[HN Gopher] The saddest "just ship it" story (2020)
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The saddest "just ship it" story (2020)
Author : cercatrova
Score : 471 points
Date : 2022-05-12 10:53 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kitze.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (kitze.io)
| openplatypus wrote:
| I got stuck on weird integration with the payment processor.
| This, plus a few other minor issues set me back two months.
|
| No biggy, right? Wrong. I have shipped B2B product in late
| November. Came in December downtime. Close to 4-5 months wasted
| because I delayed shipping.
|
| Till day I slap myself in the face for that.
| loh wrote:
| This kind of thing happens way too often and is one of the
| problems my startup (Molecule.dev) solves. May I ask which
| payment processor?
| jonnypotty wrote:
| Shit man. That sucks.
| mcv wrote:
| When my oldest son was still young, I was working on my first
| Android game: a memory game about recognising letters, words, or
| anything. With a voice saying the letter, word, etc, so children
| would learn to match the symbol with the sound. I thought it
| would help my son learn to read, but before I knew it, he could
| read already. (At 4 or something. Never had to teach him a
| thing.) I lost my purpose and stopped working on it.
|
| Years later, we had another child. Deep into his struggles with
| talking, and later reading, I finally remembered that unfinished
| app again. Didn't know where it was, didn't want to restart it,
| and really the ideal moment for my second son to start using it
| was 2 years ago, so I didn't even bother.
| slimebart wrote:
| Kitze is a nice guy and an entertaining follow. I do think he
| needs to switch off more, however. He leans into tech in a very
| emotional way, and is very specific about what he wants. Which
| are good qualities, but they become bad when you can't switch
| off.
|
| I think at one point he mentioned he stopped listening to
| learning podcasts when going for daily walks, and instead let his
| mind rest and enjoy the walk. If anyone feels like they are
| becoming their own worst enemy with their projects, then that
| sort of thinking is a good idea.
|
| Having said that, he's also very successful with his other
| project. So he's a good follow, if you don't mind the trolling
| about web development ;)
| Reason077 wrote:
| I find podcasts very relaxing. So relaxing that I often listen
| to them to fall asleep, especially ones where the presenter has
| a nice soothing voice. Very important to turn off the auto-play
| feature, however!
| cersa8 wrote:
| I use podcast/audiobooks exclusively to fall asleep. But
| indeed, the narrator/presenter needs to have a soothing voice
| and no intro and outro jingles.
| ciccionamente wrote:
| Most of the time "just intensely search first any competitor"
| before "start shipping it" works fine.
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| > I started building an app on 01.01.2018. It was New Year's Eve
| and we just had the crappiest night ever. Yes, imagine a night so
| bad that at midnight you decide "you know what, fuck it, I'm
| gonna work on WEB DEVELOPMENT". That bad.
|
| Am I the only one that actually enjoys development ? I do
| development for fun in my free time, often with things that are
| completely throw away.
| corobo wrote:
| There are multiple types of development
|
| I LOVE tinkering with silly bots or automations I've come up
| with to solve a problem I'm having for sure! I'd happily chuck
| away a weekend even if it's just preliminary work that ends up
| scrapped. This is fun!
|
| I don't love everything dev I do for pay, that often comes more
| under the "well, the bills do need paying.." category
|
| Not because it's bad or unethical or whatever, don't get me
| wrong, it's just going to be basically the same tasks I did for
| the last site. Not as fun.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I enjoy coding when I have a problem code can solve. (Sometimes
| I enjoy it a little too much, and before I know it I've skipped
| dinner.) I don't think I'd code just for the sake of it,
| though.
| rglover wrote:
| > "After 2 years of development, juggling between the fucking
| horror that's the web platform, React Native, Expo, GraphQL,
| bitching about how there's no ideal tech stack, the good old
| jQuery and Filezilla days, switching to other projects, releasing
| other apps, losing passion, finding passion, coming back to the
| app, etc. etc. etc..."
|
| There is now. https://github.com/cheatcode/joystick
| dcow wrote:
| While there's clearly some nugget of advice in this rant, I can't
| help but find it really cringe to the point of wondering if the
| author has mental or psychological issues. They are literally
| sitting here telling everyone else to ship their shit but they
| won't ship their shit. Talk about bad ways to lead. Does the
| author want a pity party? I'm just really confused what I'm
| supposed to take away as the reader from all the self
| flagellation. Is it an effective literary tactic for people?
| tantalor wrote:
| The smallest "tiny violin playing just for you" ever
| donatj wrote:
| I have been working on a side project for going on 12 years now.
| In that time a bunch of competitors popped up. I gave up on the
| idea several times. All the competitors shut down their public
| APIs though, which is why I started up on it again about 5 years
| ago. I've got it in a place _I_ really like. I use it daily.
|
| The biggest blocker for me right now to making it open is wanting
| improved security. I ideally want all the data encrypted in a way
| _I_ can 't read it. I haven't worked out the scheme.
|
| I've got it in a sort of private beta, but I can't get anyone to
| use it other than me. And you know what, I think I'm at peace
| with that.
|
| The project has been if nothing else a place for me to test ideas
| and try techniques. Beyond that, it's the tool _I wanted_.
|
| The Digital Ocean droplet I run it on costs me all of $5 a month,
| the domain $15 a year. I could be doing worse.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| What is it?
| tr1ll10nb1ll wrote:
| I started working on the project (one that I'm currently working
| on) around the beginning of 2021. I stopped though after a month
| because the alpha version I made looked terrible (and got some
| mean reviews on places) and I thought maybe the product just
| doesn't fit in anywhere.
|
| I got contacted by a few VCs, upon realizing my crappy project
| had some potential, I started working on it again, regularly
| started contacting the potential users, launched 3 private
| versions until July 2021. The bunch of users I had liked it but
| then... I stopped updating it and it eventually sorta died. I
| just couldn't get out of the private beta in time.
|
| Stopped working on it for ~8 months. Recently got in a startup
| pipeline program of a large accelerator for this project which
| made me realize how stupid I am to keep throwing cool
| opportunities that come my way.
|
| So, now I'm back at it hoping to get out of that grim cycle of
| not shipping on time. I've got the 2.0 version of my project in
| works shipping later this month.
|
| And, luckily enough, all those old private users (and new
| developers I started contacting again) really do want to get
| their hands on the 2.0 version.
|
| Hopefully, this ends well for a "shipping story".
| qwertox wrote:
| I can relate. And I'm so burned out that I barely have a will to
| live.
| alin23 wrote:
| What are you working on? If you poured that much work into it
| already, I'm genuinely curious about all the details ^_^
| mromanuk wrote:
| Hey, have you considered doing therapy?
| chalst wrote:
| To save dang the effort, we had this story when it came out:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23774521
|
| Of its 160 comments, this stands out:
|
| > I'm in this same boat, but 8... EIGHT YEARS LATER! that
| competitor went out of business, and I bought them, their
| customers, and everything because I know the way I had more
| efficiently solved some of the same problems will let me run that
| business profitably.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775784
| simmo9000 wrote:
| "... fuck it, I'm gonna work on WEB DEVELOPMENT. That bad."
|
| I hear you!
