signs up for OnlineOrNot, I have an automated email going out asking what brought them to sign up today. I explicitly tell them I read and reply to every email. This is the main source of my insight for building product. I like this a lot. The main competitive advantage indie founders have is a personal touch and direct access to the founder. I think too many indie founders over-automate and over-outsource their customer interactions. It always drives me crazy when I use a product from an indie founder, and I reach out with feedback and the response is just a generic, outsourced customer service rep who says, "Thank you for your feedback. I'll pass it along to the team." > Tracking your MRR is a crap way to measure how you're doing as a business... Find another success metric to figure out if people are actually using your product, and whether it's bringing them value. Things like number of images generated, or number of form completions, for example. I agree, but I'll add the caveat that the other metric should be as proximate to revenue as you can get. Early on, I made the mistake of measuring success based on things like social media followers or SEO rank, even though those things didn't directly translate into revenue. I felt like I was succeeding, but I eventually realized I was pursuing metrics that were too loosely related to revenue.
- sebastiennight 1y ago
  > Early on, prospective customers would tell me that they'd definitely buy if I had X feature, and I'd spend a week implementing it, and then the customer would disappear or say they couldn't purchase for some other reason. The trick I've found for this is to pre-sell. Would you buy, now, knowing that the feature is on the roadmap and will be there soon? If yes, and they vote with their credit card: we build ASAP, to fulfill the promise. If no, it might mean you should not waste time on that feature.
  - mtlynch 1y ago
    >The trick I've found for this is to pre-sell. Would you buy, now, knowing that the feature is on the roadmap and will be there soon? Yes, exactly! That's the same solution I landed on. I'd say, "Great! You can pre-pay for three months of service, and your billing cycle won’t start until that feature is available."
bix6 1y ago
Great read. What success metric are you using? Total requests?
- rozenmd 1y ago
  I've been working on increasing the number of folks using the service, and how many checks each account runs (since I charge per check, I'm motivated to make that experience the best I can)
gcanyon 1y ago
> Never give away "unlimited" anything This is resonating very much with me, but perhaps for a different reason. I'm launching a product within a business that is already successful. I get to give demos to potential customers, and I've been making a point of saying, "And this aspect of the product is unlimited" about many things in the product. On the one hand, related to the above, it's potentially possible that a whale user could cost us, but it's frankly unlikely. But it occurs to me that if I put a limit on certain aspects of the offering, it will likely make it seem worth more -- it's a scarce resource if we treat it as such.
- jspiral 1y ago
  I'm sure you've already thought about this but bear in mind that as a buyer, I don't want to hear "unlimited" for things that have material scaling costs for my service providers, it just sounds unsustainable and likely to change later or be the cause of an issue. On the other hand being free from arbitrary limits is great.
  - benoau 1y ago
    Unlimited usage like that means someone else has to pay for your usage - when the provider's pricing changes or their growth declines your usage may no longer be subsidized by someone else's. You risk becoming dependent on them without knowing the true cost of your usage, which also might not be sustainable for you.
- rozenmd 1y ago
  For additional context, this recommendation also comes from having customers explicitly tell me they can't tell their bosses that 1 status page is the same price as 200, when their existing enterprise contract for a similar service is 6 figures. It was too cheap relative to what they expected to pay.
arewethereyeta 1y ago
TBH, I find it extremely hard to acquire customers. Even with a rock solid product that is NOT, in any way, below the competition. I get the visits but the signups are non existent. Probably because my audience is geared towards programmers and tech oriented businesses. I can do almost any project but marketing kills me.
- usernamed7 1y ago
  LPT: you need sales
  - arewethereyeta 1y ago
    is this sarcasm?
    - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
      Probably referring to having a sales team/person, rather than actual sales. Hard to judge what is wrong/could be better as I couldn't gather what your actual project is. Maybe there are some obvious glaring mistakes on the landing page or something that scares people off? Or it might just be trying to solve a problem that people don't actually have, or communicated poorly what problem it solves. I tend to see these being the most common reasons people don't even sign up.
      - arewethereyeta 1y ago
        Oh, the problem is there trust me. I am very close to both industries and I know for a fact that my service covers big holes. I'm just a sucker at converting.
        soneca 1y ago
        Try to convert people that you know and trust you. You might learn why you are not converting people that do not know you
        1y ago
jurgenkesker 1y ago
