[HN Gopher] Just Launch the Damn Thing
___________________________________________________________________
Just Launch the Damn Thing
Author : alex_c
Score : 55 points
Date : 2021-02-08 16:00 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mobilefolk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mobilefolk.com)
| Hadrianus wrote:
| But also, don't. The world is chock-full of unstable, insecure,
| incomplete apps, services and technologies. Our desire to be
| first to market, or to practice extreme continuous improvement
| via rapid iteration and rapid feedback creates motivations which,
| in some ways, are antithetical to the moral imperative we as
| engineers should all feel. That of creating technology that is
| secure, private and stable. We don't need another password
| breach, we don't need another growth metric driven app the belies
| the privacy invasions that power that growth metric.
|
| Make old ideas better, make new ideas mature.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Internet is a Kondratieff cycle: It's a long economic cycle.
| 40+ years.
|
| - At the beginning, you innovate, and there are 100 car
| manufacturers in your city (Lyon, France) and every employee
| can build a car from A to Z.
|
| - Then you mature. You need to build the petrol station in
| every corner of the city, and put pollution everywhere
| especially on cathedrals (and passwords spill all over the
| place). Employees have a scope and become replaceable, but at
| least it's a skill that _can_ be taught at school so you build
| schools to output a nation's worth of engineers, not PhDs.
|
| - Then it concentrates. You still make more and more cars every
| year, but legal requirements rise and less than a dozen
| manufacturers per continent make it, it is extremely capital-
| intensive and return on investment is around the interest rate.
| Employees have a mundane job, there is even a job description,
| which would be an insult to most of the previous generation.
|
| - Then global warming comes and you need to remove petrol
| stations and cheat on tests to prove that you comply to
| regulatory emissions.
|
| Startups are at phase 2. Regulatory burden is so immense that
| the only way to comply to SOCs/PII/Health/GDPR requirements is
| to build inside of AWS. The job is becoming 1. either work for
| Atlasssian or Amazon 2. or be independent and built a toy
| inside their containers, with pre-approved APIs that insurances
| cover you for.
|
| Your comment is a sign that we're entering phase 3: It's hard
| to launch a startup and comply by the correct security and
| redundancy requirements, the talent has to be great, funding is
| absolutely necessary to have enough lawyers and designers, it's
| capital intensive but still has excellent potential growth.
|
| But soon, launching a startup will be as hard as launching a
| clothing brand: You'll need support from stars to get famous,
| advertising power of the soap industry, and you'll only make 4%
| above market rate.
| artful-hacker wrote:
| I think you are right, but when you take your time how do you
| beat the company that just Zooms through, ignoring security,
| privacy, and stability, eats the entire market share, and
| leaves the secure, private, and stable apps to fight over
| scraps?
| tjs8rj wrote:
| I think a major consideration is building what matters.
| Clearly, evidenced by Zooms continued dominance in spite of
| these scandals, these privacy issues aren't breaking to
| customers.
|
| While obviously not moral, the current environment seems to
| reward "get big fast, then take a breath to clean up the mess
| before other catch up", by then the damage to many has
| already been done, but your company is huge and ate the rest.
| markyc wrote:
| In case you were wondering, the skier dropped his backpack and
| was able to get away from the bear
|
| https://abc11.com/bear-chases-skier-romania-skiing-brown-cha...
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Ah yes this discussion. As always, I will chime in saying what I
| always say.
|
| While it's true that you need to begin the iteration process with
| real customers sooner rather than later, you still have to
| actually build something for them to use. This is still going to
| be very hard work.
|
| Yes, don't build features nobody has asked for yet, but do
| completely deliver on at least one core feature that actually
| makes people want more. Also, if you're a small team, and you
| crank out sub-par and not very well understood foundations,
| you're running the very real risk of having it all fall apart
| from underneath you when the first thing goes wrong. Again, don't
| go full k8s if you don't need to, but it's still very important
| to have a solid grasp on every aspect of your system.
|
| You can't just skip the hard parts and get to the money printer.
| Or maybe you can, in which case, consider me jealous!
| pixelbash wrote:
| I've recently started thinking of businesses in similar terms
| to core game loops. Deep in the guts of every successful
| business there is one (or more) loops that keep the rest going.
| When I next try something i'll start with the loop.
| hinkley wrote:
| And when the hype curve gets ahead of your development speed,
| the internet can be very cruel.
|
| There's a fine line between an MVP and chumming the waters.
|
| Stealth Mode is meant to give you some buffer against
| competitors who agree with the kernel of your idea and want to
| copy it. If the idea is obvious, someone else might beat you to
| market while you're faffing about. If there is no danger of a
| competitor having the same idea, then customers might not 'get
| it' either, at which point waiting has cost you a fortune.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| I can agree with that for the most part. The only point I
| don't exactly agree on is putting too much weight on being
| first to market.
|
| Like you said, being first to market comes with the burden of
| having to educate the market about what the offering even is,
| whereas having competition means the market exists already
| and you won't have to do (as much of) this work.
|
| In the end, there are plenty of examples of best-in-market
| beating first-to-market, and vice versa. And here we are
| trying to predict the weather :p
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm not a big fan of first to market myself, but it does
| seem to get some people to pay attention, so I'm not afraid
| of dangling that carrot if it suits me.
|
| Feedback is important. It's not the only thing that's
| important, but it's important. Sitting on a bunch of dark
| code means you won't get any feedback, and when you do get
| it, it won't be usable (too late to reverse course).
