7 ms·

Ask HN: Are there any startups making desktop apps?

71 points by hikz 11y ago

There are tons of VC-backed startups making mobile and web apps but are there any VC-backed startups making a desktop app?

lovelearning 11y ago
Evernote? https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/evernote https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/evernote
- enesunal 11y ago
  evernote's motto is "notes everywhere" or smt like that. They are building desktop app yes, but this app is also js and browser extension. not counts. sorry evernote, I loved you though.
  - matthewmacleod 11y ago
    That's nonsense. Evernote are a 'startup' in a sense, and have a desktop app (probably one of the primary ways people have interacted with it). It's literally exactly wha the author asked about. It's exactly the sort of service that I want a desktop app for too. I mean, I stopped paying after it deleted a bunch of my content, but still…
tjosten 11y ago
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/Dropshare https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/Dropshare
- mreiland 11y ago
  I'm interested in this, are there any similar solutions for windows and/or linux?
tormeh 11y ago
In the traditional, server-independent, sense? Hard to serve advertisements that way. There's always a lot of new game studios, but I don't think they count. There's no end-game in games development, no lock-in, no network-effects, no industry-standard-status. A single bad game can ruin the studio.
- troymc 11y ago
  Startup game studios are startups. Many game studios do get acquired or IPO, classic startup end-games. Game studios also satisfy your other criteria, but since when are those criteria for calling a company a startup? For example, a single bad product/service can kill any startup, not just a game studio.
  - tormeh 11y ago
    Of course, but generally a startup grows to a certain size and becomes a safe corporation. A game studio is like a startup that can't succeed, only survive. The games industry is pretty unique in the software world in that there's no/little help in old successes. It's got more in common with consulting than it does with Google/Dropbox/Facebook.
    - troymc 11y ago
      Madden NFL is a counterexample. That game came out in 1988. Not many software companies can say they've been working on the same software series since 1988. Will Dropbox still be relevant in 2035? Madden NFL is not the only example of a "safe", long-running game series (franchise). Wikipedia has a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-running_video_game_franchises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-running_video_...
- warfangle 11y ago
  The only studios that have lock in and network effects are those that launch successful MMOs. And the only independent company running a successful MMO at the moment is, as far as I know, CCP Games. Blizzard doesn't really count - they haven't been an independent company since 1994.
egfx 11y ago
Actually most are making native mobile apps. I'm a mobile guy making a cross compatible web app. Why anyone would make a native app in our world of ECMAScript6 and HTML5 is beyond me.
- pikzen 11y ago
  Having sane tools, languages and adequate performance maybe. :)
  - egfx 11y ago
    The web will eat up everything, watch.
    - joshuapants 11y ago
      "Will" is not the same as "already has."
- troymc 11y ago
  Where do you get the statistic that "most" HN folks are making native mobile apps? Are you sure it's not server-side software, or machine-independent code, or something else? i.e. [citation needed] Also, the reasons people make native mobile apps rather than hybrid apps (which run inside a mobile web-player component) are speed and reliability. Famously, Facebook switched from HTML5 to native for their iOS app: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-the-hood-rebuilding-facebook-for-ios/10151036091753920 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-th...
  - egfx 11y ago
    Maybe less so the case with HN but certainly the case. Just look at Product Hunt where nearly half of today's posts are mobile native apps. Facebook has since built and released React. I'm willing to bet Facebook will switch away from native again.
    - 11y ago
sunpatel 11y ago
we have a hybrid desktop/web app www.iorad.com. The desktop app does the captures and sends it to the web page for configuring.
captn3m0 11y ago
I can think of Dropbox, Slack, GitHub right now.
- ohitsdom 11y ago
  Slack's desktop client is really just a wrapper around a web browser.
  - joeyspn 11y ago
    Electron, specifically... https://github.com/atom/electron/ https://github.com/atom/electron/
    - captn3m0 11y ago
      Interesting. I haven't used it because they don't support Linux yet. (EDIT: I mean Slack, not electron)
      - joeyspn 11y ago
        You can build a wrapper (using a webview) of slack web with nw.js or electron... You'll get pretty much the same functionalities, including desktop notifications for the chats.
  - s_dev 11y ago
    Spotify and Skype come to mind as well.
    - ponyous 11y ago
      Is Skype considered start up?
    - jimbobob 11y ago
      Spotify uses Chromium Embedded Framework to serve a lot of UI elements via HTML/CSS/JavaScript[0]. Anecdotally, there seem to be a number of desktop apps moving in this direction. [0] http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-technology-behind-the-Spotify-desktop-app http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-technology-behind-the-Spoti...
ll123 11y ago
http://www.bluestacks.com/ http://www.bluestacks.com/
bhouston 11y ago