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| I've only ever "shipped" two independent projects, and they are
| the the best things I have ever done for myself in terms of
| development, both from a personal career growth perspective but
| even financially.
|
| I work at a nonprofit and I had done some ABSURDLY SIMPLE data
| analysis on a relatively annoying public data set to consume. I'd
| done it for our institution, but it was sort of straightforward
| to generalize it to any institution for which this would be
| applicable. The code was... awful. Rather than doing it
| "properly," since I already had all the code I had written to do
| the analysis for my institution, I literally just ran it on the
| entire data set (10GB or so) for every organization that existed
| and then just put some result file on S3. My "site" would just
| let folks search for their institution, and present the data with
| a couple graphs, some nice visuals, and have them print it out. I
| was ashamed of it in a technical sense.
|
| But I just bought a domain and tweeted at a journalist. Whelp,
| two weeks later, I had my picture in the city's biggest paper, my
| org got some positive press, did a service for other non-profits,
| had folks reaching out to me about jobs, etc. It took SO LITTLE
| effort, and every instinct I had was that it was bad and I
| shouldn't publish it. But the reality is I had already done 95%
| of the work... committing to just do the extra 5% was so hard to
| do, but in hindsight, so obviously amazing ROI, even if it hadn't
| gotten the attention it did.
|
| Secondly, I built a reading app for a teacher at my school to let
| him do an activity where kids would jumble up sentences and
| paragraphs in order to help them understand transition words. The
| only reason I agree to try to do this was that I was learning
| React at the time and wanted to play with the React drag and drop
| library. After a weekend, I had it essentially working, and it
| was a success in his classroom. And here, too, it was to be the
| end of it... but I pushed myself through it, added a simple login
| mechanic, user account, etc. I had a small technical question as
| I was wrapping up, and I posted it on reddit. Someone who worked
| at a nonprofit mentioned to me that the app could potentially
| qualify for a grant that the Verizon foundation was running for
| learning apps. I applied... and we got it. The money award helped
| pay for my entire grad school tuition.
|
| Really... just ship it!
| wpietri wrote:
| This is awesome!
|
| And I want to add that the same applies if you ship it and it
| doesn't succeed. Because then you either learn that you're
| barking up the wrong tree or what to try next.
|
| A decade ago I did a startup with a pal who is an excellent
| product manager. He had an idea that sounded great. So great
| that we actually raised some seed money. But when we built a
| basic prototype, it turned out people hated it. [1] That sounds
| like a bad outcome. But if it's not going to work, then the
| sooner you find that out, the less time you waste on it.
|
| So yes, ship early and pay close attention to how people
| receive it.
|
| [1] more here in a 5-minute Ignite talk he did on it: Here's a
| 5-minute ignite talk from him: https://vimeo.com/24749599
| ambicapter wrote:
| > The money award helped pay for my entire grad school tuition.
|
| Is that what the award was...intended for? You maybe don't want
| to brag about that on the internet.
| klysm wrote:
| That's what I was gonna say lol, pretty sure that's not legal
| at all.
| pphysch wrote:
| Usually the recruitment org will use the grant money to hire
| someone to work on the grant project, at which point the
| money is successfully laundered for any legal use by the
| employee.
|
| Or you can simply attribute X% of an existing salary to the
| grant, and not even bother hiring someone new.
|
| It's relatively easy to spend grant money on anything, as
| long as it's not in unreasonable amounts.
| beambot wrote:
| I assume the award was to pay for development. As long as it
| wasn't grossly in excess of prevailing dev wages, why
| shouldn't they be able to use their salary as they see
| fit...?
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| That's exactly right -- along with the money I had to
| introduce the app to a few schools, collect feedback, make
| improvements, etc., which is what the money was for and
| which I did. It just worked out nicely that I was in grad
| school at the time and it matched to what my outstanding
| balance was!
| alin23 wrote:
| The first project sounds like you just thought of a really
| clever caching mechanism :) if the data rarely changes and the
| cache is still valid then why not, I think you did find the
| "proper" way to do it!
|
| As programmers we tend to want to generalize a lot, when in
| fact you can get to 80% of solving the real pain of a task with
| the first 20% of the work. The rest of the work can usually be
| done by a human much faster and with more trust than a three-
| thousand-if-elif-else solution would get.
| pcwelder wrote:
| I have an opposite story.
|
| I created a reddit bot that recommended some words to the users
| on https://reddit.com/r/whatstheword subreddit posts.
|
| I could've done a lot of things to improve quality, but it looked
| good as a first draft and shipped it following that philosophy.
| It turned out to be buggy, and the bot ended up getting banned
| after an overnight run.
|
| So I think "just ship it" applies only in a large market where
| you can recover, and losing a few customers is expected.
| s_dev wrote:
| How would you know that the bot would have been banned without
| shipping? What is preventing you from improving and re-
| releasing the bot? Sounds like you got the fast feedback you
| needed from shipping.
| pcwelder wrote:
| I don't want to circumvent the ban by creating a new account,
| it's against the rules, and mods will ban it without
| considering anything else. I could try convincing the mods,
| but it'll not be easy.
|
| > Sounds like you got the fast feedback you needed from
| shipping
|
| I did get fast feedback and fresh views on what's lacking,
| and it was a good learning experience. But if I were to do it
| again, I'd spent 4x the time to include more functionality
| and do extensive testing.
| cwoolfe wrote:
| This article was funny and had a good moral wrapped in it. The
| part where he pays his competitor is priceless. "A tear rolled
| down my cheek for every single digit of my credit card that I
| entered in their app"
| maxverse wrote:
| Also my favorite part. Poetry.
| onion2k wrote:
| "Maybe this is actually obvious, but it's still a common mistake
| in startups so I'll say it - you don't have to believe your
| product is good to start selling; you just have to be better than
| not having the product. You don't even have to believe it's the
| best, or believe it's complete, or even like it. People will
| happily give you money for anything that makes their pain point
| slightly less painful."
|
| Me, 3 hours ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31351147
| [deleted]
| DalekBaldwin wrote:
| This is the general answer to "why is there so much bad code?"
| in almost any context. The marginal value of a poorly-written
| solution compared to no solution is usually much larger than
| the marginal value of a well-written solution compared to a
| poorly-written solution.
| rco8786 wrote:
| In some ways it's a rule that _only_ bad code gets shipped. I
| find that heuristic helpful in my day job.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I think, one factor of this is attaching your pride or self
| worth to the product you are building and picking wrong KPI.
|
| This thing you are building will prove everyone how smart or
| [SOMETHING ELSE] you are and the only way to have this happen
| is to strike at once, shock and awe everyone with your
| brilliance. You can't simply launch an imperfect product, what
| that will say about you?
| gamerDude wrote:
| In fact, you don't even have to have a product to start
| selling. All my successful products and companies started by
| selling first and building something only once I already had
| someone who wanted it. Those turned into companies generating
| $100k/mon.
|
| The ones where I just went and built something and started
| selling the MVP are making a couple $100/mon.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| Mind me asking what they are?
| cushychicken wrote:
| We are our own worst critics, and that truth prevents so many
| dope ideas from becoming real.
| lbriner wrote:
| I wouldn't quite agree that people will happily give you money
| for anything that makes their pain less. There is still
| oboarding friction, possible import issues, fear of vendor
| lock-in etc.
|
| I think it is something that is easy to describe in theory,
| "ship what people want", "pivot quickly" etc. but the truth is
| most of us think we have solved a problem with our product but
| as soon as the first customer says, "I would buy it if you
| changed all those things", we quickly get stuck between,
| "product market fit" and "I am not solving your problem so
| let's find the customer whose problem I am solving" to avoid
| creating something that only customer wants.