Very well rounded and grounded article. Like it very much! Indeed as someone else in the comments said, the personal touch is the best asset you have as indie. So talk with your customers. I run a Android app, next to my day job, and I pride myself on always putting the customer first, and actually fixing their pain points or implementing their suggestions. Empathy is so important, and something a big company will struggle with. I'll checkout the recommended books!
- rahimnathwani 1y ago
  What's the Android app? If it's for a general audience, this is a good opportunity to plug it :)
  - jurgenkesker 1y ago
    Haha, well it's that you asked. Mini Piano Lite, a piano app. Building it for 15 years already. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=umito.android.minipiano https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=umito.android....
    - rareitem 1y ago
      Congrats on the 10mil+ downloads
mjwhansen 1y ago
Congrats on four years, Max! Thanks for mentioning my book, glad to hear it has been helpful!
zug_zug 1y ago
So... what happened? Did 2 hours a week work? Is it profitable now? Is it your only job? If so how many years of 2 hours a week did it take to become a livable income? I love this philosophy of beating out the enshittification and not hypergrowing.
- elijaht 1y ago
  Many of those questions are answerable from the article. It’s 2 hours a day, it has a $500 MRR, they still have a full time job
  - rozenmd 1y ago
    I haven't publicly disclosed my MRR in years, and it's been a long time since I was at $500 - where'd you get that from?
gethly 1y ago
I can relate, though I am not that far. I spent few years working full-time on developing my product, had a business plan, spent money and things like that. Only to finally go online and get zero bites. I was counting on few people to become instant customers, none of that materialised. Even friends left me hanging out in the cold. So that was quite a cold shower and a slap in the face. But in the end, it was my own miscalculation. Also, the mobile UI is important. I did not underestimate it, I just had no time to implement it. It will take weeks or months to do and I pushed it as the next thing, after I am done developing the current feature. In the end, you cannot do it all, certainly not out the gate. I am still kinda on schedule and progressing as planned with things, I was just expecting more interest. I had to adjust and refocus, but in the end, it is about being able to keep going.
- Nashooo 1y ago
  Looking at your site. I think the big disclaimer around the site not being for mobile is more off-putting then then the actual UI. Especially as a landing page it is fine. Maybe put that disclaimer later on ?
  - gethly 1y ago
    There is info in the FAQ section, but of course, people complained that they should be told when they enter the website as they see it looking broken on their phone. As you can see on your own use case, there is no pleasing everybody :D
- soneca 1y ago
  I would blame 90% of your lack of bites at your horrible mobile UI. Mobile UX is important for everyone. For content creators, your target market, is crucial. If you postponed it for any other feature, you underestimated it. For what is worth, I had a great experience using Cursor/AI to make a web app style mobile friendly. It also did some help with the copywriting as well. I would give it a try if I were you. No intention of being harsh, but, from my point of view, your mobile UI is breaking your business. So immediate action seems advisable. Good luck!
openplatypus 1y ago
> Competitors don't really matter This is so spot on. I am also in a competitive space. Couple of my competitor man-child founders blocked me on social media for simply being on their feed. I took it as a blessing. I tuned out from their noise quickly and focus on customers rather than social media attention disorder. Do yourself a solid. Don't watch competitors. Watch customers and the market.
- MarcelOlsz 1y ago
  Haha! I had a YC founder threaten to sue me and tell me that she owned all my IP after seeing a demo :)
  - andrewmcwatters 1y ago
    Nice! I hope you did something like frame the communication. I think that would be great inspiration.
    - MarcelOlsz 1y ago
      I do have the call recorded. I can print out her disgusted face the moment I said "it took me like, two weekends".
- dannyxertify 1y ago
  What a helpful insights bro!
- gwd 1y ago
  One book I read actually put it a different way: Lots of competition is actually a good thing. If you come to a market that's "wide open" with nobody else there, there are two possibilities: 1. You're the first person to ever think of that idea 2. Lots of other people have had the same idea, but failed to make it work. I mean, #1 is possible -- somebody has got to be first -- but #2 is much more likely. By contrast, if you're in a space with lots of competitors, that demonstrates that the business idea is sustainable: if the market can support N sustainable companies, is can probably sustain N+1, particularly if you bring something new to the table.
8bite 1y ago
> Competitors don't really matter [...] Sure, there are more "table-stakes" features that customers need before they'll even consider using you, but the real competitor is a lack of awareness of your product, more than anything. I like this quote a lot. I think it addresses a common execution paralysis where someone identifies a solution to a rich problem space but decides against building it due to there being an obvious competitor.
fullstackchris 1y ago
