7 ms·
Commercial freedom
- sounds 14y agoI really enjoyed this article. It was an upbeat analysis and he put some good thought into why software freedoms are important for business.
- a5seo 14y agoDefinitely agree. It's a great counter to the narrative that everything is getting worse (China's GDP overtaking the US, inflation, higher taxes, etc). The things that really matter to building a business are still awesome. We're incredibly lucky to live in this time and build stuff with minimal hassle.
- bitops 14y agoIt was a great article, and I was happy to see David write something with a positive slant. He's a deft operator of flamethrowers, but it's nice to get the other side of him too.
- arbuge 14y agoAnother benefit to add to that list - no inventory to manage...
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y agoAn all my domains are open 24/7 without my intervention and without employees, just think how crazy that would have sound 25 years ago.
- peacemaker 14y ago"All we needed was an idea for a product that people were willing to pay for" This is the difficult part, in my opinion. Sure, "Ideas are all around us" but finding one that people will genuinely pay for, in a market big enough to be profitable yet not already saturated with high quality competitors, is very difficult.
- jammur 14y agoI think this is the problem that the "Lean Startup" methodologies aim to solve, enabling you to cheaply and quickly test out ideas in order to find the one that will satisfy the criteria you listed.
- marshallp 14y agoYeah, it's such a simple thing that nerds don't seem to get. Put out ads on craigslist, adwords, indiegogo. Whatever sells, do that. The biggest problem is having more ideas than time to write them into an ad, there's too many potential products. You can outsource the creation of whatever sells so executing isn't even that big a hurdle (though you do have to be careful with initial pricing on the ad so that costs don't get you).
- davedx 14y agoDo you have examples of these ads? I'd love to see how other people phrase them as I'm investigating this kind of stuff for myself at the moment.
- markkanof 14y agoI don't want to downplay your point, because it's certainly not trivial identify a problem where people are willing to pay for the solution to that problem. However, if you know anyone in an industry other than software development, this can be a great source of ideas. Just ask a few questions about what their day to day job responsibilities entail. Then sit back and let them talk. I find that most people pretty quickly start talking about the pain points. Some of those pain points are likely to be something that people would pay to solve. Plus you give your friend/family member/acquaintance a chance to vent which they probably appreciate as well.
- chc 14y agoThis suggestion always drives me batty, because it sounds like a good idea, but either my acquaintances are just spectacularly unhelpful or it requires some great skill that is always omitted from the suggestion.
- meriksson 14y agoThis is a wonderful essay! I often think about how extraordinarily lucky I am to be living through this technological boom. Computation, automation and mass-communication will continue to transform human society even more for decades. High-end software development skills will become even more scarce. Immersing yourself in the boom by running a software shop with a bunch of good friends - the best of times! Earlier tonight I was talking to someone about how odd it seems to me that software startups normally aim to operate at a loss. Perhaps I am a romantic, but I like the idea of a business making a good profit. Especially when dealing with something as lucrative as software, a business should be profitable from day one. I have always regarded David and Jason highly for having a similar attitude.
- pav3l 14y ago>High-end software development skills will become even more scarce. It's not obvious to me. Can you explain your reasoning?
- jaggederest 14y agoMy reasoning along the same line is that there will be many more applications for high-end software development skills, vastly exceeding the rate at which new people gain high-end software development skills. Glad to be a "just a programmer" right about now.
- fbuilesv 14y agoI'm not the OP but here's my take on it: as we evolve so do our tools, and as more and more people start creating their businesses online, the tools to support that will become easier and more efficient it'll get to do that. Today you don't need a programmer to setup your online website with a store attached to it (and that could be 100% of your business), imagine what you will be able to achieve in a couple of years by yourself.
- robryan 14y agoI think providing generalized software and plugins that non programmers can use for say blogging and ecommerce will always be somewhat limited. Once you get to a certain size the plugins will need customization to really work the way you want them to. I do have a bit of a biased perspective though, instead of looking for a non programming solution I just jump into the code an make it work the way I want. It is amazing sometimes to see what tools people have cobbled together on a website to get away without programming knowledge.
- throwaway54-762 14y agoWait, DHH races in Le Mans?
- mikebridgman 14y agoYes, a Porsche GT3 - number 37 of course! http://37racing.com/about http://37racing.com/about
- jakebellacera 14y agoThat's so awesome. TIL.
- davidw 14y agoI sometimes wonder if this is here to stay, and indeed may even expand to other fields; or whether it's a transient phase, and in the future, people without lots to spend on capital won't be able to build businesses. I think the first is correct, but who knows. A serious think about the question and the economics behind it would be fun to read.
- SparrowOS 14y agobullshit
- georgespencer 14y agoI was talking about this very topic with a friend of mine recently. He works in advertising and felt moderately disingenuous about advising young people to go into a traditional ad agency. There has never been a better, more stable time to start a business for most of the people in the western world. The internet has absolutely equalised just about every market you can think of. Fixed costs are a thing of the past; seed capital is plentiful (although there are the same number of top and second tier VCs, in Europe at least); being young is no longer a barrier to entry but a competitive advantage; there have been enough radically disruptive technologies in the last 30 years that it's pretty easy to convince seed investors to jump on board; we're living in a period where a lot of the world that was in poverty in the last four or five decades is coming out of poverty; middle classes are expanding all over the planet; with accessible languages like Rails and accessible architecture like Heroku it's a piece of piss to build and deploy a prototype… The list goes on and on for me. The major barrier to entry for creating things rather than working in corporations is the type of personality people have. I see two types of people coming out of universities in Europe: people who see problems and bitch, and people who see problems and have solutions to them. (As an aside, I follow the hashtag #firstworldproblem on Twitter because first world problems are very often the basis of a great product or service.) If you're a smart person working in a 9-5 then you're missing the biggest opportunity to do something fantastic, whether successful or not, that there has ever been. Forget the industrial revolution, or the early days of the internet. Now is the time to be building cool shit and telling people about it. Rare for me to agree with DHH but on this topic I really do.