| onion2k wrote:
| _There is still oboarding friction, possible import issues,
| fear of vendor lock-in etc._
|
| My point isn't really about the customer - it's about the
| startup, and the belief that you'll get to where you want to
| be eventually. Every single reason a founder can come up with
| not to be out there selling like "The product isn't
| finished", "It needs feature X", "It's not fast enough", "It
| needs better design", etc is wrong. No matter how bad your
| product is, if it's enough to solve the problem _a bit_ then
| someone will pay for it. Any improvements you can make after
| that just increases the number of people who 'll buy.
|
| The fun game of running a startup is to make sure you're
| finding enough customers to make enough money to pay for
| building new things that enables you to find more customers,
| until you're big enough to either be self-sustaining or exit.
| codingdave wrote:
| > My point isn't really about the customer - it's about the
| startup,
|
| Startups _are_ about the customer. Every single thing we
| do, whether related to tech or not, is to find and satisfy
| a customer 's need in order to make it worth their while to
| give us money for our product. I think we agree on that,
| but if you ever disconnect your perspective or decisions
| from the customer, you open yourself up to going off-track.
| wildmanx wrote:
| > Every single reason a founder can come up with not to be
| out there selling like "The product isn't finished", "It
| needs feature X", "It's not fast enough", "It needs better
| design", etc is wrong.
|
| But don't you run the risk of some potential customer
| coming, trying it, deciding it's crap, moving on, and now
| they are burned for the foreseeable future? So, once your
| product isn't _that_ crap anymore, they won 't come back
| try again, since your brand is burned and has built a
| "that's crap" reputation?
| altdataseller wrote:
| This is a problem in a market where they are maybe a
| small # of potential customers (ie. a niche market like
| 'satellite imagery data'), but not if your market is the
| Fortune 10K
| cushychicken wrote:
| >I wouldn't quite agree that people will happily give you
| money for anything that makes their pain less.
|
| I think OP's point is that the customer is a better judge of
| "worth" in the sense of money spent vs pain reduced than you
| are.
|
| It's impossible to do that worth test yourself. Expose to
| what you make to customers; see if they vote with their
| dollars.
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| Aka JobsToBeDone theory of innovation.
| spamizbad wrote:
| This is extremely true.
|
| I think some people are "maximizers" - They will always do
| research to seek out the "best" for their given budget for even
| moderately priced purchases. Engineers tend to fit this
| profile, so its easy for them to get psyched-out when trying to
| ship a product.
|
| But people - and businesses - aren't always like this. They
| will buy what's available and seems to get the job done and
| seems like less of a hassle.
|
| I worked at a company that at one point had an inferior product
| to our biggest competitor. We survived and they went out of
| business. Looking back, one big reason was the fact that we
| were able to fly under their radar until we had feature parity.
| We had no fear of shipping early... or shipping half-baked
| features. I kind of cringe now looking back. And when we
| finally eclipsed them (as those half-baked features slowly
| became fully-baked) we were still invisible to them - it wasn't
| until we started poaching some large accounts of theirs that we
| finally landed on their radar.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > They will buy what's available and seems to get the job
| done and seems like less of a hassle.
|
| Enter AWS and GCP. People wonder why businesses seem to burn
| 10s of millions of dollars by choosing AWS instead of self-
| hosting, but the personnel and time advantage of offloading
| to AWS is often worth it.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. And I'd add that although engineers tend to be more
| prone to behave as optimizers, we are all optimizers for some
| things and satisficers for others.
|
| If you're starting to sell a product, it's really valuable to
| spend some time thinking about areas in which you behave as a
| satisficer, a person who's just looking for "good enough".
| Maybe it's buying rice. Or apples. Or where you fill up your
| car. Or buying jeans or flatware or toilet paper. There will
| be some things where your goal is to devote as little time
| and attention to possible to make the choice. Where you just
| want it to work adequately for your purpose.
|
| The truth is most people are in satisficer mode for most
| purchases, if only because we don't have the time to really
| dig in on everything. Thinking about one's product from a
| satisficer perspective can be really helpful, as they tend to
| value things differently. They can also be much easier to
| sell to and are more likely to stay loyal as long as things
| are going smoothly.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| It's worse if we routinely read highly critical message
| boards like this one. I'm currently developing a desktop app
| using Electron, but comments like this [1] make me wonder if
| I should scrap it and start over using purely Rust and/or
| C++.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31350035
| dceddia wrote:
| 100%! I had the same fears when I started rewriting a
| native Mac video editing app in Electron last year, that it
| would be a big hurdle and that people would hate it. I
| don't think that's actually true anymore outside of our
| limited tech bubble. I also don't think it's necessarily
| true that "Electron == slow", especially if you can offload
| the heavy stuff to native code and use Electron just for
| the UI.
|
| I switched to using Tauri recently though, with the same
| sort of architecture - Svelte front end, Rust for the heavy
| stuff, and it's working out nicely. It's actually faster
| than the Mac app in most ways (and to be fair, Electron
| worked well too, but the installer size and startup time
| bugged me)
|
| If you don't like the bloat of Electron and don't mind
| dealing with 2 browser engines instead of 1 (Webview2 +
| Safari), Tauri is worth a look. Doubly so if you already
| know some Rust. They're still a bit early days in some
| respects, so it depends on what Electron features you need.
| samhw wrote:
| Honestly, I say this as a big Rust user: ignore that shit.
| At the level of writing a desktop app, the truth is that
| you're already using a vast amount of CPU and memory, and
| eking out performance gains on that level is not going to
| make a vast difference. It's very likely that your Rust
| code would end up being littered with .clone() and the
| like, and likely less performant than well-written JS.
|
| Also, V8 is an incredible piece of technology, and is not
| _that_ far off being competitive with Rust or C++. In some
| scenarios GC (by which I mean tracing) can outperform
| reference counting, or even Rust-style malloc+free. The
| event loop architecture is also very naturally fitted to
| user interfaces.
|
| Ignore the HN opinionmongers and build with whatever tools
| you can work with. You'll be much faster and more flexible,
| and you'll gain an understanding of what the bottlenecks
| are, which you can use to do _targeted_ optimisation later
| on :)
| Perseids wrote:
| I find it really fascinating how a completely different
| subset of Hackernews users answers to you than are present
| on other threads. As literary no sibling is voicing a
| dissenting opinion I feel compelled to present it:
|
| Purely from the user perspective I hate electron, because
| of its _RAM_ usage. The speed argument is a straw man: Of
| course V8 is fast. And yes, VSCode is a very good IDE. But
| the problem is real world electron application don 't scale
| down. In my (of course biased) experience even simple
| electron applications use at least half a gigabyte of RAM,
| often a whole gigabyte. If you're on a beefy 32gb machine
| you'll never noticed the difference. But on the 8gb
| machines most people around me use, these electron apps
| really take up a huge fraction of RAM. And swapping is
| definitely noticeable slow, even on SSDs. The "think about
| the planet" argument comes to play, when I need to upgrade
| my PC because RAM is the bottleneck. And seriously what
| fraction of the population even has the knowledge to only
| upgrade the RAM and not buy a whole new PC.
