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Oh, snap. I just got ASCII-arted by tptacek. You know what? I'm going to do this, just so I can settle this once and for all and be right on the Internet. I'll

by chc 14y ago

Oh, snap. I just got ASCII-arted by tptacek. You know what? I'm going to do this, just so I can settle this once and for all and be right on the Internet. I'll throw up a crap product, work on it like five hours a week, and we'll see how far in the hole I am from hosting costs. Incidentally, it's the second part ("Carefully study how best to present your offering to your target market") that I believe to be tremendously difficult and that I don't believe I will have much chance at. From where I'm standing, one of three things happens: 1. You get lucky and happen to be very good this. 2. You get lucky and happen on the right approach without actually being good at this in general. 3. Your product earns back nearly 10% of its expenses.

tptacek 14y ago
Curious: apart from methodical patience, what super power do you believe Patrick was "very good at"? I'm confirming too many people's biases by commenting on a 'patio11 thread about 'patio11, but the deliberately assumed helplessness of HN'ers when it comes to business is one of those things that drives me fucking bananas. In this case, so bananas that I have deployed ASCII art on HN for the first time ever. :)
- chc 14y ago
  > Curious: apart from methodical patience, what super power do you believe Patrick was "very good at"? In a word: marketing. Finding the right ways to efficiently reach his target market. I've tried marketing before — it's hard! Many BigCos seem to have the same problem. I can write whatever software I want, and I can study people for hours on end, but that doesn't mean the study will actually teach me the things I need to know to get the people to use the software.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I think the marketing you're thinking of when you think about Kalzumeus --- blog posts, year-end summaries, podcasts, email newsletters, video courses --- is stuff that did not matter when he was bootstrapping. There you'd be confusing cause with effect: the adept marketing you see today is a product of his nuts-and-bolts execution selling a product as a microISV and paying close attention to what was working. There is a super power at play here, but it doesn't take a radioactive spider to get it. People who can simultaneously speak "customer service" and "technology" are rare. Many of the world's most successful software businesses have noticed that and achieved billions just by arbitraging a trivially corrected ineptitude common to programmers.
    - chc 14y ago
      I'm actually thinking more of his bazillions of well-chosen targeted landing pages (e.g. "Dolch sight words bingo"), his ability to rank highly enough in search engines for the right words that interested visitors flow into his site (you can't be profitable with 40 uniques a day) — that sort of thing. In essence, yes, you need to pay attention to what is working, but first you need to find something that works in order to pay attention to it. > There is a super power at play here, but it doesn't take a radioactive spider to get it. People who can simultaneously speak "customer service" and "technology" are rare. Many of the world's most successful software businesses have noticed that and achieved billions just by arbitraging a trivially corrected ineptitude common to programmers. I agree, this is one thing that really benefits him. But from the standpoint of someone starting out with nothing, I'd say shoddy customer service is a pretty good problem to have — it means you have customers who need serving! If you can't do customer acquisition, customer retention becomes a moot point. Dutifully serving two people who each pay $20 a month will not make you billions of anything. Patrick actually mentioned this on his blog some years back: He had a tiny customer base and knew he needed to find a way to grow it. The conclusion of the story was something along the lines of "I did marketing and then it was OK." That's where a lot of people's stories would have gone differently.
      - thenomad 14y ago
        I have a certain amount of expertise at the type of SEO Patrick used to bootstrap BCC - I've used a similar technique to get my last public web project to 400k-ish uniques/month. It's not rocket science, and most people on HN could do it. As tptacek has said several times, it just takes a couple of years' worth of persistence and willingness to look at what's actually happening and adapt for it.
      - Cass 14y ago
        you can't be profitable with 40 uniques a day No, that's the awesome thing about software sales: You absolutely can be! Step 1: Price software at $20 Step 2: Assume hosting costs of $10 per month Step 3: Convert at a ratio of 200 views to 1 sale [1] Step 4: Profit!!! Admittedly, your profit for the first month will be $40 - $10 = $30, and your hourly wage will be $30 divided by however many hours you worked on the thing. But let's say the software, like BCC version 1, is basically "a random number generator attached to a GUI" (as I vaguely remember patio11 describing it once), so you didn't put in too many hours. Now if you can manage to maybe triple your daily uniques to an entire 120 views a day and keep converting at that ratio without putting in too many more hours, you already have a business that'll pay for your pizza, forever, without really all that much effort on your part. Now, if you assume an opportunity cost at google salary for working on this, of course it'll never be profitable. But if I assume google salary opportunity cost for my work, I'm losing money at an incredible rate by being a doctor, too. [1] Someone who actually sells software for a living could probably give you more realistic numbers here, but these don't seem entirely unachievable to me.
