7 ms·
You’re a little company, now act like one (2009)
- ensignavenger 1y agoPersonally, I like hyphens, a lot. I don't understand the trend of removing them. But whatever.
- moron4hire 1y agoMissed opportunity to say that you're a hyphen-enjoyer.
- OJFord 1y agoUnderstanding-absent of the removing-them trend.
- ensignavenger 1y agoYou know, I re-read my comment before submitting it, and one thing I thout was- I'm not using enough hyphens in this comment! But alas I submitted it anyway.
- cut3 1y agoI do as well which is why im trying something new in a new project. Hard to start but im getting there
- layer8 1y agoMe too, as they improve readability when used correctly. They are there for a reason. In the quote in the article, the hyphens in “risk-analysis” and “decision-support” are incorrect, however. Know your hyphens!
- f30e3dfed1c9 1y agoI've been complaining that nobody knows how to use hyphens anymore for ten or fifteen years. I used to send a friend examples from pretty big, well-known publications like Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and others. I've given up hope and accepted that this is just the way things are now.
- pesfandiar 1y agoPerhaps it looks less AI generated without perfect punctuation.
- dmje 1y agoGreat, that.
- dmje 1y ago[flagged]
- kawsper 1y agoI didn't downvote you, but here's my guess: You're not contributing much to the discussion with a comment like that, if you liked it, you could just have upvoted the submission, no need to put a comment.
- tomhow 1y agoI don’t have a reference now (will try to find it tomorrow) but it’s actually been part of the HN ethos from the early days that a brief, simple compliment is fine here. I think maybe the flags were because it seemed as though it may have been sarcasm, but I’ve turned the flags off now.
- dmje 1y agoThanks Tom, I'll take it if it didn't add anything. Sarcasm it wasn't, I thought it was a great piece, just didn't have time at the time to add anything more!
- NaOH 1y agopg, from 2009: Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks." What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
- tomhow 1y agoGreat, thanks!
- jmkni 1y agoReminded me of the Paul Graham essay "Do Things that Don't Scale" - https://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html https://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html
- landgenoot 1y agoBeing small is a unique selling point. Lately, I was talking to a small business owner who runs his business over Whatsapp. He was interested in creating some kind of customer portal. I advised him against it. No digital concept is going to beat that customer experience.
- mnahkies 1y agoI've been a bit of a skeptic around that, but recently had an amazing experience with a small motorcycle rental company where we arranged everything over Whatsapp. They had a basic website that outlined their general terms and bikes on offer etc, but then actually arranging the booking dropped into WhatsApp which allowed me to outline my specific needs and get a useful steer. Throughout the trip I was able to continue messaging as things came up and it felt more like I was borrowing a bike from a mate than renting one from a business.
- SoftTalker 1y agoAt that point I would prefer a phone call. And I don't like unnecessasry phone calls, but protracted discussions over chat is awful.
- collingreen 1y agoI see where you're coming from but a text record you can go back and review is very valuable to me in these situations as well.
- dmd 1y agoCounterpoint: If I had to talk on the phone with the company instead of using text, I would choose a different company.
- lostlogin 1y agoYou prefer the AI slop that pours out?
- 1y ago
- danenania 1y agoGreat post. Another benefit of this approach is it’s simply much easier. If you’re trying to act like some smooth corporate salesperson or be overly formal or whatever and that’s not really you, interacting with customers and prospects and… everyone… will feel tiring and painful. But if you drop the pretense and just act like yourself? Minimal extra energy required. As a bonus, it opens you up to make real connections with people who you click with as you run your business. So it works, it’s easier, and it’s more fun. And has basically no downsides. But still something that most founders seem to have to learn the hard way for some reason.