> you'll have customers that demand you rewrite your app just because they gave you $9 I've also seen this first hand. Customer emails me 3 times within 3 days and one of those emails included him stating that "time is precious". He subscribed on the $7 / month tier... and then cancelled the next day anyway because he didnt even read what the product did... sigh
wiradikusuma 1y ago
I almost skipped reading the article, thinking it was just another bragging/survivorship bias story. It wasn't. Thanks for sharing. I want to add another anecdote: I built an app for creating certificates[1]. It was originally a case study for a book I'm writing, so I didn't think much of "target users". But then I decided to make it a real/standalone product. I was struggling to find real users. Then, just by sheer coincidence, a friend shared his struggle with existing ticket sales platforms. I thought, "Hey, with what I've built so far, it's just like adding another 10% of work" (It wasn't). So I "expanded" the app to become a white-label ticket sales platform[2]. People started using it, and they also use the certificate generation feature ("Your app can create certs for attending events? Sweet!"). I don't know how to distill this into advice, but you get the idea. It's like a South Park meme: Step #1: Listen to users, Step #2: ???, Step #3: Profit! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43483919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43483919 [2] https://pentas.id/ https://pentas.id/
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  What does create a cert for an event mean?
  - wiradikusuma 1y ago
    Some associations require their members to attend e.g workshops to collect credits. There's a minimum annual credits you need to collect otherwise you lose membership.
    - rareitem 1y ago
      So it’s a proof you attended an event?
      - MrPowerGamerBR 1y ago
        If it is how I think it is, then yes, it is a proof that you attended the event. I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but in some countries (example: Brazil) some courses (like Computer Science) require you to have "additional hours", where these hours can be courses, lectures, etc related to the course. To prove to the university that you did these courses, you need a certificate "proving" that you participated. Most of the time they are a PDF file with the name of the event, the date and your name in it.
sgarland 1y ago
> Ship first, worry about scale later This is repeated constantly, but I fear that it is internalized as “write shitty code and throw money at it later.” If you have taken the time to learn your language well, you can avoid a lot of really bad decisions that don’t cost you additional time. Similarly, on the infra side of things (where this advice is usually doled out), maybe take the time to have a modicum of understanding about the tools you’re building on. If you’re using a DBaaS, your vendor almost certainly has monitoring built-in, often for free, or a nominal cost. USE IT, and learn what it is you’re looking at. “The DB is slow” could be anything from excessive row locks due to improperly-held transactions to actually hitting an underlying resource limit – and for the latter, 9/10 it’s a symptom of something that’s misconfigured, or not understanding your RDBMS’ operation. For example, do you have a write-heavy table with a UUIDv4 PK, lots of columns that are heavily indexed, and some medium-large JSON blobs in it? Congratulations, you’ve created Postgres’ (and MySQL, but for different reasons) worst nightmare. Every write is amplified by the indexes, and even if you’re doing an UPDATE and are only hitting one of the indexed columns, all of them will be rewritten. The UUIDv4 PK means your WAL traffic is going to skyrocket from all the full page writes, and if your JSON blobs are big enough to be unwieldy, but not big enough to have be TOASTed, that’s another huge amplification to writes. All of this can easily result in hitting IOPS limits, network bandwidth limits, or CPU saturation from additional queries piling up while this one is dealt with, and all of it could be easily avoided by having a basic understanding of your tooling.
- chrisweekly 1y ago
  This is an awesome comment. As someone who doesn't spend much time in the DB tier, I especially appreciate the real-world details in your final paragraph. Do you have a blog where you write about this stuff, and/or have any particular recommendations for learning or reference materials? I'm sure there's no substitute for experience when it comes to developing an intuition for good db design, but I'd be grateful for your expert advice if you have more to share. TIA
  - sgarland 1y ago
    I don’t generally blog about it, but I may at some point. For specific discussions on what I wrote about, I recommend (other than reading Postgres’ docs, of course) this [0] and this [1], and anything else on those sites. If you like technical podcasts, postgres.fm [2] is pretty good. [0]: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/hot-updates-in-postgresql-for-better-performance/ https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/hot-updates-in-postgr... [1]: https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/impact-full-page-writes?lang=en https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/impact-full-page-writes?la... [2]: https://postgres.fm/ https://postgres.fm/
ezodude 1y ago
Nice write up. Love: Ask people how they found you. Docs are the product. Be ruthlessly iterative.
I_Write_It 1y ago
Nice read, I liked it. I'm wondering, what were your favorite channels through which people found you?