- danielweber 14y ago
  There is a lot of money out there for hackers who want to make stuff for non-hackers; but I think a lot of HN'ers have problems figuring out what those things are. Lots of hackers like to build things relevant to their own hobbies, but the problem is that if you make (say) a WoW character builder, some other hacker will build another one for free. (I don't play WoW so I don't know if my example made any sense, but you can fill in the blank for one that does.) They need to find something non-hackers want. I don't think there is any list you or 'patio11 has of these things, or else the niche would already be filled. But I think that's what HN'ers want: "tell me what to build!" And they don't know what to build.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    If you're only willing to build things you like, I've got no help to offer you on microISV product businesses. For what it's worth, I have the same challenge. For people like us, my recommendation is: find a way to align what you like with something that is lucrative as a service. You can make a lot of money wanking around with suave ways to get pixels onto an iPhone screen.
  - minibus 14y ago
    And therein lies the rub. If hackers build things relevant to their own hobbies, and "hackers," as a group, tend to have really similar hobbies... They'll build the same products. Over and over and over again. Not bad, per se, but a massive opportunity for someone with development skill and a different set of interests.
    - danielweber 14y ago
      I meant was that hackers build those things because they are familiar to them. Patrick had some interaction, somewhere, that led him to realize that people need bingo cards. Ask the non-hackers in your life what little pieces of software they occasionally have a big enough desire for -- big enough they'd pick $30 at the time. Then tell me. :)
      - whatusername 14y ago
wglb 14y ago
So Patrick did not throw up a crap product--it was just a very simple product. If you are serious about this, start reading his blog from the beginning. He gives a blow-by-blow account of how he got there. And I predict that having a self-defeating attitude will greatly impede your success.
- chc 14y ago
  > So Patrick did not throw up a crap product--it was just a very simple product. Fine, it's a poh-tah-toh. > If you are serious about this, start reading his blog from the beginning. He gives a blow-by-blow account of how he got there. I've actually read his blog for years. I've learned lots of useful lessons from it, but one of my takeaways is that Patrick is just very good at marketing. But yes, I am serious. I'm considering setting up a blog documenting the process so everyone can point and laugh, but I'll have to figure out whether my ego can take it. > And I predict that having a self-defeating attitude will greatly impede your success. What a great hedge! If I succeed, you can say you told me so, and if I fail, you can still say you told me so. But no, really, tptacek just said desire and a modicum of effort were the prerequisites. I can do those. If pseudo-religious faith is required as well, then I guess I will fail. But there's nothing to be done about that, is there?
  - xhrpost 14y ago
    Reading this "challenge" unfold here has been interesting and perhaps oddly, inspiring. If you do go through with something, please pass a link my way :)
- SyneRyder 14y ago
  I really hope Patrick won't mind me saying this, but... that initial downloadable Java version really was quite bad. You could resize the Bingo window smaller than it should be, causing all kinds of bugs that made the bingo cards completely unusable. Only quitting the program & restarting would fix it, resizing wouldn't. I remember this because I kept looking at his program at the time, wondering why it was successful, how those bugs slipped through whatever beta testing he did. I assume the marketing (especially SEO) is what filled that gap, as well as understanding what his customer demographic would tolerate. Of course, the product improved greatly over time as well, so I really don't mean this as a criticism. If you want an example of a true minimum-viable-product, Bingo Card Creator 1.0 had to be it.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nsxwolf 14y ago
You should see what he can do with ANSI.
thenomad 14y ago
I really hope you do try this out, and blog about it - it'll be REALLY interesting for all concerned. If you do decide to do this, I'd be more than happy to offer help and advice if you think that'll be valuable. I'm not patio11-level successful at this stuff yet, but I have a certain amount of knowledge, particularly about marketing. Email's in my HN profile!