- ednite 1y agoI agree with your comment and couldn’t agree more with this article. It’s solid advice for anyone just starting out with a product or service. Speaking authentically and admitting you don’t have all the answers is genuine, not weak. That kind of honesty has always worked best for me. People respond better to real conversations, concrete examples, and the feeling that you’re building with them, not just selling at them. In my experience, working with smaller businesses has opened more doors than chasing big corporate clients. Smaller companies tend to be more curious, open to new ideas, and quick to take action. That said, “dress to impress” can work, but in my experience, it’s often a short-lived win. It grabs attention, but rarely builds lasting trust or real traction. Not a playbook I buy into. For example, I recently sat through a 3-hour pitch from a so-called “AI consultant.” The presentation was packed with buzzwords, vague promises, and a sleek slide deck. Every time someone asked how AI would actually solve a specific problem, the answer was basically: “AI will handle that,” followed by name-dropping a popular AI company like it was the solution to everything. It was clear the consultant didn’t fully understand the tech, but the leadership team still ate it up. This article was a great reminder that trying to sound big and impressive might get attention early on, but it often backfires later. Being honest and straightforward has always been my real strength, even if it keeps me small.
- treetalker 1y agoTaleb has written about dressing to impress and looking the part: https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like-surgeons-23b0e2cf6d52 https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like-surg...
- 3dsnano 1y agovulnerability can be a superpower if leveraged correctly… i think it leads towards more authentic conversations and weeds out the folks who don’t “get it” yet
- locallost 1y agoHeh, I'm kind of in the same or similar boat. I changed jobs specifically last year to join a smaller company, thinking we'll get a lot done without a lot of fuss and stakeholders, which was bothering me in my previous job -- it was impossible to get something going. But it turned out my new small team spends a lot of time trying to do the work of 50 people with 1/10th the resources, essentially cosplaying a large brand. I said we're not X, we're Y, and let's be that because it has its advantages, but people are busy with case studies, UX, patterns etc. The funniest part is they are laser focused on a competitor and a lot of the talk ends up being "do it like competitor X does". So yeah, you're a little company, act like one.
- ryandrake 1y agoI worked at a medium sized company attacking a market dominated by one or two gigantic FAANGs and it was really sad how focused our leadership was on copying them feature-for-feature and watching them closely to do whatever they were doing. Surprisingly, they also had far more process and red tape in place slowing down routine things than I encountered in BigTech. They were always agonizing over easy product decisions, and second guessing themselves and waiting to see what FAANG does when they should have been taking risks and differentiating themselves. Like, come on, guys, use our few advantages over them and do something great and unexpected! Nope, it was always stuff like: we need to do another grand redesign because we want to change our brand look and feel again.
- curtisszmania 1y ago[dead]
- _1tem 1y agoThere are exceptions. For example in fintech or anything in finance that requires trust, you want to seem bigger than you are. In contrast to OP, I’ve lost customers in the early days when they found out I was a solo founder. It’s more “normal” to share your financial data with huge companies who don’t care about you, but it’s scary to give it to “some guy”.
- jmkni 1y agoThis is a good point. I was involved in one startup in particular where "trust" was important. They didn't understand why I was pushing to build a native Android/iOS app and have it on the app store, as opposed to a PWA. It's because, like it or not, having an app on the app store makes you look legitimate, it makes you look like a real company. It was a pain in the ass, a PWA would have been way easier, but I still maintain it was the right call.