I have seen some but they are not in the B2C space. Usually in specialty B2B space. A lot of medical applications (signal processing, visualization, robot control) tend to be traditional desktop applications. Also military applications for analysis, and planning are often desktop based because they can not use consumer mobile devices nor can they rely on the "cloud".
pavlov 11y ago
Neonto: http://neonto.com http://neonto.com Mac desktop app (native Cocoa + OpenGL, no web views). Desktop is pretty much necessary for this tool because it needs to integrate with Xcode and Android Studio.
ownedthx 11y ago
http://www.jamkazam.com http://www.jamkazam.com - we are not yet VC-backed, but I hope so soon. Because latency is an absolute premium for playing music in real-time across the internet, we've focused first on the desktop, where we have the most control ... but still find a ton of challenges. If you saw this recent article about Android and audio latency, you can see why there are challenges in the mobile space: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9386994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9386994 If you were to try and build a web-only version of JamKazam, WebRTC is your best bet but it does not have low enough latency, either.
- hikz 11y ago
  That is amazing. Sad that your initial crowd funding was unsuccessful. Have you tried to tell about your product on reddit? There are many subreddits interested in tech like this and in indie music production.
tomjen3 11y ago
Spotify have a web app, but their native app is much better (because apparently that is where they focus).
mejackreed 11y ago
https://www.mapbox.com/mapbox-studio/ https://www.mapbox.com/mapbox-studio/
- donkeyd 11y ago
  Also: https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/ https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/
Dirlewanger 11y ago
Nylas are, in addition to their open source sync engine: https://nylas.com/ https://nylas.com/
- joshmlewis 11y ago
  We're using their Sync Engine and while it still took a good bit of time to implement, I'm sure it saved us a ton of time in the long run.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
carrotleads 11y ago
Medical imaging desktop app http://www.truelifeanatomy.com.au/software/software-overview/ http://www.truelifeanatomy.com.au/software/software-overview... We built it 10+ yrs back and we are still waiting for the big break which I guess in the medical field will come only once the big boys die off.. too many entrenched interests.
- randlet 11y ago
  Just FYI I noticed a small typo on that page: "This places a significant stain on the hardware" stain -> strain.
anemitz 11y ago
Close.io -- http://close.io http://close.io We have a native Mac and Windows app which uses Chromium embedded to wrap our core web app then adds our call stack (based on PJSIP) so you can make sales calls right within the app.
techaddict009 11y ago
http://www.installmonetizer.com/ http://www.installmonetizer.com/ Probably funded by YC IIRC.
- SchizoDuckie 11y ago
  Somebody with too much money should buy this company and then bury it somewhere very deep.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Buying them would be rewarding them.
  - juliangregorian 11y ago
    Or, you know, people could start paying for software. (I know, I'm a dreamer.)
bankim 11y ago
AeroFS on multiple platforms including MacOS, Windows & Linux https://www.aerofs.com/ https://www.aerofs.com/
yesimahuman 11y ago
Yep, we are at Ionic, though it's more of a supporting tool for a bigger service (much like GitHub for Mac, etc.).
HashThis 11y ago
Mac App "Sketch" and "Hyper 3".
Taek 11y ago
Sia: siacoin.com github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia We're ultimately trying to build a decentralized object store Platform, but our initial approach is a desktop application. We're hoping that the majority of embedded and streamed content on the web is stored on and fetched from our Platform.
- RexM 11y ago
  Stuff like this seems really interesting to me. How is Sia different from filecoin? http://filecoin.io/ http://filecoin.io/
cowmix 11y ago
This "Ask HN" question makes me feel really, really old.
- BorisMelnik 11y ago
  agree, it seems like just yesterday there were only desktop apps and mobile / web apps were a new thing!
rapture 11y ago
Curse Voice: http://beta.cursevoice.com/ http://beta.cursevoice.com/ We are building a cross platform communication app specifically for gamers. Currently only the Windows desktop application is publicly available. Mac, iOS, and Android are all in development and will be available soon.
QuantumRoar 11y ago
I've heard a few times that creating a decent desktop program with a GUI takes far more skill and experience. I can see why that is, since a fully fletched desktop program can be orders of magnitude more complex than most of the mobile and web apps. I'd love to see more of the bleeding edge desktop software like the Adobe stuff, Blender, all the DAWs for Audio, etc. But it feels to me that not very many programmers have the skill to pull something like that off. Also, there doesn't seem to be much of an incentive left to invest into such things. I would very much want that the mind set changes a little bit. Great desktop software makes a profit from selling to customers who value quality and awesome features. I wonder why that is not enough incentive for ambitious programmers. I only ever hear about developers for mobile and web apps getting a lot of money for things I seriously don't care about. I have the feeling that we use desktop computers for the same things we used them ten years ago. I can't even remember when I had the last "I need that!"-moment for desktop software. So why can't we reinvent the desktop with software, like many try to reinvent what phones and web apps can be used for? It's like the desktop computer in this day and age is slowly reduced to a platform (OS) for a platform (browser) for web apps. That's probably why many can get by with a tiny laptop or even a chromebook, which is probably the culmination of that thought. However, I've not lost all hope. My bet is on virtual reality. If someone can build a really awesome VR application where everybody's like "I need that!!!", I can see how the desktop could return to its former glory, considering that a decent VR needs a ton of compute. But there's still the problem that VR is hard, GPU programming is hard, 3D is hard, parallelization is hard and optimizing is hard. So are there any pioneers left with an enormous amount of skill and time who would risk to start such a glorious and uncertain journey without some VC guy dropping a few million dollars on the table? Or are we all going to end up as web developers because that's where the capital seems to be?