269 points by mtlynch 1y ago

This is one of the best articles about running a bootstrapped business that I've ever read. These are all great tips that obviously come from years of hard work and introspection. > When I started, I integrated with standard SaaS product analytics software that most big SaaS products use. They tend to have features like session recording, where you can see exactly where their mouse moves in your product, and funnel tracking for working out how many users make it the whole way through from landing page to using your product. I had the same experience. When I started out, I'd see people talk about complicated views in their analytics with cohort analysis and A/B testing. I'd think those people were succeeding because of their analytics, so I kept trying to build complicated views in Google Analytics or investigate expensive alternative analytics platforms. And I eventually just landed on going even simpler than Google Analytics and not checking it unless I had a specific question I wanted to answer. > People will suggest you should build particular features to improve your product. They'll never use those features. I've experienced this as well. Early on, prospective customers would tell me that they'd definitely buy if I had X feature, and I'd spend a week implementing it, and then the customer would disappear or say they couldn't purchase for some other reason. > When a user signs up for OnlineOrNot, I have an automated email going out asking what brought them to sign up today. I explicitly tell them I read and reply to every email. This is the main source of my insight for building product. I like this a lot. The main competitive advantage indie founders have is a personal touch and direct access to the founder. I think too many indie founders over-automate and over-outsource their customer interactions. It always drives me crazy when I use a product from an indie founder, and I reach out with feedback and the response is just a generic, outsourced customer service rep who says, "Thank you for your feedback. I'll pass it along to the team." > Tracking your MRR is a crap way to measure how you're doing as a business... Find another success metric to figure out if people are actually using your product, and whether it's bringing them value. Things like number of images generated, or number of form completions, for example. I agree, but I'll add the caveat that the other metric should be as proximate to revenue as you can get. Early on, I made the mistake of measuring success based on things like social media followers or SEO rank, even though those things didn't directly translate into revenue. I felt like I was succeeding, but I eventually realized I was pursuing metrics that were too loosely related to revenue.

sebastiennight 1y ago
> Early on, prospective customers would tell me that they'd definitely buy if I had X feature, and I'd spend a week implementing it, and then the customer would disappear or say they couldn't purchase for some other reason. The trick I've found for this is to pre-sell. Would you buy, now, knowing that the feature is on the roadmap and will be there soon? If yes, and they vote with their credit card: we build ASAP, to fulfill the promise. If no, it might mean you should not waste time on that feature.
- mtlynch 1y ago
  >The trick I've found for this is to pre-sell. Would you buy, now, knowing that the feature is on the roadmap and will be there soon? Yes, exactly! That's the same solution I landed on. I'd say, "Great! You can pre-pay for three months of service, and your billing cycle won’t start until that feature is available."

