5 ms·

My apologies for sounding bitter. You stated you don't care what I think. Just wanted to say though that i've admired you and your company for a long time. I p

by outlore 11mo ago

My apologies for sounding bitter. You stated you don't care what I think. Just wanted to say though that i've admired you and your company for a long time. I participated in user interviews so I could score one of your famous hats. I submitted copious feedback. I was an evangelist for branching workflows and recommended several colleagues to your product. I watched all the talks, interviews and devrel videos. I'm glad you are doing better now as a company, but as naive as it may be, I guess I would love to see an example of a company that consistently put people over profits, that is all

samlambert 11mo ago
[flagged]
- prussia 11mo ago
  > if you liked the company or product so much why would you take shots like that? Key word here is "liked". Seems like OP liked the company when it had a free tier, and no longer does after it axed the tier. They don't owe your company anything, in the same way your company doesn't owe anything to the non-paying "customers" it stopped subsidising. No foul play by either party. I wouldn't take it too personally.
- mping 11mo ago
  Jesus dude,just say it was a mistake to call it free forever. How can you be a founder or whatever, have a product and not expect people to judge the words your website had, or the words you say? You should know it comes with the territory. Doesn't matter how hard you guys worked to be profitable, it's about building trust and relationship with your audience.
  - dardeaup 11mo ago
    He's horribly blind to this. His arrogance and ego prevent him from doing the right thing.
bruce511 11mo ago
If a business does not run at a profit, it folds, and all the people there lose out. Now, of course, the scale of the profit is worth discussing. The use of the profit is worth discussing. But in general terms some profit is necessary. For example, I bootstraped a business from 0 to 50 people. We took no outside investment. We "paid" for the growth using profits. Our working capital, cash reserves, stock, equipment, vehicles etc, all come out of profits. Yes, over the years, there have been things that didn't work out. People who ended up surplus to requirements. People not suited to the role they were in. Most left amicably. Some were pushed. None of that was easy but it was necessary because just keeping unproductive (or worse, divisive) people around is bad for everyone. Running a business is hard. Firing people is hard. Comments like "people over profits" are flippant, but miss the underlying realities small businesses face all the time. Yes, there are large tech businesses out there with bottomless pockets, who hire (and fire) by the thousands. But surely those bring hired in cohorts that big understand that a wind blows both ways. It's not necessarily helpful though to apply your feelings about that to all the businesses that are not that.
- samlambert 11mo ago
  I have immense respect for you building a profitable bootstrapped business. We raised venture to do this, I can't imagine bootstrapping. People are upset that I said I don't care what he thinks and maybe I was harsh but honestly people who have never tried doing this are always the ones to take shots, you basically can't care.
  - deaux 11mo ago
    > I was harsh but honestly people who have never tried doing this are always the ones to take shots People who haven't tried doing what, running a VC-backed SaaS, a model which by its own nature is destined to end up engaging in dumping practices to gain market share, after which enshittification ensues? With the alternative being going bust or being acquired and then quickly shut down? As we've seen hundreds of times now? I mean, yeah. In the sense that people who haven't tried kicking their cat tend to be the ones taking shots at those who have. Look, maybe you're a unicorn, in the sense that you're the 1%, the single person in your batch who ends up both profitable and won't follow down this path. But that's an extraordinary claim that would require overwhelming evidence. You spent lots of resources on Youtube and Twitter evangelism to cheap solo devs, targeting the exact content those consume - even compared to all of your competitors and other dev tools going at this market, investing in this strategy harder than almost anyone - which obviously results in an enormously lopsided % of free-tier uses (that's the whole point of the strategy). To then go "turns out we're not profitable this way, who woulda thought, guess we have to go paid-only!", this alone basically rules out the extraordinary claim. There's no chance you didn't do the back-of-the-envelope calculation about how big of a free tier you could realistically support.
AYBABTME 11mo ago
People over profit in this case would have been cowardice, not courage. Some had to lose their job for others to keep theirs and for the product to continue serving their customers. Would you respect a leader who refuses to make hard calls and sinks everyone aboard the ship as a result? Also people buy databases to do serious stuff. They pay you money to trust you with their data. Being a serious company that makes the hard calls to protect your product is exactly what a serious customer needs. FWIW I was part of these layoffs and I completely supported them. No glory in putting your head in the sand when people count on you to do the right thing.