- FigBug 11y ago
  I don't think it's more skill, just different. I currently work on a DAW. I left for a while because I thought my skills were becoming obsolete and I needed to get in on this 'web' thing. I was useless and I lasted 9 months. To just jump in and learn html/js/css + everything else you need to be a web developer is a huge task. And a lot of stuff just doesn't work -- and the only way to know how to get it to work is experience. By contrast I think C++ and realtime audio programming is simple, but I've slowly picked it up over almost 20 years. I retreated back to desktop apps and firmware. I'll take another stab at learning web technologies, but not at a startup where I need to deliver asap and learn at the same time. As much as developers hate sandboxes, the lack of one (except Mac OS until recently) is why I think desktop is failing. Users just don't feel safe installing random software like they do going to websites or installing mobile apps. Users have been conditioned to only install software from sources they trust, and they trust no one. If I post a link to my new web project, most people will click on it. If I post a link to an .exe almost nobody will download it. I think that's the main issue killing the desktop. Big downloads, compatibility issues, slow installs are also an issue, but I think they are secondary.
aerovistae 11y ago
I'm trying to figure out how he made the small grey lines under the subtitles like "Coding Skills" and "Design Skills"....can't figure out what's creating it. Anyone?
- Martijn 11y ago
  You're in the wrong thread. :-) But to answer your question anyway, this is the responsible line of code: https://github.com/marekdlugos/TakeMeAsIntern/blob/master/assets/css/styles.css#L35 https://github.com/marekdlugos/TakeMeAsIntern/blob/master/as...
  - FigBug 11y ago
    What is the correct thread? I am curious to what this comment is about now?
    - phirschybar 11y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9458283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9458283
  - aerovistae 11y ago
    Oh whoops good point. dunno how I managed that. astute connection made on your part, wow!
flippyhead 11y ago
We are! http://fetching.io http://fetching.io Granted our desktop app is a highly customized version of our hosted web app. We use NWJS to package up our Meteor app (along with elastic search and mongo) to create a secure, local-only version of our personal web search tool.
shanecleveland 11y ago
There may be a diminishing audience of consumer desktop users, but I don't see the business audience of desktop users dwindling. But B2B enterprise software doesn't get the coverage of fast-growing consumer startups. Are there industry-specific news sources to uncover some of this? I have a few web apps that target business, and they simply wouldn't ever be utilized on a mobile device. There's some things that presently and always will require a desktop setup.
ekwogefee 11y ago
Feem - LAN chat/file transfer utility. cross platform (Linux/Mac OSX/Windows Desktop/"Modern" Windows/Windows Phone/iOS/Android/). Trivia 1: We are based in Cameroon/Africa. Trivia 2: I'm the sole developer.
- milkywayz 11y ago
  This is actually a pretty cool tool, going to use this. Frequently need to transfer stuff from my iPhone/iPad/Macbook to and from my windows desktop and google drive is not always necessary :)
WorldWideWayne 11y ago
Pinegrow is a new desktop app from a startup, but I'm not sure if they have VC backing. http://pinegrow.com/ http://pinegrow.com/
lardissone 11y ago
https://import.io/ https://import.io/
joseacta 11y ago
We have a product that provides licensing and copy protection for desktop apps http://www.licensespot.com http://www.licensespot.com We've been growing our customer base steadily. So the answer is yes, lots of startups doing desktop apps.
vram22 11y ago
Interesting topic. http://microisv.com/ http://microisv.com/ has some info. Andy Brice's blog, Successful Software, sometimes has articles about other mISVs than himself. He has a product, Perfect Table Plan, that has done quite well. And he recently created another product that has also started doing well. http://successfulsoftware.net/ http://successfulsoftware.net/
fmavituna 11y ago
Not VC backed-up but we are fairly big. We are building a web application security scanner - www.netsparker.com It's Windows only / .NET
boduh 11y ago
http://www.boxifier.com http://www.boxifier.com - Sync and backup any folder to Dropbox. 100% desktop app. We are bootstrapped. An app like ours probably wouldn't make sense for a VC to back but it feels really great knowing that people from all over the world use it to backup their external drives to Dropbox or collaborate on the files on their NAS using Dropbox. At one point you might feel out of the trend for not building a mobile or web app but I guess what matters is that your app helps someone, regardless of it being a web, mobile or desktop app.