|
| If I had to advise you personally, I might even tell you to
| choose electron. But be aware that you are using the
| "defect" option in the prisoner's dilemma: as everybody
| around you is choosing the societally harmful option of
| wasting resources you are at a competitive disadvantage to
| do the right thing. And also: electron has stolen mind
| share off of better solutions, so the documentation there
| is also not in the best place.
|
| And even worse, those people I reach with my argument, and
| thus put at a competitive disadvantage because they are
| going the extra mile to do the rights thing, might be those
| that I want to support the most, because they might be
| willing to the right (IMO) things at other topics I value
| as well, like the importance of privacy.
|
| So what is the conclusion? I have no idea how to fix our
| collective resource waste and it is hard to assign
| individual responsibility and I'm deeply dissatisfied by
| the whole situation.
| datagram wrote:
| > So what is the conclusion? I have no idea how to fix
| our collective resource waste and it is hard to assign
| individual responsibility and I'm deeply dissatisfied by
| the whole situation.
|
| I think the most likely conclusion is that once OSes are
| guaranteed to have a modern-enough browser engine (this
| is close to being true for Windows since they introduced
| WebView2), Electron could update their framework to use
| the system's native webview (or at least make it
| available as an option for the developer). This would
| bring back the problem of having to test in multiple
| browsers, but I'd rather test against an old version of
| Chromium, or even Safari, than have to test against the
| old Edge engine in WebView1.
|
| Edit: Did some more reading, and the way Electron
| discusses WebView2 doesn't seem to imply that they're
| interested in integrating with it:
| https://www.electronjs.org/blog/webview2
|
| But regardless, I think all it would take is someone else
| making a framework that uses native webviews and
| implements enough of Electron's APIs/tooling to be close
| to a drop-in replacement. (Then again, how many people
| are using Preact?)
| cercatrova wrote:
| > _I find it really fascinating how a completely
| different subset of Hackernews users answers to you than
| are present on other threads. As literary no sibling is
| voicing a dissenting opinion_
|
| I suspect the difference is because they are responding
| from a developer's mindset, not a user's. For devs,
| Electron really is the easiest way to make desktop apps,
| especially if one already has web experience. Users who
| dislike Electron are generally seen as a vocal minority
| (how many people use Slack or VSCode vs non-Electron
| variants?). But then you have this vocal minority
| congregating on HN, which is especially focused on speed,
| and you get comments like the parent linked, dismissing
| Electron.
|
| The dev point of view is more prevalent in this thread
| because the linked article is all about how a dev failed
| to ship an app because they thought it wasn't good
| enough, which is exactly the problem Electron solves,
| even if it's worse for the user.
| spamizbad wrote:
| I couldn't imagine building a desktop app with anything
| other than Electron these days UNLESS I had significant
| prior experience with some other toolchain.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Ignore that! I mean I do hope Electron one day adds
| performance tuning knobs, to disable some browser
| behaviours so you as a dev can speed up the electron app.
| But yeah use what you want. I would use it for desktop (I
| would probably just wrap a web app in it, 2 for 1)
| electroly wrote:
| You have to just ignore software moralizers like that;
| people who have goals other than solving problems for users
| in a cost effective way. They aren't common, they're just
| really loud. There's a reason Electron is incredibly
| popular and it's not because the developers are stupid or
| careless.
| ratww wrote:
| "Desktop App" could be anything from a taskbar app with a
| couple screens, to a CRUD app, to something that plays
| video, to a screenshot app, to something that only deals
| with audio, to something that only really needs system
| dialogs, etc, etc...
|
| Electron works great for some of those use cases.
|
| The other stuff works great for other use cases.
|
| Anyone giving general advice on that is giving bad advice,
| period.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Nah, if you do really believe creating what is effectively
| a web app is faster than a proper desktop one, go ahead and
| create it.
|
| The only useful recommendation here is that, when you have
| some time, and don't have to rewrite an entire app, and if
| you expect to target the desktop again, you will gain from
| learning desktop frameworks. But absolutely not now while
| you are on the middle of something.
| zrobotics wrote:
| I'm someone who tends to hate on electron, but definitely
| ignore those comments. If you have a large, experienced
| team who can easily crank out a native app, then there is
| potential for increased performance, but for solo projects
| and small teams the increased productivity alone is worth
| it. It's way better to have something available than a
| promised feature that may ship in 2 years.
|
| Plus, there are tons of slow buggy apps that are written in
| c++, that doesn't guarantee performant software. Electron
| doesn't need to be slow either, VSCode demonstrates that.
| Especially for a solo dev or small team, electron is for
| sure the right choice for a desktop app.
|
| Edit: the reason I tend to dislike electron is that apps
| don't often follow native UI trends, which is definitely a
| solvable problem.
| camgunz wrote:
| As Charm would say: "haters > /dev/null". Build what you
| want!
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| "talk to the hand" in pre computer speak I guess!
| esjeon wrote:
| This is just a personal viewpoint, but I think the era of "just
| ship it" will be gone after a decade or so.
|
| * Software "development" skill will become so common and cheap
| that simple tools won't get any market.
|
| * The market will be dictated by tools instead of code _content_.
|
| * Language-as-a-service will be a thing, as it allows customers
| to fill in business requirements AND allows the backing company
| to perform engineering behind the scene.
| [deleted]
| loh wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree, and I may even be working on what
| you're describing here, which I wrote a little bit about on my
| company blog (bit of a shameless plug, sorry):
| https://blog.molecule.dev/system-integration-tool-not-framew...
| techplex wrote:
| I know it doesn't matter for the point the author is trying to
| make but, Such a tease, what does the app do?
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Given they got suspicious about if their idea was stolen, it'd
| be interesting if the app solves something unique, or some very
| common problem.
| paxys wrote:
| Yeah I'm fully expecting it to be something like a project
| management app. There are tons of ideas which you think are
| unique, but many, many others have them as well, because they
| run into all the same problems as you in their day to day
| life.
| mynegation wrote:
| I remember he at some point had a landing page for a browser
| that would show you a web page in multiple resolutions, all at
| once, with hot reload. Not sure if this is the application, he
| might have had another one.
| bambax wrote:
| Yes, he made Sizzy, and it's apparently very successful.
| Here's the story (quite well told I think):
| https://kitze.io/posts/github-stars-wont-pay-your-rent
| Markstar wrote:
| I'm a bit in a similar boat: My wife's department (university)
| asked me for a 'little' favor, which I programmed in Java to get
| back into programming after ~4 years of being a stay-at-home dad.
| After finishing the prototype in 2019, we made the life-changing
| decision to focus on making it a program that we want to sell.
| Decided to go C++ and Electron, but with the corona virus and me
| taking forever to learn all the skills, I still haven't released
| it as of now. :(
|
| However, I'm still working on it and hope to release it in time
| for a conference that I signed up for, so this will be a 'make or
| break' year for me.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Make sure they don't claim copyright on your code.
| Markstar wrote:
| Thank you for the heads up, but I don't see how.
|
| They were not part of the development and have no financial
| involvement. Hmm, now that I think about it, I am going to
| the conference as affiliate of the university... :/
| jacquesm wrote:
| All it would take is that they specified what to build and
| claimed that you never sent them an invoice but that it was
| work for hire regardless.
|
| Remember that they are much bigger than you and if there is
| money involved they may well act irrational, and as a
| smaller party this can be very unnerving and costly.