bix6 1y ago

Great read. What success metric are you using? Total requests?

rozenmd 1y ago
I've been working on increasing the number of folks using the service, and how many checks each account runs (since I charge per check, I'm motivated to make that experience the best I can)

gcanyon 1y ago

> Never give away "unlimited" anything This is resonating very much with me, but perhaps for a different reason. I'm launching a product within a business that is already successful. I get to give demos to potential customers, and I've been making a point of saying, "And this aspect of the product is unlimited" about many things in the product. On the one hand, related to the above, it's potentially possible that a whale user could cost us, but it's frankly unlikely. But it occurs to me that if I put a limit on certain aspects of the offering, it will likely make it seem worth more -- it's a scarce resource if we treat it as such.

jspiral 1y ago
I'm sure you've already thought about this but bear in mind that as a buyer, I don't want to hear "unlimited" for things that have material scaling costs for my service providers, it just sounds unsustainable and likely to change later or be the cause of an issue. On the other hand being free from arbitrary limits is great.
- benoau 1y ago
  Unlimited usage like that means someone else has to pay for your usage - when the provider's pricing changes or their growth declines your usage may no longer be subsidized by someone else's. You risk becoming dependent on them without knowing the true cost of your usage, which also might not be sustainable for you.
rozenmd 1y ago
For additional context, this recommendation also comes from having customers explicitly tell me they can't tell their bosses that 1 status page is the same price as 200, when their existing enterprise contract for a similar service is 6 figures. It was too cheap relative to what they expected to pay.

arewethereyeta 1y ago

TBH, I find it extremely hard to acquire customers. Even with a rock solid product that is NOT, in any way, below the competition. I get the visits but the signups are non existent. Probably because my audience is geared towards programmers and tech oriented businesses. I can do almost any project but marketing kills me.

usernamed7 1y ago
LPT: you need sales
- arewethereyeta 1y ago
  is this sarcasm?
  - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
    Probably referring to having a sales team/person, rather than actual sales. Hard to judge what is wrong/could be better as I couldn't gather what your actual project is. Maybe there are some obvious glaring mistakes on the landing page or something that scares people off? Or it might just be trying to solve a problem that people don't actually have, or communicated poorly what problem it solves. I tend to see these being the most common reasons people don't even sign up.
    - arewethereyeta 1y ago
      Oh, the problem is there trust me. I am very close to both industries and I know for a fact that my service covers big holes. I'm just a sucker at converting.
      - soneca 1y ago
        Try to convert people that you know and trust you. You might learn why you are not converting people that do not know you
      - 1y ago

jurgenkesker 1y ago

Very well rounded and grounded article. Like it very much! Indeed as someone else in the comments said, the personal touch is the best asset you have as indie. So talk with your customers. I run a Android app, next to my day job, and I pride myself on always putting the customer first, and actually fixing their pain points or implementing their suggestions. Empathy is so important, and something a big company will struggle with. I'll checkout the recommended books!

rahimnathwani 1y ago
What's the Android app? If it's for a general audience, this is a good opportunity to plug it :)
- jurgenkesker 1y ago
  Haha, well it's that you asked. Mini Piano Lite, a piano app. Building it for 15 years already. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=umito.android.minipiano https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=umito.android....
  - rareitem 1y ago
    Congrats on the 10mil+ downloads

mjwhansen 1y ago

Congrats on four years, Max! Thanks for mentioning my book, glad to hear it has been helpful!

zug_zug 1y ago

So... what happened? Did 2 hours a week work? Is it profitable now? Is it your only job? If so how many years of 2 hours a week did it take to become a livable income? I love this philosophy of beating out the enshittification and not hypergrowing.