71 points by hikz 11y ago

There are tons of VC-backed startups making mobile and web apps but are there any VC-backed startups making a desktop app?

lovelearning 11y ago

Evernote? https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/evernote https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/evernote

enesunal 11y ago
evernote's motto is "notes everywhere" or smt like that. They are building desktop app yes, but this app is also js and browser extension. not counts. sorry evernote, I loved you though.
- matthewmacleod 11y ago
  That's nonsense. Evernote are a 'startup' in a sense, and have a desktop app (probably one of the primary ways people have interacted with it). It's literally exactly wha the author asked about. It's exactly the sort of service that I want a desktop app for too. I mean, I stopped paying after it deleted a bunch of my content, but still…

tjosten 11y ago

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/Dropshare https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/Dropshare

mreiland 11y ago
I'm interested in this, are there any similar solutions for windows and/or linux?

tormeh 11y ago

In the traditional, server-independent, sense? Hard to serve advertisements that way. There's always a lot of new game studios, but I don't think they count. There's no end-game in games development, no lock-in, no network-effects, no industry-standard-status. A single bad game can ruin the studio.

troymc 11y ago
Startup game studios are startups. Many game studios do get acquired or IPO, classic startup end-games. Game studios also satisfy your other criteria, but since when are those criteria for calling a company a startup? For example, a single bad product/service can kill any startup, not just a game studio.
- tormeh 11y ago
  Of course, but generally a startup grows to a certain size and becomes a safe corporation. A game studio is like a startup that can't succeed, only survive. The games industry is pretty unique in the software world in that there's no/little help in old successes. It's got more in common with consulting than it does with Google/Dropbox/Facebook.
  - troymc 11y ago
    Madden NFL is a counterexample. That game came out in 1988. Not many software companies can say they've been working on the same software series since 1988. Will Dropbox still be relevant in 2035? Madden NFL is not the only example of a "safe", long-running game series (franchise). Wikipedia has a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-running_video_game_franchises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-running_video_...
warfangle 11y ago
The only studios that have lock in and network effects are those that launch successful MMOs. And the only independent company running a successful MMO at the moment is, as far as I know, CCP Games. Blizzard doesn't really count - they haven't been an independent company since 1994.