|
| Best to make sure that you have it spelled out that the
| code is yours, stick a big fat copyright sign on top of it
| and if possible get them on the record that it is clear
| that the rights belong to you. When in doubt, consult and
| IP lawyer.
| Markstar wrote:
| Again, thanks for taking the time to write! It is
| certainly good advice!
|
| Luckily the situation is in this specific case is that I
| don't have to worry about it - I'm 100% sure of it. My
| nightmares come more from the fear that I will finish one
| day and find out that I took too long and I missed my
| window of opportunity.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ok :) Best of luck then, I hope you will make out like a
| bandit. If you do run into trouble feel free to reach
| out.
| MockObject wrote:
| Why didn't you ship the Java version?
| camillomiller wrote:
| Or "perfect is the enemy of done"
| rawfan wrote:
| I built a really shitty version of linkedin for people in my
| school to stay in touch after graduation (in 1998 i think).
| People were really using it and pressing me to improve on it.
|
| I just didn't care and at some time just deleted it (angering
| many friends). No regrets, though. I was definitely not ready to
| take the idea any further, back then.
| pflenker wrote:
| A big fallacy that I always see - and that is implied by this
| post - is that the work ends after shipping, a.k.a. "build it and
| they will come". That doesn't happen any more. So after you
| "ship" it, you need to promote it, advertise it, create buzz
| around it and make people use it. And that is a totally different
| kind of beast than coding something.
|
| But on the flip side, if you develop a side project just for
| yourself, you most certainly learn something. Heck, the author
| explicitly mentioned learning React Native, which is absolutely
| great and definitely worth investing time into.
|
| Learning things is valuable in itself.
| aliswe wrote:
| most importantly you also need to continue developing it
| sharps_xp wrote:
| pkrumins wrote:
| You're so wrong. I built it and they came. And when I say they,
| I mean millions of users. Here's my blog post about it:
| https://catonmat.net/if-you-build-it-they-will-come
| pflenker wrote:
| Congratulations! Though in claiming that since it worked in
| your case, it will work in the majority of cases you commit
| the anecdotal evidence fallacy.
| aliswe wrote:
| aka Survivorship bias.
| OrwellianTimes wrote:
| 'So I deployed it on Vercel, bought a domain name and posted it
| on the brand twitter account we created a few days ago. Why am
| I not getting users?'
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I also think they didn't learn one important lesson (maybe).
| MVP's don't need bells and whistles. Stop adding that "one last
| thing". It's a Minimum Viable Product. It should be lean, and
| somewhat polished. Add features later.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The biggest fallacy in my experience is that the thing you
| built isn't done at ship because your first build is only what
| you thought of to build. Your users might need some of what you
| built, but the feature requests will quickly show you that you
| only thought a fraction of the possible things a user would
| want.
| bambax wrote:
| > _" build it and they will come"_
|
| I also used to think that build it and they will come was a big
| fallacy, but it's not really. The fallacy is, "build it and the
| whole world will fight to get what you built". That sure won't
| happen by itself or by chance.
|
| But if you build something reasonably good, _some_ people will
| come. That may not be enough for you to make a living out of
| it, but it will make it worthwhile.
|
| > _Learning things is valuable in itself._
|
| From the same author:
|
| > _Open source, writing blog posts, and playing with tweaking
| lint settings and editor themes all day are completely fine
| until your landlord knocks on your door or you 're at the
| checkout at the grocery store. You're doing a crazy 2-hour
| commute every day telling yourself "well at least I'm learning
| a lot about SVG". Fuck that._
|
| https://kitze.io/posts/github-stars-wont-pay-your-rent
|
| (I am actually, currently learning a lot about SVG and love it;
| but the quote is right that it's not paying the rent.)
| pflenker wrote:
| Learning helps you pay your rent in the long run though, as
| it lifts your overall qualification level.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| One thing I've found to not be fallacious is "if you don't
| want them to come, they will come". With open source this is
| so true. My projects that I don't want to actively maintain
| anymore are always the ones that generate lots of issues and
| pull requests and stars, versus the ones I actually use on a
| daily basis that no one but me cares about.
| anothersullivan wrote:
| I completely agree. A couple months ago I received the same
| "Ship It" advice on a HN Comment.
|
| I did, but no one came. Marketing feels like an orthogonal
| skill but can not be overstated enough.
| tootie wrote:
| I saw one startup whose "launch" was a splash page with a logo,
| description of an imaginary product they hadn't built yet and a
| Hubspot signup form that you sign up for news. These guys had
| it right. Get customer insight while you build features. In
| fact, they were building something that has been solved since
| before the computer was invented, they were just going to have
| a splashy brand.
| konschubert wrote:
| Serious question, how do you know whether it's your product or
| your marketing that sucks?
|
| For example, I tried twitter ads for my product [1] and I got
| zero sales after spending $50.
|
| What are good marketing strategies for niche hardware products?
|
| [1] https://www.invisible-computers.com/
| sofixa wrote:
| That's precisely the thing i am going to be looking for soon.
| Yours looks pretty good, but i find the product page to be a
| bit lacking in detail and polish ( including typos like "come
| with wooden stand" instead of "comes"), which can be off-
| putting.
| s1mon wrote:
| It's not clear who your product is for. "Everyone" is the
| wrong answer, BTW. If you try to make everyone happy, you
| usually end up making no one happy. It's super important to
| focus on actual user problems.
|
| 1. Is this solving a pain point the user has already?
|
| 2. Do they currently have some less-than-great solution in
| place?
|
| 3. Are they willing to pay for something which will solve
| their problem?
|
| Looking at your product, I see a possible market, but it
| might need to be tuned (UX and/or marketing) to be
| successful.
|
| A relative of mine needs 24/7 in-home care. There are a
| number of people involved and a decent number of Dr
| appointments etc to coordinate. The people involved with
| elder care are super low tech, but in her case, a shared
| visible calendar could be useful.
|
| In general, the products for seniors and/or people with
| dementia or other disabilities tend to have horrible design
| and still aren't really suited to physical/cognitive
| challenges of the users and their caregivers. It's a niche,
| but one that could use a lot of developments.
| openknot wrote:
| Twitter ads are widely seen as ineffective versus other
| advertising channels (to verify for yourself, you can check
| r/PPC, r/marketing, and other subreddits via a
| site:reddit.com Google search). Results are likely lower due
| to poorer analytics, which translates to your ads not
| appearing to the most relevant people.
|
| Google Search Ads and Facebook/Instagram ads are seen as more
| effective in comparison (results are likely higher as
| Facebook/Meta are relatively better at analytics, so
| advertisements appear to more relevant people).
|
| In addition, $50 is not a lot to spend on an ad campaign. It
| generally takes a higher number of advertisement views by the
| same person (preferably across different websites and
| channels) to produce an intended result.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Let's say you are a guy in a basement spending your own
| money. What is the minimum spend that you see for
| advertising to be at all effective?
| sdwr wrote:
| Piling on for some feedback here. This isnt a product that
| people _need_. Everyone already has access to a calendar on
| their phone, on paper, on a whiteboard, whatever.
|
| So it has to be something people _want_. And it doesnt look
| cool /sleek/exciting enough for people to want it. The bezel
| is huge, its black and white, and looks overpriced.
|
| Some marketing angles work, but your product has to honestly
| support them. Ex:
|
| - hackable. Need to show off connection interface, API, some
| cool project examples. As far as I can tell, LEDs never hurt
| here.