- arpit 14y agoAs a software developer I love this part about my job. But its these freedoms that I feel are now challenged by the App Stores.I hope they don't foretell the future of our industry.
- dangrossman 14y agoThere are more than 5 countries the US currently has trade sanctions or embargoes on, aren't there? That would make this blog post an admission of violating some federal laws, wouldn't it? IANAL, I don't know why my mind jumps to such things... I doubt any website's been prosecuted for not having some kind of country blocklist.
- stevoski 14y agoWhich countries? I can think of no more than 5. Also, a trade sanction is sometimes limited to certain types of trade.
- marshallp 14y agoDHH needs to get off his high horse. He's hacked his way into providing a tiny service for artsy folks but he's not exactly hacking on immortality tech or AI like some of us. The government needs to consider redistributing some of his wealth. This essay is him gloating about sitting on piles of cash, where's the concern for starving african children or terminal cancer patients. He should sell his company and work on immortality tech. He can start with extracorporeal devices like described here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuBDhT7Y5GU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuBDhT7Y5GU
- koide 14y agomarshallp needs to get off his pony. DHH's is not gloating about the piles of cash he surely has on this essay. He's talking about the unprecedented and amazing opportunities unregulated internet gives businesses. And about your career counseling, I'd rather have DHH building niche web software with nice UI than have him build life supporting medical equipment.
- marshallp 14y agoWhy should he keep building nice UI's. He's proven himself as a can-do hacker and has millions in the bank. He could spend his resources saving lives instead of polishing what's a tiny hill in the global landscape of ideas.
- koide 14y agoHe should keep doing whatever he wants to do. You could propose him a venture on life supporting devices and see what he tells you. There's a (tiny) chance he hasn't gotten into life supporting devices because the opportunity hasn't shown itself. On the other hand it might just be that this area is too far out of his domain of expertise or he's just not interested in it. Maybe he doesn't feel like immortality is a worthy goal to pursue. Maybe he donates thousands monthly to whatever charity he feels truly help people. Maybe he drinks all that money with friends after race driving.
- 14y ago
- namank 14y agoSo, what's next?
- marcamillion 14y agoThis! Every few decades there is some revolution, but there is very rarely one that is as revolutionary as the one we are living in now. The argument can be made that the shipping container did something similar (with respect to distribution) that the internet is now doing - but that's only half of the equation. The other half is building the product. Before the internet, sure you could find a public library near you and hope they have the right information (for you) that will help you learn the skills needed to build the product you want from scratch. Now, everybody has access to not just the right information, but the best information - and it just gets better every day. It's like having the library of congress at your street corner, no matter where you live, 100 years ago. It is unprecedented how much we can do right now, how many people we can reach, and how much of an impact a single person can have with such few resources. This is why I love economic progress. Without 'economic growth', we would have never reached here. People don't get that economic growth is synonymous with advancement. If we don't grow, we can't advance - and if we don't advance we can't grow. I don't get why people would advocate not focusing on growth. If we don't grow, we die - if only for the fact that population growth is not slowing. But also for the fact that in order to push civilization forward, we have to grow which creates the environment for these types of disruptions.
- iambvk 14y agoI still think there is one middle man that is very tough to get rid of: banks or payment gateways, like visa. They still are getting their cut! If bitcoin is going to change that, it is also going to create opportunity!
- rayiner 14y agoIt helps that the internet is a medium that makes it very difficult to harm other people, either intentionally or accidentally.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- natmaster 14y agoSoftware is so new, regulators haven't figured out how to push out the little guys. Enjoy it while it lasts.
- patio11 14y agoIt literally broke my mind about when I realized that I didn't need to ask for permission from anyone to start a business. That very well might have been the first consequential decision I ever made in my life where that was the case. I think that is related to one of the fundamental mindset shifts you have to go through, and it is a bit of a wrenching one: success is now successfully identifying and exploiting features of reality, such as project feasibility and customer demand, rather than adapting oneself to match the exact published criteria of the decisionmaker who can grant success. (pg has a much better phrase for this in the wealth essay: "wealth does not come from Daddy.")
- yellowblue 14y agoLiterally broke your mind?
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y agoBe careful there, he said "mind" not "brain". And also, obligatory kxcd: http://xkcd.com/1108/ http://xkcd.com/1108/
- sounds 14y agohttp://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/imgs.xkcd.com http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/imgs.xkcd.com
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y agoWeird, it works from my location. (Colombia)
- pretoriusB 14y agoYes, literally. People flogging that dead horse fail to realize that a word has many meanings, not always compatible with it's original or primary meaning ("sad gay people", do exist, for example). If they have looked into a recent dictionary, e.g dictionary.com, they would have read, for example: lit·er·al·ly [lit-er-uh-lee] adverb (...) 4.in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually. Emphasis mine. There's even a usage note: Since the early 20th century, literally has been widely used as an intensifier meaning “in effect, virtually,” a sense that contradicts the earlier meaning “actually, without exaggeration".
- digitalengineer 14y ago"There's gold in them hills!" The (growth of) the Internet is like the days of the Gold Rush in the US. Everyone tries to strike it rich, and one a very few actually do find 'gold'. But I'll tell you who ALWAYS made a killing: The clever guys that sold the shovels and axes. Be a tool. (You know, like the guys at 37Signals).