egfx 11y ago

Actually most are making native mobile apps. I'm a mobile guy making a cross compatible web app. Why anyone would make a native app in our world of ECMAScript6 and HTML5 is beyond me.

pikzen 11y ago
Having sane tools, languages and adequate performance maybe. :)
- egfx 11y ago
  The web will eat up everything, watch.
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    "Will" is not the same as "already has."
troymc 11y ago
Where do you get the statistic that "most" HN folks are making native mobile apps? Are you sure it's not server-side software, or machine-independent code, or something else? i.e. [citation needed] Also, the reasons people make native mobile apps rather than hybrid apps (which run inside a mobile web-player component) are speed and reliability. Famously, Facebook switched from HTML5 to native for their iOS app: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-the-hood-rebuilding-facebook-for-ios/10151036091753920 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-th...
- egfx 11y ago
  Maybe less so the case with HN but certainly the case. Just look at Product Hunt where nearly half of today's posts are mobile native apps. Facebook has since built and released React. I'm willing to bet Facebook will switch away from native again.
  - 11y ago

sunpatel 11y ago

we have a hybrid desktop/web app www.iorad.com. The desktop app does the captures and sends it to the web page for configuring.

captn3m0 11y ago

I can think of Dropbox, Slack, GitHub right now.

ohitsdom 11y ago
Slack's desktop client is really just a wrapper around a web browser.
- joeyspn 11y ago
  Electron, specifically... https://github.com/atom/electron/ https://github.com/atom/electron/
  - captn3m0 11y ago
    Interesting. I haven't used it because they don't support Linux yet. (EDIT: I mean Slack, not electron)
    - joeyspn 11y ago
      You can build a wrapper (using a webview) of slack web with nw.js or electron... You'll get pretty much the same functionalities, including desktop notifications for the chats.
- s_dev 11y ago
  Spotify and Skype come to mind as well.
  - ponyous 11y ago
    Is Skype considered start up?
  - jimbobob 11y ago
    Spotify uses Chromium Embedded Framework to serve a lot of UI elements via HTML/CSS/JavaScript[0]. Anecdotally, there seem to be a number of desktop apps moving in this direction. [0] http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-technology-behind-the-Spotify-desktop-app http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-technology-behind-the-Spoti...

ll123 11y ago

http://www.bluestacks.com/ http://www.bluestacks.com/

bhouston 11y ago

I have seen some but they are not in the B2C space. Usually in specialty B2B space. A lot of medical applications (signal processing, visualization, robot control) tend to be traditional desktop applications. Also military applications for analysis, and planning are often desktop based because they can not use consumer mobile devices nor can they rely on the "cloud".

pavlov 11y ago

Neonto: http://neonto.com http://neonto.com Mac desktop app (native Cocoa + OpenGL, no web views). Desktop is pretty much necessary for this tool because it needs to integrate with Xcode and Android Studio.

ownedthx 11y ago

http://www.jamkazam.com http://www.jamkazam.com - we are not yet VC-backed, but I hope so soon. Because latency is an absolute premium for playing music in real-time across the internet, we've focused first on the desktop, where we have the most control ... but still find a ton of challenges. If you saw this recent article about Android and audio latency, you can see why there are challenges in the mobile space: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9386994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9386994 If you were to try and build a web-only version of JamKazam, WebRTC is your best bet but it does not have low enough latency, either.

hikz 11y ago
That is amazing. Sad that your initial crowd funding was unsuccessful. Have you tried to tell about your product on reddit? There are many subreddits interested in tech like this and in indie music production.

tomjen3 11y ago

Spotify have a web app, but their native app is much better (because apparently that is where they focus).

mejackreed 11y ago

https://www.mapbox.com/mapbox-studio/ https://www.mapbox.com/mapbox-studio/

donkeyd 11y ago
Also: https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/ https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/