|
| - sophisticated/elegant.
|
| - useful. Seems easier to use /better than what people are
| already doing.
|
| - cool. Buys access to a group of exciting people you
| wouldn't get to meet otherwise.
|
| But the absolute best way to market a hardware product is to
| stop making it about tech. My dad bought a digital picture
| frame a while back as a gift. Thats a way easier bar to
| clear, its emotional, sentimental, symbolic, so the technical
| execution doesnt need to be as flawless.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Hey, this is kind of cool! If only it supported caldav I
| might get one.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| I don't think the landing page is bad. Product seems cool. I
| don't agree with the people talking about extra features. The
| main issue I feel is that this is something only people with
| quite a bit of money and leisure can afford (because it's not
| solving a direct problem, it's just for convenience). So you
| need something on the page that will unconsciously persuade
| these people that it's cool. It's an upmarket product but the
| website doesn't advertise it as such.
|
| Rather than doing online ads I think a promo vid with a
| progressive looking family / hipsters would be more
| effective. ;)
| samatman wrote:
| Looks like it's sold out, which is a pity, I enjoy the
| design. You have a typo on the front page, 'eletronig' for
| 'electronic'.
| konschubert wrote:
| I fixed the typo, thank you!
|
| You can leave your email to be notified when it's back in
| stock.
| Multiplayer wrote:
| I'll buy one. Agree with the comments that you need to put a
| little time in to describe this thing in a lot more detail!
|
| That said, I would love to have my calendar always just
| sitting there on my desk. This is the perfect item for anyone
| with adhd or similar. I would target that niche.
| konschubert wrote:
| I've heard that before from another customer, that it's a
| good product for ADHD.
| corobo wrote:
| If your business wraps up does this turn into a pretty brick?
|
| My instant wonder and would be a deal breaker until I found
| out if the device pulls from the calendar directly or via a
| proxy you run if it helps any
|
| Going by the language in the privacy policy it's the proxy
| method. I'd have to pass, personally. Looks great but I got
| no use for it if you shut down
|
| Also it's "sold out" so I assume it doesn't and won't exist
| until you get enough interest. For me this is more an impulse
| buy, give me a week thinking about it and I'd forget about it
| completely (then 2 years later I get an email "xyzzy is
| complete and shipping now!" with no reminder of what it is)
| konschubert wrote:
| It's pretty cheap to keep the API running and I promised
| myself I'd be doing that for many years even if I make 0
| money with it.
|
| But I want to be upfront about the fact that there are
| things beyond my control that might force me to shut down
| some or all functionality. For example, if google shuts
| down access to the calendar API, the calendar feature will
| be in trouble.
| executive wrote:
| [1] looks like a hastily prepared landing page for a
| dropshipped AliExpress product. 1 photo, no video. Why only
| Google Calendar? How to 'use your phone to connect'? Is there
| a companion app? Why is contact page under Policies and
| labelled Imprint? Why 2 Privacy Policy links? About us
| section reads like boilerplate scam and links off-site to
| some random blog. Line height config looks ugly in bottom nav
| area.
|
| At least it works without Javascript.
| konschubert wrote:
| Hi, thank you for having a go over it! This is great
| feedback.
|
| I find it really, really hard to take good pictures and
| even harder to take video. I am getting help with that and
| I hope the situation will improve.
|
| yes, there is a companion app, should I make that more
| clear?
|
| The contact page is labelled imprint because that's the law
| here in Germany... I could have an additional contact page
| though.
|
| The two privacy policies are because one is for visitors of
| the website and one is for users of my product. Two totally
| different contexts, and I was unsure how to fuse them.
| Probably also something I should get help with.
|
| I cut down on the about us section. But I agree this needs
| some work still...
| executive wrote:
| Looking better already!
|
| On clickthru Shopify page, there are some decent photos.
| But would replace/remove the Amazon text in one of them.
|
| Also would show the back / cord & connector.
|
| Yes, would have apps page with direct links to store.
|
| Re: contact page. Is this actually true? This page for
| example still says contact when viewing Germany version
| of page. https://teenage.engineering/contact
|
| Re: privacy: you could have one link, with some way to
| show both once you get to that page. Few will read this
| anyway, may as well not clutter home page with 2 links.
|
| Good luck my friend.
| konschubert wrote:
| Thank you
| bemmu wrote:
| You might be able to get some customers with that spend on
| average, but could have hit zero just from bad luck
| (randomness is clumpy). Customers can easily cost tens of
| dollars to acquire.
|
| As an example, for my own subscription box service the cost
| to acquire a customer from YouTube ads was ~$49.
| aidos wrote:
| Yeah, your website sucks. The product looks really nice, but
| the landing page barely even feels like it wants me to check
| it out. I can barely even tell it's a landing page.
|
| I was actually thinking about exactly this product earlier
| this week. I have kids and their schedule is really
| complicated these days - some days some of them need packed
| lunches, uniform is different on PE days etc etc. I want to
| walk into the kitchen and have the details for the day right
| there. There's a real use for the product, you need to work
| on the landing page (I'd suggest considering starting again
| with a template)
| konschubert wrote:
| Puh, I tried so hard with that website. I don't know,
| design and marketing is just sooo hard for me.
|
| Do you have a template that you think I should use?
|
| And do you know maybe somebody who could help me build a
| better landing page without costing me all my life savings?
| aidos wrote:
| Sorry, didn't want to poo poo the whole thing. Don't get
| down about it! This is an opportunity to rework the site
| so it works for you.
|
| As sibling comment says, use a website builder instead.
| Something like shopify will have everything you need
| (though I'm not massively familiar with it myself).
|
| Another suggestion I have is to focus on the target
| audience. I skimmed the doc you linked to about uploading
| images (couldn't find any extra docs on the site at a
| glance btw) and it felt geek heavy in terminology.
|
| The shots of the device look nice, but there's an app for
| managing it? Is it easy to use? If I buy this device
| would my wife ever use it or is it too complicated?
|
| Are you actually making these devices yourself? If I were
| hand making these my starting point would be to sell to
| friends so I could iterate on the whole thing. There are
| a lot of people on here talking about ads and marketing
| but honestly, hustle is how you get started.
| konschubert wrote:
| Nono, I am very grateful for your feedback! If my website
| is bad it means that it can be improved and then my
| conversions will go app and that's great news!
|
| I don't define myself by my design skills so you didn't
| hurt any feelings :D
|
| I am a bit wary of using Shopify for landing pages
| because I'm worried it will make it feel even more like a
| dropshipping enterprise...
|
| But maybe that's the smaller problem if at least my
| website looks good then!
| cercatrova wrote:
| Make a website with an online builder and use their
| templates. For example:
|
| - Webflow: https://webflow.com/templates
|
| - SquareSpace: https://www.squarespace.com/templates
|
| - Shopify: https://themes.shopify.com/
|
| I'd recommend Shopify, and a minimalist, light theme such
| as the one below, since your product is made of light
| wood.
|
| https://themes.shopify.com/themes/craft/styles/default?su
| rfa...
| konschubert wrote:
| I already use shopify for the shop page,
| https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-
| cale...
|
| But I've been wary of using it for the whole website
| since I didn't want my whole page structure and content
| coupled to shopify.
|
| And I didn't want it all to feel like a shopify store.