| azinman2 wrote:
| > worrying about scalability before having a single user
|
| While you don't want to do something really dumb that's hard to
| get out of from day 1, I can't agree more. Last year I was asked
| to help with an open source medical devices project for Covid,
| and when the guy writing the infrastructure said he had a
| microservices design in place I took that as a queue to exit the
| project. They hadn't even validated that people needed what they
| thought they should build, and here was a guy about to do a ton
| of work for scale that likely never came.
| dabockster wrote:
| I prefer the middle ground: do some planning and optimization so
| I don't release a freaking PWA monster into the world, then have
| to stall later while I figure out how to maintain the darn thing.
| toast0 wrote:
| The point of the article is that stalling later, when you have
| a better idea or what people want (and maybe some revenue,
| maybe?) is better than stalling now, when you have no
| customers.
|
| Launching something that clearly nobody will use because it
| can't do anything is clearly a waste of time still, but if you
| have something that people will use despite its flaws, maybe
| it's time to launch.
| hinkley wrote:
| It's an argument that makes total sense until you see how
| peers implement that idea.
|
| The fact is we have coworkers who want to appear high brow
| but not put in the work. So they will espouse a deep belief
| but then use it to do something else entirely. Or nothing at
| all.
|
| Stalling, YAGNI, are extremely powerful tools. Maybe not
| explosives level of power, but perhaps cutting torch. You can
| get yourself into a lot of trouble with a torch if you do
| things in the wrong order or skip steps. (Not a welder, but I
| recently watch Alex Steele, Youtube blacksmith, and his then-
| partner make the same mistake twice in three weeks - heating
| a 3 piece assembly with a torch to get pieces 1 and 2
| apart/together, could not remove piece 3 afterward due to the
| heat - expensive teachable moment the first time, but they
| needed a refresher)
|
| The Fine Art of Stalling is figuring out which Irreversible
| Decisions you can safely put off until later, when there is
| more information, and which things you require now regardless
| of reversibility. You don't stall on Reversible Decisions you
| need soon. You make them cheap.
|
| Got a bike shed to paint? Budget for five coats of paint in
| as many colors, pick one at random, and then move the fuck
| on. Your real job is determining which concrete contractor is
| certified to lay the base for your nuclear reactor, when you
| need it laid, the lead time each candidate needs to start the
| work, and any buffer you want to build in. If that means you
| don't need to know for another year, then let's keep an eye
| on those contractors' finances, turnover, and lawsuits, and
| look at the next thorn in our side, like the shipping company
| we're using that keeps screwing up.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| I legit don't understand what these blog posts hope to
| accomplish.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| The real reason is the drive traffic to their site. You must be
| new to this. Apparently this is "the" way to drive traffic /
| growth now, i.e. by writing these sort of short blog posts now.
| It's the "growth hacking" way. I have a product in the Chinese
| market so I haven't really used these kinds of marketing
| techniques. Maybe someone else can chip in how well these
| methods work in driving traffic and subsequently conversions,
| I'm genuinely curious as well
| antipaul wrote:
| Indeed, this was a creative, even literary, entry but it makes
| a memorable case for overcoming writers block, I mean,
| entrepreneur's block.
| gowld wrote:
| They get the author's company/brand on the front-page of HN,
| for a little name recognition.
|
| It's an ad.
| kgin wrote:
| Don't let that slow you down. Just launch the damn blog post
| and let your readers tell you what you should hope to
| accomplish.
| GCA10 wrote:
| I'd much rather see these sorts of posts as flow charts, with
| lots of If/Then functions along the way. For example: - Are you
| entering a regulated market with unbendable safety standards? If
| yes, take time to get it right. If not, proceed faster. - Do you
| need to hit the next milestone fast to get more money. If so,
| launch rapidly with what you've got. If not, consider taking more
| time to get it right
|
| Individual anecdotes are often charming and sometimes inspiring.
| But with so many decision points, a series of "succeed like me"
| single-example posts, all with different messages, start to blur.
| laurent92 wrote:
| > When it finally catches up, that bear can take many forms.
| Running out of money, losing interest, burning out, partners
| falling out, family or life situations changing, markets shifting
| and opportunities disappearing... That bear is running out of
| time.
|
| It's funny because I read many books and HN posts until I
| launched 7 years ago, and I was prepared for all situations
| (including downs) and all went well.
|
| But no-one had told me that one. Fortunately, my startup is my
| longest streak in a single employment (2.5 max for the other
| ones, I'm missing recognition in the real world), but now I feel
| it's time to enquire how one jumps out of this.
|
| - Intermediaries like Corum Group only accept to help you sell if
| you are worth 6-30mEUR (I'm around there, but, being sole owner,
| it's hard to prove a valuation),
|
| - When selling a startup, there are always provision clauses that
| a lot of liabilities will remain with you. Which defeats the role
| of an LLC (or equivalent in Europe).
|
| So it's hard to sell or jump ships.
|
| This is just food for thoughts for the wannabe-entrepreneurs here
| -- but by all means, that was my best professional experience and
| I had immensely more recognition naked in front of a market than
| in companies where the boss wouldn't even coach me into improving
| myself, apart from "be the best of the team and we may promote
| you - 9 month later -- maybe."
|
| So: THANK YOU HN!
| whitepoplar wrote:
| Definitely a good point! Would you be willing to share what
| company you started?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| "We'll do it live" - Bill O'Reilly
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1M6EYA14eU
| jhunter1016 wrote:
| "Always wear a backpack."
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-10 23:02 UTC)