elijaht 1y ago
Many of those questions are answerable from the article. It’s 2 hours a day, it has a $500 MRR, they still have a full time job
- rozenmd 1y ago
  I haven't publicly disclosed my MRR in years, and it's been a long time since I was at $500 - where'd you get that from?

gethly 1y ago

I can relate, though I am not that far. I spent few years working full-time on developing my product, had a business plan, spent money and things like that. Only to finally go online and get zero bites. I was counting on few people to become instant customers, none of that materialised. Even friends left me hanging out in the cold. So that was quite a cold shower and a slap in the face. But in the end, it was my own miscalculation. Also, the mobile UI is important. I did not underestimate it, I just had no time to implement it. It will take weeks or months to do and I pushed it as the next thing, after I am done developing the current feature. In the end, you cannot do it all, certainly not out the gate. I am still kinda on schedule and progressing as planned with things, I was just expecting more interest. I had to adjust and refocus, but in the end, it is about being able to keep going.

Nashooo 1y ago
Looking at your site. I think the big disclaimer around the site not being for mobile is more off-putting then then the actual UI. Especially as a landing page it is fine. Maybe put that disclaimer later on ?
- gethly 1y ago
  There is info in the FAQ section, but of course, people complained that they should be told when they enter the website as they see it looking broken on their phone. As you can see on your own use case, there is no pleasing everybody :D
soneca 1y ago
I would blame 90% of your lack of bites at your horrible mobile UI. Mobile UX is important for everyone. For content creators, your target market, is crucial. If you postponed it for any other feature, you underestimated it. For what is worth, I had a great experience using Cursor/AI to make a web app style mobile friendly. It also did some help with the copywriting as well. I would give it a try if I were you. No intention of being harsh, but, from my point of view, your mobile UI is breaking your business. So immediate action seems advisable. Good luck!

openplatypus 1y ago

> Competitors don't really matter This is so spot on. I am also in a competitive space. Couple of my competitor man-child founders blocked me on social media for simply being on their feed. I took it as a blessing. I tuned out from their noise quickly and focus on customers rather than social media attention disorder. Do yourself a solid. Don't watch competitors. Watch customers and the market.

MarcelOlsz 1y ago
Haha! I had a YC founder threaten to sue me and tell me that she owned all my IP after seeing a demo :)
- andrewmcwatters 1y ago
  Nice! I hope you did something like frame the communication. I think that would be great inspiration.
  - MarcelOlsz 1y ago
    I do have the call recorded. I can print out her disgusted face the moment I said "it took me like, two weekends".
dannyxertify 1y ago
What a helpful insights bro!
gwd 1y ago
One book I read actually put it a different way: Lots of competition is actually a good thing. If you come to a market that's "wide open" with nobody else there, there are two possibilities: 1. You're the first person to ever think of that idea 2. Lots of other people have had the same idea, but failed to make it work. I mean, #1 is possible -- somebody has got to be first -- but #2 is much more likely. By contrast, if you're in a space with lots of competitors, that demonstrates that the business idea is sustainable: if the market can support N sustainable companies, is can probably sustain N+1, particularly if you bring something new to the table.

8bite 1y ago

> Competitors don't really matter [...] Sure, there are more "table-stakes" features that customers need before they'll even consider using you, but the real competitor is a lack of awareness of your product, more than anything. I like this quote a lot. I think it addresses a common execution paralysis where someone identifies a solution to a rich problem space but decides against building it due to there being an obvious competitor.