|
| But maybe that was a bad priority and I should just get
| over it.
|
| Thanks for the tip with the theme, btw
| cercatrova wrote:
| Yeah, at risk of sounding brash, I do think you should
| "get over it" as your main priority is to sell items, not
| to build a well-structured website in HTML. The latter is
| ancillary, merely a means to an end.
| happimess wrote:
| Rad product! Can I feed it arbitrary images/html/something?
| konschubert wrote:
| Yes, arbitrary images, you just have to specify the image
| url.
|
| Here are the instructions, so you can see how it works:
| https://www.invisible-computers.com/invisible-
| calendar/image...
| lbriner wrote:
| I think like others have said, it does depend on whether you
| are targetting the mass market or a smaller (and hopefully more
| lucrative) niche.
|
| Plenty of companies don't do what you say and still become
| successful.
|
| However, for a pure software solution with little market
| expertise, I suspect what you are saying is correct because the
| barrier is so low. If you can "build an app" in a weekend, so
| can 1000s of other people.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| They "can" but will they?
| psygn89 wrote:
| If it prints money and can be made in a weekend then of
| course. However, the more niche it is to an audience or
| knowledge needed beforehand (i.e. simple music generator)
| it would no longer be a weekend project.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Yes, Given they couldn't develop the app without planning the
| release, I wonder if they'd have time to properly support it if
| they shipped..
| op00to wrote:
| This article made me so sad - the author really doesn't need to
| be as hard on themselves as they are!
| rob74 wrote:
| I think he was exaggerating to make it a more interesting read.
| Or, at least, I hope so...
| neoyagami wrote:
| Now im going to shipit
| darkteflon wrote:
| From the headline, honestly I thought this was going to involve a
| death.
| llampx wrote:
| I actually thought it was going to involve a Boeing product
| manager. /potshot
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Yes, I would say the "just ship the Therac-25 with the
| Therac-20 firmware" to be a few degrees sadder.
| hoodwink wrote:
| what app is he talking about?
| openplatypus wrote:
| We will never know. He didn't ship it ;)
| nashashmi wrote:
| My only comment here is you got to have thick skin if you want to
| follow this advice. Once you ship it, you will get a hundred
| compliments, and thousands of critiques (mostly from the jealous
| people).
|
| When you don't have thick skin, you don't ship. Ever.
| lbriner wrote:
| So true. I think my biggest negative when it comes to the idea
| of running a business is that thick skin. Not so obnoxious that
| you don't take feedback but realistic that opinions are free
| and come thick and fast!
|
| I think this also plays out when people are always comparing
| themselves to their competitors instead of just concentrating
| on what they are doing well. Just because "Big Company" does
| it, doesn't mean it is worthwhile and that they won't pull it
| in 6 months when they realise they created something useless!
| sbayeta wrote:
| This had me laughing loudly, and sadly.
|
| Really super good article, give it a read if you haven't shipped
| because of reasons
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Kinda feel the app that managed to ship deserved a shoutout in
| this. Your idea is already out there, the value is 0.
| martindbp wrote:
| Yep, I'm there, been going for a year, it's amazing how quickly
| time passes by. Getting ready to ship, for realsies this time.
| Maybe I'm imagining, but due to the unimaginable number of apps
| and SaaS out there today, it's not as easy to put out something
| you're embarrassed about. The only way to do that is to have
| something extremely small and polished, in which case it's almost
| certainly been done already multiple times. I'm sure there are
| some niches still to be filled, but it sure was easier back in,
| say, 2012.
| krallja wrote:
| > it sure was easier back in, say, 2012
|
| I was on HN in 2012. It was not any easier. People said the
| same thing back then. "Oh, if only I had gotten started in
| 2005, with DHTML, when things were easier." "I wish I was
| paying attention when iPhone app store came out."
|
| Just because you missed one boat doesn't mean you'll miss the
| next one. Keep an eye out for it.
|
| <<History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before.
| Nothing under the sun is truly new.>>
| martindbp wrote:
| I hope you're right!
| op00to wrote:
| You can do it! HN believes in you.
| batch12 wrote:
| It still isn't too late to finish the app/site and put it out
| there. Instead, it seems that the author burned out. With that
| said, there's no shame in dropping the project to stay sane.
| sillycube wrote:
| calltrak wrote:
| block_dagger wrote:
| Could have done without the violence expressed in the opening.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Grow up.
| texasviking wrote:
| Hits me in the feels.
|
| In 2011 I had an idea for a ceramic coffee mug with a threaded
| base. then build a screw on base with heating element, battery,
| and QI charger. Screw the base on, set it on a QI charge pad...
| voila "always hot coffee". When you're done for the day, unscrew
| the base, put the mug in the dishwasher. Rinse, repeat.
|
| For a year I researched getting a prototype built, castings, etc.
| Finally decided to just abandon it. Just drink coffee faster and
| it won't get cold.
|
| Now I have 2 Ember mugs and an Ember travel thermos. Still can't
| dishwash it, but dang it's useful.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Why does it need to screw into the heater? I picked up a coffee
| mug heating plate at a garage sale for $3. Works great.
| frontman1988 wrote:
| Being a solo dev on some app/website is not really worth it these
| days. There was a time when you could single-handedly create a
| million dollar app in some niche. But now the competition has
| increased so much that you need VC money or atleast a team if you
| want to create any impact whatsoever.
| simmo9000 wrote:
| I think this is a valid comment questioning where one puts
| their goalpost for their realisation of a funded MVP coming
| from their idea. The market has shifted alot from what it was 5
| years ago... 10 years, 15, 20, 30...
|
| Ideas are what has gotten humanity this far and I am happy to
| see technological advances, in product that makes me happy,
| that come from our Haxor within, so to speak.
|
| It is a big ladder to climb between Idea and Product, one step
| at a time is the only way.
|
| How would one possibly eat an elephant?
|
| Tools are required, for catching, skinning, cooking blah
| blah... and help from folks can be another tool within your
| toolbox whilst you fly solo dev.
|
| Is the statement that the elephant is now too big to catch? It
| is hard to find other hungry folk to help hunt a big thing?
| Where is the hunting ground? Where do you get helping from
| other hungry solo devs to kill an elephant with only your
| inputs of skill, effort and time?
| llampx wrote:
| If your only KPI is "Am I at unicorn valuation yet?" then yes,
| but I'm sure you can do well being a small fish in a big pond.
| There are still underserved markets out there. Find your niche
| and build your product around it.
| slimebart wrote:
| I don't believe this. A solo developer can create a more
| focused product, with less features, and still do well for
| themselves. Once you accept VC money you need to do well for
| the entire company, and the expectation is to be less niche to
| meet many users. Just talking very generally.
| jetbooster wrote:
| Is this not debunked by Wordle's success? That was a single dev
| effort, and sold for multiple millions.
| seiferteric wrote:
| I've had this experience several times. The one that hurts the
| most I think was one I worked on with a friend called VRwalkthru
| that we wanted to sell as a service to real-estate agents and
| people selling their houses. You used a special camera to take
| pano photos throughout a property and keep track of your
| movements and directions in an app (it used accelerator / compass
| data). Then the photos would be converted to photo-spheres and
| arrows would be added you could click on the move to the next
| spot like google street view so you could "walk through" a
| property listing. We got a prototype working and sent cold emails
| to a bunch of real-estate agents and got... nothing, maybe one
| luke-warm response. We eventually gave up. That was about 2011,
| then a few years later along came matterport and I see it on
| practically every listing I look at.. oh well. I guess we didn't
| know how or who to sell it to, or it was not good or professional
| enough, I don't know...