by chc 14y ago

tptacek 14y ago

Curious: apart from methodical patience, what super power do you believe Patrick was "very good at"? I'm confirming too many people's biases by commenting on a 'patio11 thread about 'patio11, but the deliberately assumed helplessness of HN'ers when it comes to business is one of those things that drives me fucking bananas. In this case, so bananas that I have deployed ASCII art on HN for the first time ever. :)

chc 14y ago
> Curious: apart from methodical patience, what super power do you believe Patrick was "very good at"? In a word: marketing. Finding the right ways to efficiently reach his target market. I've tried marketing before — it's hard! Many BigCos seem to have the same problem. I can write whatever software I want, and I can study people for hours on end, but that doesn't mean the study will actually teach me the things I need to know to get the people to use the software.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I think the marketing you're thinking of when you think about Kalzumeus --- blog posts, year-end summaries, podcasts, email newsletters, video courses --- is stuff that did not matter when he was bootstrapping. There you'd be confusing cause with effect: the adept marketing you see today is a product of his nuts-and-bolts execution selling a product as a microISV and paying close attention to what was working. There is a super power at play here, but it doesn't take a radioactive spider to get it. People who can simultaneously speak "customer service" and "technology" are rare. Many of the world's most successful software businesses have noticed that and achieved billions just by arbitraging a trivially corrected ineptitude common to programmers.
  - chc 14y ago
    I'm actually thinking more of his bazillions of well-chosen targeted landing pages (e.g. "Dolch sight words bingo"), his ability to rank highly enough in search engines for the right words that interested visitors flow into his site (you can't be profitable with 40 uniques a day) — that sort of thing. In essence, yes, you need to pay attention to what is working, but first you need to find something that works in order to pay attention to it. > There is a super power at play here, but it doesn't take a radioactive spider to get it. People who can simultaneously speak "customer service" and "technology" are rare. Many of the world's most successful software businesses have noticed that and achieved billions just by arbitraging a trivially corrected ineptitude common to programmers. I agree, this is one thing that really benefits him. But from the standpoint of someone starting out with nothing, I'd say shoddy customer service is a pretty good problem to have — it means you have customers who need serving! If you can't do customer acquisition, customer retention becomes a moot point. Dutifully serving two people who each pay $20 a month will not make you billions of anything. Patrick actually mentioned this on his blog some years back: He had a tiny customer base and knew he needed to find a way to grow it. The conclusion of the story was something along the lines of "I did marketing and then it was OK." That's where a lot of people's stories would have gone differently.
    - thenomad 14y ago
      I have a certain amount of expertise at the type of SEO Patrick used to bootstrap BCC - I've used a similar technique to get my last public web project to 400k-ish uniques/month. It's not rocket science, and most people on HN could do it. As tptacek has said several times, it just takes a couple of years' worth of persistence and willingness to look at what's actually happening and adapt for it.
    - Cass 14y ago
      you can't be profitable with 40 uniques a day No, that's the awesome thing about software sales: You absolutely can be! Step 1: Price software at $20 Step 2: Assume hosting costs of $10 per month Step 3: Convert at a ratio of 200 views to 1 sale [1] Step 4: Profit!!! Admittedly, your profit for the first month will be $40 - $10 = $30, and your hourly wage will be $30 divided by however many hours you worked on the thing. But let's say the software, like BCC version 1, is basically "a random number generator attached to a GUI" (as I vaguely remember patio11 describing it once), so you didn't put in too many hours. Now if you can manage to maybe triple your daily uniques to an entire 120 views a day and keep converting at that ratio without putting in too many more hours, you already have a business that'll pay for your pizza, forever, without really all that much effort on your part. Now, if you assume an opportunity cost at google salary for working on this, of course it'll never be profitable. But if I assume google salary opportunity cost for my work, I'm losing money at an incredible rate by being a doctor, too. [1] Someone who actually sells software for a living could probably give you more realistic numbers here, but these don't seem entirely unachievable to me.
danielweber 14y ago
There is a lot of money out there for hackers who want to make stuff for non-hackers; but I think a lot of HN'ers have problems figuring out what those things are. Lots of hackers like to build things relevant to their own hobbies, but the problem is that if you make (say) a WoW character builder, some other hacker will build another one for free. (I don't play WoW so I don't know if my example made any sense, but you can fill in the blank for one that does.) They need to find something non-hackers want. I don't think there is any list you or 'patio11 has of these things, or else the niche would already be filled. But I think that's what HN'ers want: "tell me what to build!" And they don't know what to build.
- tptacek 14y ago
  If you're only willing to build things you like, I've got no help to offer you on microISV product businesses. For what it's worth, I have the same challenge. For people like us, my recommendation is: find a way to align what you like with something that is lucrative as a service. You can make a lot of money wanking around with suave ways to get pixels onto an iPhone screen.
- minibus 14y ago
  And therein lies the rub. If hackers build things relevant to their own hobbies, and "hackers," as a group, tend to have really similar hobbies... They'll build the same products. Over and over and over again. Not bad, per se, but a massive opportunity for someone with development skill and a different set of interests.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    I meant was that hackers build those things because they are familiar to them. Patrick had some interaction, somewhere, that led him to realize that people need bingo cards. Ask the non-hackers in your life what little pieces of software they occasionally have a big enough desire for -- big enough they'd pick $30 at the time. Then tell me. :)
    - whatusername 14y ago

