3 ms·

Ask HN: Critique my startup: ZeroTier One

7 points by api 12y ago

(I've posted about this on other occasions, so apologies if I'm being spammy.) https://www.zerotier.com/ -- Status: Tech: Emulates an Ethernet switch over a robust P2P protocol. Product: VPN-like, make virtual networks everywhere. Revenue: freemium Growth: ~1% organic (no promotion), ~50% user retention after 1-2 months (measured). Feedback: positive, >90% "very disappointed" for canonical "if this product disappeared?" question. -- Issues: * 1% organic growth tells me: I haven't quite achieved product/market fit, the "beta" status is putting people off, or product isn't quite "there." * Freemium conversion rate is also low, tells me current value proposition is broken. * No mobile version. Already know how to build it, but time consuming... -- Hypothesis: Virtual networking ("VPN" has become confusing due to HideMyAss, etc.) is a "sleeper" market not unlike file sync. "There's lots of things that can do this." "But do you like any of them?" I've studied Dropbox closely. I'm trying to do that in virtual networking-- solve an old problem in a compelling new way. Some validation e.g.: #1 source of organic hits is variations of "alternative to Hamachi" directly or via alternativeto.net. Two parter then... (1) is this hypothesis correct?, and (2) what would push this from "good" to "category redefining?" I have some bigger "pivot" ideas but I wanted to get feedback on what's there first. All thoughts are welcome. Thanks!

api 12y ago
Some other info: 500-600 users online at any given time, about 1000 total global users. User base is highly global, with lots in China, etc. There's a lot of people using this to collaborate globally. Paying customers are all consulting outfits with distributed teams. I can see this being compelling there. But there's only a couple of them. Current development iteration is focusing on better OS integration, a bit of other polish elements, and fixing some very minor networking issues reported by a few users. On Windows networks now show up (in the dev branch) as "real" networks, and it shows the popup allowing you to select their role and firewall designation as home, work, or public. On Mac I'm working on making networks show up in System Preferences as real networks there as well.
- abhinavgujjar 12y ago
  As a person in technology, while I understand the concept of creating a LAN, I couldn't think up of a reason for which I may need one. Maybe that's something you might want to put up on the landing page?
  - api 12y ago
    This fits into the category of advice that's "so simple I'd have never thought of it." Maybe I need to prominently list some use cases. Thanks. :)
    - tptacek 12y ago
      I once actually needed to emulate a LAN to do a migration of an ISP POP from one place to another (the terminal servers lived on a LAN with hardcoded dependencies on RADIUS servers, DNS, &c). I did it with a proxy ARP daemon I wrote for the task. Nothing comes immediately to my mind for why I'd want that same capability in 2014. Which is not to say there isn't an important use case. Rather: even people who have done stuff like this before probably need to be told how this service makes their life better.
      - api 12y ago
        One thing I'm getting from this particular thread is that I need to focus more on use cases and concretes and less on technology, at least in my initial splash page. For some reason these two responses kind of crystalized that for me... I went to the site and viewed it with new eyes and thought "this would only be appealing to a very narrow, technically focused sort of user." Here's what some current users are doing: * "Office LAN with no office" for file, printer, and other devices sharing and collaborative development. One comment was "cool, now we can use git as an actual peer to peer version control system." * Allowing a distributed team to access a license server that must be online to use some commercial app. * With bridging to extend an office into VPN-space (regular VPN replacement). * A few users have used it to create a private backplane network between servers in the cloud. I wrote up a blog post on this: https://www.zerotier.com/blog/?p=176 https://www.zerotier.com/blog/?p=176 * One user is researching it as a way to link together small embedded devices with cellular connections in the field. I've been working with them on this. It builds and runs fine on Raspberry Pi and works over cellular Internet. * It's got a bit of a following as a way to tunnel out from behind the Chinese Great Firewall, though I'm not sure if that's a sustainable or monetizable area. But I do have one paying customer from this market. It's a commercial user with an office inside China and an office outside that finds it very convenient to have a single LAN spanning their China and Oregon offices. * The public network feature has a bit of a following in the decentralized networking community. This is not likely to be a direct revenue source but has resulted in a lot of high quality technical feedback.
boykin 12y ago
This appears to be another auto-vpn solution. At first glance it appears to be professional and well thought out (e.g. auto certificate management); however, I ask what is your target customer? Most companies who require a VPN solution will use a service provider or hardware appliance at the edge of their network so they don't have to configure multiple endpoints. From what I've seen consumers would have no use for this, maybe in the past when LAN-enabled games were popular, but what about today?
- api 12y ago
  I'm trying to skirt the term VPN a little with this. Not only does it refer as you say to tunnels into networks, but it's also become a confusing term to end users of late because of things like HideMyAss. "VPN... isn't that something you use to hide your traffic from your ISP?" Of the converted users so far, the vast majority of them are distributed teams. It's a peer to peer virtual network, so it allows them to have an "office LAN without an office." There's a wide variety of reasons people might want that. Nevertheless, I am getting the impression that that's a niche market, so I'm thinking about other directions I might go with this. The underlying engine is very powerful and versatile, so there are other markets I could potentially apply it to: SDN, p2p SDKs for software developers, etc. I'm starting a market research deep dive on this kind of thing. I can't imagine that there are no larger niches for a networking engine that enables friction-free direct connectivity between any two devices, but I'm not completely sure what these niches are. I've got some hypotheses but I want to let the market research lead. Thanks for your comments!
  - boykin 12y ago
    You're welcome. For the sake of argument let's assume your target customers are small teams. I'm going to try and pin you down on one area you keep assuming is true: "There's a wide variety of reasons people might want that." Can you name 3? I can't think of a single application a team might use that would require layer 2 connectivity. File sharing is done with dropbox, email and other server or saas solutions these days. Modern version control systems work across the internet. VoIP would be through a provider... There are a lot of other areas you can apply this technology, but there are already tons of players in those spaces.