- joseda-hg 1y agoI mean, if you only wanted it for credibility, couldn't you just wrap the PWA and publish it to the playstore? Not saying it wasn't right to actually build the app, but you could have sidestepped the issue if that wasn't the priority
- neilv 1y agoI would've liked to hand articles like this to someone, when I was making related arguments about not pretending to be a big company. One seed startup (where I had our prestigious flagship enterprise customer running with thus-far-perfect uptime in critical production, but we needed a second customer before we could raise), and which was down to a few people, I tried to convince a biz person to let me pitch in on sales. (Seeing as how, although I dislike doing sales, it was what most needed help right then, or there wouldn't be a business, and I could also use product insight into what actually resonates with customers. And I've done a bit of sales before, and my dad was an engineer-by-training salesperson (osmosis!). My mindset is I don't try to pretend I'm not a nerd. I instead convey that I'm genuinely aligned with their success, I'll listen and understand, and I'll deliver successful solutions like competitors can't.) Nope, we need a glossy Web site including video. Biz person needs to reformat our security assurances document into a brochure before it can be handed over to prospect's IT for vetting. And biz person needs to introduce me on a customer call as "one of our software engineers" (when I was the only one, working the usual technical cofounder miracles). :) Like all startups, there were many mistakes, but I think one of the mistakes that time was thinking we had to fake it till we make it, when that undermined our strengths. (Well, slick artifice fit some of our sales prospects, but we didn't land those anyway.) In hindsight, I think we should've focused on presenting ourselves as an exceptionally skilled and credible team that is 100%+ committed to the pilot project being a success for that particular customer (and for our champions there). Competitors' salespeople couldn't deliver that, nor fake it very credibly, and there wasn't yet an obvious enterprise CYA alternative (nobody ever got fired for buying IBM).
- ivape 1y agoWhat are the incentives for sales for allowing you to do that? What incentives do people in agile or product development or management have to let developers partake? There's nothing to gain and everything to lose. See, I would love to live in Disneyworld too. The only lesson to be learned from all of this is when you build your next company, don't allow these people in. I'll keep beating that drum to eternity, because I saw first-hand how the work of tech people is leeched off by so many.
- 1y ago
- w10-1 1y agoThis 2009 advice to be accessible when small is highly relevant for the many outside work who haven’t managed to catch the AI wave, or for those AI companies targeting micro-niche. But I suspect that early adopters are different for AI companies than technology infrastructure: AI early adopters want the benefit, but have no insight into how to push things forward. So if there is backflow of information from your customers, exactly what information do you need to improve?
- eszed 1y agoMy company is medium size, at least within our industry, and I actively look for little companies. Every complex platform has bugs and un-considered edge-cases and poorly thought out engineering choices. Large companies don't fix them; small companies do. (That's overstated, obviously, but not wildly so.) I'm the sort of client that wants to help you improve your product, and can - if you'll let me. When I'm allowed to talk directly to engineers (possible at small companies, vanishingly rare at large ones), we both end up better off. I've seen the whole cycle, though, and it gets frustrating. Small and ambitious company works closely with me to build something really great; raises money / goes public / gets acquired; early employees cash out (good for them!) or get outsourced (disastrous choice); development stalls and features break. Now I'm back looking for a new small company to work with again. It's dispiriting, and so, so wasteful.
- fuzzzerd 1y agoSounds like you are had some experience that might leave you with some unique insights into markets underserved by small players that can deliver continuous improvements.
- isaachinman 1y agoWhat services do you offer, exactly?
- latchkey 1y agoSmall companies are hungry.
- specialist 1y agoHave you ever negotiated having the source code (etc) put into escrow, should the vendor abandon the product? Working in healthcare (electronic medical records), that was a standard line item for our customers. Good thing too; after acquisition, our grandparent company's execs quickly found a new leprechaun to chase after, and our product died on the vine. Despite first mover advantage, great revenue, and pipeline of prospects, our tiny effort was less than a round off error to the grandparent (Quest Diagnostics).
- lelanthran 1y ago
- latchkey 1y agoPrevious discussions: You’re a little company, now act like one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1395164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1395164 (June 1, 2010 — 153 points, 14 comments) You're a little company, now act like one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795976 (August 31, 2009 — 240 points, 53 comments)
- joshstrange 1y agoI think this advice is very dependent on the situation. There are many cases where you will not even get your foot in the door if you advertise the true team/company size. At least for myself, I've only experienced shock/surprise when people find out the size of my company (1), this normally happens either never or late/after the sale. I'm sure the software-buying process in an org is always a challenge, but my product replaces a in-person-only/physical-only workflow so there are, understandably, some people who are nervous/apprehensive about the change to software. Injecting any extra uncertainty based on company size/sales into process seems unwise. I _never_ lie but I also don't start the sales pitch with "Hi, I'm a 1-person company with X previous sales".