wglb 14y ago

So Patrick did not throw up a crap product--it was just a very simple product. If you are serious about this, start reading his blog from the beginning. He gives a blow-by-blow account of how he got there. And I predict that having a self-defeating attitude will greatly impede your success.

chc 14y ago
> So Patrick did not throw up a crap product--it was just a very simple product. Fine, it's a poh-tah-toh. > If you are serious about this, start reading his blog from the beginning. He gives a blow-by-blow account of how he got there. I've actually read his blog for years. I've learned lots of useful lessons from it, but one of my takeaways is that Patrick is just very good at marketing. But yes, I am serious. I'm considering setting up a blog documenting the process so everyone can point and laugh, but I'll have to figure out whether my ego can take it. > And I predict that having a self-defeating attitude will greatly impede your success. What a great hedge! If I succeed, you can say you told me so, and if I fail, you can still say you told me so. But no, really, tptacek just said desire and a modicum of effort were the prerequisites. I can do those. If pseudo-religious faith is required as well, then I guess I will fail. But there's nothing to be done about that, is there?
- xhrpost 14y ago
  Reading this "challenge" unfold here has been interesting and perhaps oddly, inspiring. If you do go through with something, please pass a link my way :)
SyneRyder 14y ago
I really hope Patrick won't mind me saying this, but... that initial downloadable Java version really was quite bad. You could resize the Bingo window smaller than it should be, causing all kinds of bugs that made the bingo cards completely unusable. Only quitting the program & restarting would fix it, resizing wouldn't. I remember this because I kept looking at his program at the time, wondering why it was successful, how those bugs slipped through whatever beta testing he did. I assume the marketing (especially SEO) is what filled that gap, as well as understanding what his customer demographic would tolerate. Of course, the product improved greatly over time as well, so I really don't mean this as a criticism. If you want an example of a true minimum-viable-product, Bingo Card Creator 1.0 had to be it.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

nsxwolf 14y ago

You should see what he can do with ANSI.

thenomad 14y ago

I really hope you do try this out, and blog about it - it'll be REALLY interesting for all concerned. If you do decide to do this, I'd be more than happy to offer help and advice if you think that'll be valuable. I'm not patio11-level successful at this stuff yet, but I have a certain amount of knowledge, particularly about marketing. Email's in my HN profile!