7 points by api 12y ago

api 12y ago

Some other info: 500-600 users online at any given time, about 1000 total global users. User base is highly global, with lots in China, etc. There's a lot of people using this to collaborate globally. Paying customers are all consulting outfits with distributed teams. I can see this being compelling there. But there's only a couple of them. Current development iteration is focusing on better OS integration, a bit of other polish elements, and fixing some very minor networking issues reported by a few users. On Windows networks now show up (in the dev branch) as "real" networks, and it shows the popup allowing you to select their role and firewall designation as home, work, or public. On Mac I'm working on making networks show up in System Preferences as real networks there as well.

abhinavgujjar 12y ago
As a person in technology, while I understand the concept of creating a LAN, I couldn't think up of a reason for which I may need one. Maybe that's something you might want to put up on the landing page?
- api 12y ago
  This fits into the category of advice that's "so simple I'd have never thought of it." Maybe I need to prominently list some use cases. Thanks. :)
  - tptacek 12y ago
    I once actually needed to emulate a LAN to do a migration of an ISP POP from one place to another (the terminal servers lived on a LAN with hardcoded dependencies on RADIUS servers, DNS, &c). I did it with a proxy ARP daemon I wrote for the task. Nothing comes immediately to my mind for why I'd want that same capability in 2014. Which is not to say there isn't an important use case. Rather: even people who have done stuff like this before probably need to be told how this service makes their life better.
    - api 12y ago
      One thing I'm getting from this particular thread is that I need to focus more on use cases and concretes and less on technology, at least in my initial splash page. For some reason these two responses kind of crystalized that for me... I went to the site and viewed it with new eyes and thought "this would only be appealing to a very narrow, technically focused sort of user." Here's what some current users are doing: * "Office LAN with no office" for file, printer, and other devices sharing and collaborative development. One comment was "cool, now we can use git as an actual peer to peer version control system." * Allowing a distributed team to access a license server that must be online to use some commercial app. * With bridging to extend an office into VPN-space (regular VPN replacement). * A few users have used it to create a private backplane network between servers in the cloud. I wrote up a blog post on this: https://www.zerotier.com/blog/?p=176 https://www.zerotier.com/blog/?p=176 * One user is researching it as a way to link together small embedded devices with cellular connections in the field. I've been working with them on this. It builds and runs fine on Raspberry Pi and works over cellular Internet. * It's got a bit of a following as a way to tunnel out from behind the Chinese Great Firewall, though I'm not sure if that's a sustainable or monetizable area. But I do have one paying customer from this market. It's a commercial user with an office inside China and an office outside that finds it very convenient to have a single LAN spanning their China and Oregon offices. * The public network feature has a bit of a following in the decentralized networking community. This is not likely to be a direct revenue source but has resulted in a lot of high quality technical feedback.

boykin 12y ago

This appears to be another auto-vpn solution. At first glance it appears to be professional and well thought out (e.g. auto certificate management); however, I ask what is your target customer? Most companies who require a VPN solution will use a service provider or hardware appliance at the edge of their network so they don't have to configure multiple endpoints. From what I've seen consumers would have no use for this, maybe in the past when LAN-enabled games were popular, but what about today?

api 12y ago
I'm trying to skirt the term VPN a little with this. Not only does it refer as you say to tunnels into networks, but it's also become a confusing term to end users of late because of things like HideMyAss. "VPN... isn't that something you use to hide your traffic from your ISP?" Of the converted users so far, the vast majority of them are distributed teams. It's a peer to peer virtual network, so it allows them to have an "office LAN without an office." There's a wide variety of reasons people might want that. Nevertheless, I am getting the impression that that's a niche market, so I'm thinking about other directions I might go with this. The underlying engine is very powerful and versatile, so there are other markets I could potentially apply it to: SDN, p2p SDKs for software developers, etc. I'm starting a market research deep dive on this kind of thing. I can't imagine that there are no larger niches for a networking engine that enables friction-free direct connectivity between any two devices, but I'm not completely sure what these niches are. I've got some hypotheses but I want to let the market research lead. Thanks for your comments!
- boykin 12y ago
  You're welcome. For the sake of argument let's assume your target customers are small teams. I'm going to try and pin you down on one area you keep assuming is true: "There's a wide variety of reasons people might want that." Can you name 3? I can't think of a single application a team might use that would require layer 2 connectivity. File sharing is done with dropbox, email and other server or saas solutions these days. Modern version control systems work across the internet. VoIP would be through a provider... There are a lot of other areas you can apply this technology, but there are already tons of players in those spaces.