by outlore 11mo ago

samlambert 11mo ago

[flagged]

prussia 11mo ago
> if you liked the company or product so much why would you take shots like that? Key word here is "liked". Seems like OP liked the company when it had a free tier, and no longer does after it axed the tier. They don't owe your company anything, in the same way your company doesn't owe anything to the non-paying "customers" it stopped subsidising. No foul play by either party. I wouldn't take it too personally.
mping 11mo ago
Jesus dude,just say it was a mistake to call it free forever. How can you be a founder or whatever, have a product and not expect people to judge the words your website had, or the words you say? You should know it comes with the territory. Doesn't matter how hard you guys worked to be profitable, it's about building trust and relationship with your audience.
- dardeaup 11mo ago
  He's horribly blind to this. His arrogance and ego prevent him from doing the right thing.

bruce511 11mo ago

If a business does not run at a profit, it folds, and all the people there lose out. Now, of course, the scale of the profit is worth discussing. The use of the profit is worth discussing. But in general terms some profit is necessary. For example, I bootstraped a business from 0 to 50 people. We took no outside investment. We "paid" for the growth using profits. Our working capital, cash reserves, stock, equipment, vehicles etc, all come out of profits. Yes, over the years, there have been things that didn't work out. People who ended up surplus to requirements. People not suited to the role they were in. Most left amicably. Some were pushed. None of that was easy but it was necessary because just keeping unproductive (or worse, divisive) people around is bad for everyone. Running a business is hard. Firing people is hard. Comments like "people over profits" are flippant, but miss the underlying realities small businesses face all the time. Yes, there are large tech businesses out there with bottomless pockets, who hire (and fire) by the thousands. But surely those bring hired in cohorts that big understand that a wind blows both ways. It's not necessarily helpful though to apply your feelings about that to all the businesses that are not that.

samlambert 11mo ago
I have immense respect for you building a profitable bootstrapped business. We raised venture to do this, I can't imagine bootstrapping. People are upset that I said I don't care what he thinks and maybe I was harsh but honestly people who have never tried doing this are always the ones to take shots, you basically can't care.
- deaux 11mo ago
  > I was harsh but honestly people who have never tried doing this are always the ones to take shots People who haven't tried doing what, running a VC-backed SaaS, a model which by its own nature is destined to end up engaging in dumping practices to gain market share, after which enshittification ensues? With the alternative being going bust or being acquired and then quickly shut down? As we've seen hundreds of times now? I mean, yeah. In the sense that people who haven't tried kicking their cat tend to be the ones taking shots at those who have. Look, maybe you're a unicorn, in the sense that you're the 1%, the single person in your batch who ends up both profitable and won't follow down this path. But that's an extraordinary claim that would require overwhelming evidence. You spent lots of resources on Youtube and Twitter evangelism to cheap solo devs, targeting the exact content those consume - even compared to all of your competitors and other dev tools going at this market, investing in this strategy harder than almost anyone - which obviously results in an enormously lopsided % of free-tier uses (that's the whole point of the strategy). To then go "turns out we're not profitable this way, who woulda thought, guess we have to go paid-only!", this alone basically rules out the extraordinary claim. There's no chance you didn't do the back-of-the-envelope calculation about how big of a free tier you could realistically support.

AYBABTME 11mo ago

People over profit in this case would have been cowardice, not courage. Some had to lose their job for others to keep theirs and for the product to continue serving their customers. Would you respect a leader who refuses to make hard calls and sinks everyone aboard the ship as a result? Also people buy databases to do serious stuff. They pay you money to trust you with their data. Being a serious company that makes the hard calls to protect your product is exactly what a serious customer needs. FWIW I was part of these layoffs and I completely supported them. No glory in putting your head in the sand when people count on you to do the right thing.