fullstackchris 1y ago

> you'll have customers that demand you rewrite your app just because they gave you $9 I've also seen this first hand. Customer emails me 3 times within 3 days and one of those emails included him stating that "time is precious". He subscribed on the $7 / month tier... and then cancelled the next day anyway because he didnt even read what the product did... sigh

wiradikusuma 1y ago

I almost skipped reading the article, thinking it was just another bragging/survivorship bias story. It wasn't. Thanks for sharing. I want to add another anecdote: I built an app for creating certificates[1]. It was originally a case study for a book I'm writing, so I didn't think much of "target users". But then I decided to make it a real/standalone product. I was struggling to find real users. Then, just by sheer coincidence, a friend shared his struggle with existing ticket sales platforms. I thought, "Hey, with what I've built so far, it's just like adding another 10% of work" (It wasn't). So I "expanded" the app to become a white-label ticket sales platform[2]. People started using it, and they also use the certificate generation feature ("Your app can create certs for attending events? Sweet!"). I don't know how to distill this into advice, but you get the idea. It's like a South Park meme: Step #1: Listen to users, Step #2: ???, Step #3: Profit! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43483919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43483919 [2] https://pentas.id/ https://pentas.id/

mixmastamyk 1y ago
What does create a cert for an event mean?
- wiradikusuma 1y ago
  Some associations require their members to attend e.g workshops to collect credits. There's a minimum annual credits you need to collect otherwise you lose membership.
  - rareitem 1y ago
    So it’s a proof you attended an event?
    - MrPowerGamerBR 1y ago
      If it is how I think it is, then yes, it is a proof that you attended the event. I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but in some countries (example: Brazil) some courses (like Computer Science) require you to have "additional hours", where these hours can be courses, lectures, etc related to the course. To prove to the university that you did these courses, you need a certificate "proving" that you participated. Most of the time they are a PDF file with the name of the event, the date and your name in it.

sgarland 1y ago

> Ship first, worry about scale later This is repeated constantly, but I fear that it is internalized as “write shitty code and throw money at it later.” If you have taken the time to learn your language well, you can avoid a lot of really bad decisions that don’t cost you additional time. Similarly, on the infra side of things (where this advice is usually doled out), maybe take the time to have a modicum of understanding about the tools you’re building on. If you’re using a DBaaS, your vendor almost certainly has monitoring built-in, often for free, or a nominal cost. USE IT, and learn what it is you’re looking at. “The DB is slow” could be anything from excessive row locks due to improperly-held transactions to actually hitting an underlying resource limit – and for the latter, 9/10 it’s a symptom of something that’s misconfigured, or not understanding your RDBMS’ operation. For example, do you have a write-heavy table with a UUIDv4 PK, lots of columns that are heavily indexed, and some medium-large JSON blobs in it? Congratulations, you’ve created Postgres’ (and MySQL, but for different reasons) worst nightmare. Every write is amplified by the indexes, and even if you’re doing an UPDATE and are only hitting one of the indexed columns, all of them will be rewritten. The UUIDv4 PK means your WAL traffic is going to skyrocket from all the full page writes, and if your JSON blobs are big enough to be unwieldy, but not big enough to have be TOASTed, that’s another huge amplification to writes. All of this can easily result in hitting IOPS limits, network bandwidth limits, or CPU saturation from additional queries piling up while this one is dealt with, and all of it could be easily avoided by having a basic understanding of your tooling.

chrisweekly 1y ago
This is an awesome comment. As someone who doesn't spend much time in the DB tier, I especially appreciate the real-world details in your final paragraph. Do you have a blog where you write about this stuff, and/or have any particular recommendations for learning or reference materials? I'm sure there's no substitute for experience when it comes to developing an intuition for good db design, but I'd be grateful for your expert advice if you have more to share. TIA
- sgarland 1y ago
  I don’t generally blog about it, but I may at some point. For specific discussions on what I wrote about, I recommend (other than reading Postgres’ docs, of course) this [0] and this [1], and anything else on those sites. If you like technical podcasts, postgres.fm [2] is pretty good. [0]: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/hot-updates-in-postgresql-for-better-performance/ https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/hot-updates-in-postgr... [1]: https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/impact-full-page-writes?lang=en https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/impact-full-page-writes?la... [2]: https://postgres.fm/ https://postgres.fm/

ezodude 1y ago

Nice write up. Love: Ask people how they found you. Docs are the product. Be ruthlessly iterative.

I_Write_It 1y ago

Nice read, I liked it. I'm wondering, what were your favorite channels through which people found you?