Dirlewanger 11y ago

Nylas are, in addition to their open source sync engine: https://nylas.com/ https://nylas.com/

joshmlewis 11y ago
We're using their Sync Engine and while it still took a good bit of time to implement, I'm sure it saved us a ton of time in the long run.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

carrotleads 11y ago

Medical imaging desktop app http://www.truelifeanatomy.com.au/software/software-overview/ http://www.truelifeanatomy.com.au/software/software-overview... We built it 10+ yrs back and we are still waiting for the big break which I guess in the medical field will come only once the big boys die off.. too many entrenched interests.

randlet 11y ago
Just FYI I noticed a small typo on that page: "This places a significant stain on the hardware" stain -> strain.

anemitz 11y ago

Close.io -- http://close.io http://close.io We have a native Mac and Windows app which uses Chromium embedded to wrap our core web app then adds our call stack (based on PJSIP) so you can make sales calls right within the app.

techaddict009 11y ago

http://www.installmonetizer.com/ http://www.installmonetizer.com/ Probably funded by YC IIRC.

SchizoDuckie 11y ago
Somebody with too much money should buy this company and then bury it somewhere very deep.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Buying them would be rewarding them.
- juliangregorian 11y ago
  Or, you know, people could start paying for software. (I know, I'm a dreamer.)

bankim 11y ago

AeroFS on multiple platforms including MacOS, Windows & Linux https://www.aerofs.com/ https://www.aerofs.com/

yesimahuman 11y ago

Yep, we are at Ionic, though it's more of a supporting tool for a bigger service (much like GitHub for Mac, etc.).

HashThis 11y ago

Mac App "Sketch" and "Hyper 3".

Taek 11y ago

Sia: siacoin.com github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia We're ultimately trying to build a decentralized object store Platform, but our initial approach is a desktop application. We're hoping that the majority of embedded and streamed content on the web is stored on and fetched from our Platform.

RexM 11y ago
Stuff like this seems really interesting to me. How is Sia different from filecoin? http://filecoin.io/ http://filecoin.io/

cowmix 11y ago

This "Ask HN" question makes me feel really, really old.

BorisMelnik 11y ago
agree, it seems like just yesterday there were only desktop apps and mobile / web apps were a new thing!

rapture 11y ago

Curse Voice: http://beta.cursevoice.com/ http://beta.cursevoice.com/ We are building a cross platform communication app specifically for gamers. Currently only the Windows desktop application is publicly available. Mac, iOS, and Android are all in development and will be available soon.

QuantumRoar 11y ago

I've heard a few times that creating a decent desktop program with a GUI takes far more skill and experience. I can see why that is, since a fully fletched desktop program can be orders of magnitude more complex than most of the mobile and web apps. I'd love to see more of the bleeding edge desktop software like the Adobe stuff, Blender, all the DAWs for Audio, etc. But it feels to me that not very many programmers have the skill to pull something like that off. Also, there doesn't seem to be much of an incentive left to invest into such things. I would very much want that the mind set changes a little bit. Great desktop software makes a profit from selling to customers who value quality and awesome features. I wonder why that is not enough incentive for ambitious programmers. I only ever hear about developers for mobile and web apps getting a lot of money for things I seriously don't care about. I have the feeling that we use desktop computers for the same things we used them ten years ago. I can't even remember when I had the last "I need that!"-moment for desktop software. So why can't we reinvent the desktop with software, like many try to reinvent what phones and web apps can be used for? It's like the desktop computer in this day and age is slowly reduced to a platform (OS) for a platform (browser) for web apps. That's probably why many can get by with a tiny laptop or even a chromebook, which is probably the culmination of that thought. However, I've not lost all hope. My bet is on virtual reality. If someone can build a really awesome VR application where everybody's like "I need that!!!", I can see how the desktop could return to its former glory, considering that a decent VR needs a ton of compute. But there's still the problem that VR is hard, GPU programming is hard, 3D is hard, parallelization is hard and optimizing is hard. So are there any pioneers left with an enormous amount of skill and time who would risk to start such a glorious and uncertain journey without some VC guy dropping a few million dollars on the table? Or are we all going to end up as web developers because that's where the capital seems to be?

FigBug 11y ago
I don't think it's more skill, just different. I currently work on a DAW. I left for a while because I thought my skills were becoming obsolete and I needed to get in on this 'web' thing. I was useless and I lasted 9 months. To just jump in and learn html/js/css + everything else you need to be a web developer is a huge task. And a lot of stuff just doesn't work -- and the only way to know how to get it to work is experience. By contrast I think C++ and realtime audio programming is simple, but I've slowly picked it up over almost 20 years. I retreated back to desktop apps and firmware. I'll take another stab at learning web technologies, but not at a startup where I need to deliver asap and learn at the same time. As much as developers hate sandboxes, the lack of one (except Mac OS until recently) is why I think desktop is failing. Users just don't feel safe installing random software like they do going to websites or installing mobile apps. Users have been conditioned to only install software from sources they trust, and they trust no one. If I post a link to my new web project, most people will click on it. If I post a link to an .exe almost nobody will download it. I think that's the main issue killing the desktop. Big downloads, compatibility issues, slow installs are also an issue, but I think they are secondary.

aerovistae 11y ago

I'm trying to figure out how he made the small grey lines under the subtitles like "Coding Skills" and "Design Skills"....can't figure out what's creating it. Anyone?

Martijn 11y ago
You're in the wrong thread. :-) But to answer your question anyway, this is the responsible line of code: https://github.com/marekdlugos/TakeMeAsIntern/blob/master/assets/css/styles.css#L35 https://github.com/marekdlugos/TakeMeAsIntern/blob/master/as...
- FigBug 11y ago
  What is the correct thread? I am curious to what this comment is about now?
  - phirschybar 11y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9458283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9458283
- aerovistae 11y ago
  Oh whoops good point. dunno how I managed that. astute connection made on your part, wow!

flippyhead 11y ago

We are! http://fetching.io http://fetching.io Granted our desktop app is a highly customized version of our hosted web app. We use NWJS to package up our Meteor app (along with elastic search and mongo) to create a secure, local-only version of our personal web search tool.

shanecleveland 11y ago

There may be a diminishing audience of consumer desktop users, but I don't see the business audience of desktop users dwindling. But B2B enterprise software doesn't get the coverage of fast-growing consumer startups. Are there industry-specific news sources to uncover some of this? I have a few web apps that target business, and they simply wouldn't ever be utilized on a mobile device. There's some things that presently and always will require a desktop setup.

ekwogefee 11y ago

Feem - LAN chat/file transfer utility. cross platform (Linux/Mac OSX/Windows Desktop/"Modern" Windows/Windows Phone/iOS/Android/). Trivia 1: We are based in Cameroon/Africa. Trivia 2: I'm the sole developer.

milkywayz 11y ago
This is actually a pretty cool tool, going to use this. Frequently need to transfer stuff from my iPhone/iPad/Macbook to and from my windows desktop and google drive is not always necessary :)

WorldWideWayne 11y ago

Pinegrow is a new desktop app from a startup, but I'm not sure if they have VC backing. http://pinegrow.com/ http://pinegrow.com/

lardissone 11y ago

https://import.io/ https://import.io/

joseacta 11y ago

We have a product that provides licensing and copy protection for desktop apps http://www.licensespot.com http://www.licensespot.com We've been growing our customer base steadily. So the answer is yes, lots of startups doing desktop apps.

vram22 11y ago

Interesting topic. http://microisv.com/ http://microisv.com/ has some info. Andy Brice's blog, Successful Software, sometimes has articles about other mISVs than himself. He has a product, Perfect Table Plan, that has done quite well. And he recently created another product that has also started doing well. http://successfulsoftware.net/ http://successfulsoftware.net/

fmavituna 11y ago

Not VC backed-up but we are fairly big. We are building a web application security scanner - www.netsparker.com It's Windows only / .NET

boduh 11y ago

http://www.boxifier.com http://www.boxifier.com - Sync and backup any folder to Dropbox. 100% desktop app. We are bootstrapped. An app like ours probably wouldn't make sense for a VC to back but it feels really great knowing that people from all over the world use it to backup their external drives to Dropbox or collaborate on the files on their NAS using Dropbox. At one point you might feel out of the trend for not building a mobile or web app but I guess what matters is that your app helps someone, regardless of it being a web, mobile or desktop app.