| nradov wrote:
| You should have established personal relationships with a few
| local agents and then offered to do all the work yourselves for
| free to add that service to their listings. If it worked well
| that would have given you some positive references, or at least
| feedback on how to improve.
| alin23 wrote:
| If you want to get paid, projects will need a lot of non-coding
| work after coding the basic features: presentation website,
| payment/licensing, contact forms, ProductHunt/HN launch, copy
| text (have you ever tried to fit what your product solves in two
| short sentences?)
|
| One good strategy I found accidentally through Lunar
| (https://lunar.fyi) is to launch for free, prioritizing the
| contact form, and letting people know that you'll want to make
| the product paid in the future.
|
| After all the user feedback, the product will probably look very
| different from the first free version and most people will want
| to pay for the new polished version. Some will feel betrayed, but
| as long as you're keeping the old free version available, you're
| not doing anything wrong.
|
| I shared Lunar for free for 4 years before doing a huge paid
| update with Apple Silicon support and a ton of user feedback
| implemented. Most people were happy to pay and I'm now doing
| Lunar full time, earning around $3.5k a month, and the best part
| is that Lunar v1 only needed about one week of work to see that
| it solves a real problem.
|
| Even Kitze himself liked it:
| https://twitter.com/thekitze/status/1464203795030761477
| cercatrova wrote:
| Lunar is a great app! I've been using it along with Vivid.
| alin23 wrote:
| Thanks! Not sure if you're aware but Lunar also has XDR
| Brightness: https://lunar.fyi/#xdr
|
| In fact the feature landed in Lunar before Vivid launched and
| it uses a different approach that increases the brightness
| for the whole system instead of only for what's behind an
| overlay like Vivid does (although the overlay also has its
| own advantages like being able to only increase brightness
| for a single window etc. )
|
| It can be activated in the same way as Vivid: increase
| brightness over 100%
| czhu12 wrote:
| The tone of this post suggests that if the author simply just
| shipped, they would be as successful as the competitor.
|
| Building successful products is not a matter of "shipping" but
| also promoting, selling, continually improving, studying user
| behaviors, providing customer support and engaging potential
| customers.
|
| Given that the author wasn't even motivated enough to ship when
| all these other tasks weren't even applicable yet, I can't
| imagine they would be motivated to do all the work after
| shipping.
|
| Frankly, this is a good thing. I've never been more stressed than
| when I've managed to ship a product, picked up a tiny number of
| paying customers, and subsequently realized that many hundreds of
| more hours would have to be poured into the product to make it
| truly useful.
|
| You slowly start working on it, customers are upset and start
| churning, and you're constantly questioning whether it's worth it
| anymore to keep pushing.
|
| The most success I've ever had was building something I
| personally thought is fun and interesting with 0 expectations of
| money or profit, customers be damned. There's tons competitors of
| competitors that do similar things, even before I started it, but
| I couldn't care less.
|
| I'm building https://mintables.club right now, sometimes I pick
| it up for a few hours on a weekend, often I ignore it for weeks,
| but I visit it all the time because I love the artwork people
| upload.
| rob74 wrote:
| Er, nice story, really entertaining to read, but I think it would
| benefit from actually mentioning the "competitor" app that he
| ended up paying money for. I mean, he won't ship his own app
| anymore, so no harm done in mentioning it, right?
| Reason077 wrote:
| I'm curious too!
| SamBam wrote:
| I could see that distracting from the main point. Then it
| becomes "Why were you solving _that_ problem? " "Why did you
| insult their app, it's really great!" "The author's right, no
| one should use app X."
|
| It's not the point of the story.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Agreed, you see it all the time on HN, commentors
| bikeshedding insignificant parts of an article. I'm glad the
| author didn't put in the competitor in the article.
| c03 wrote:
| It's not really a story as it is now though. Someone did
| something better than this guy. It's just a stream slightly
| coherent gonzo ranting.
| samhw wrote:
| In other words, a story? An account of something that
| happened to that person? Does he have to state the names of
| every road he was on and every cafe he went to?
|
| I like this site, but the one thing I'll never understand
| is the outrageously entitled attitudes of so many people
| when it comes to free content, like fat and delirious blog-
| reading Ubus.
| dqpb wrote:
| Until he adds some actual facts, I'm going to assume the
| story is not true.
| caymanjim wrote:
| Yeah, it's hard to know how to feel about this without that
| detail. Would the author's app have beaten it to market? Was
| the competing app actually there all along, and the author
| hadn't done market research? Are they really even solving the
| same problem? I've had plenty of instances of "I thought of
| that 10 years ago!" or even "I solved that 10 years ago!" but
| it's not that simple. My solutions wouldn't have succeeded
| because they weren't usable enough and I wasn't motivated
| enough.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| He has a competitor, but he can still ship now ... right? Sounds
| like he has intimate product knowledge and knows the pain points.
| Maybe pivot to the thing that people who buy the competing
| product need?
| karterk wrote:
| > My app is officially dead.
|
| Most markets are large enough to accommodate several businesses.
| There's really no reason to stop working on something just
| because you find that there is already someone solving that same
| problem. Who knows, they will shut it down at some point, or
| might head upmarket or pivot to a tangential area.
| rozenmd wrote:
| I'm sitting here running the 200th uptime monitoring service,
| laughing at the notion you have to be first to ship a solution
| to a problem.
|
| Build something good, that people want, and iterate rapidly as
| feedback comes in.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| If I may ask: how did you get your early users? and what kind
| of money is this making? (thanks for writing the blog posts,
| I will also read them later).
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| It seems a bit rich to say that when your SaaS has <$5k in
| lifetime revenue.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30427048
|
| I'd say it's even contrary to "laughing at the notion you
| have to be the first to ship a solution to a problem".
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I think an uptime monitoring service will be my back up idea.
| It is like a pizza business, you can always find people who
| want pizza and who will rave about _your_ pizza. Dominos and
| Pizza Hut are not a problem.
| jmstfv wrote:
| As someone who built and sold an uptime monitoring service
| - don't*.
|
| You will have a hard time attracting customers as most
| common marketing channels are very saturated.
|
| *unless you're going to approach it from a unique angle AND
| have access to a customer base; even then, it won't be a
| walk in the park
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yeah, now that you say that it sounds a bit like starting
| a pizza restaurant I guess: hard work. Probably harder as
| the Pizza restaurant has physical presence and proximity,
| where as online, it is more democratic: we are all
| equally shouting into the void for attention.
| jamil7 wrote:
| That's a good analogy, there are some pieces of software
| that are used by so many people that there's always room
| for a slightly different spin on it. Look at notes apps for
| example.
| Reason077 wrote:
| If you have one project that's already successful, however,
| it's probably best to keep focusing on that and not be
| distracted by the one that never shipped.
| bentcorner wrote:
| Yesterday I got a voice mail from a cold call at work from some
| rando (I have no idea how they got my phone #), and they
| mentioned they work for some infrastructure tooling site. I
| share a name with someone higher up in the company so I
| occasionally get cold emails/calls from people thinking they're
| talking to someone with actual purchasing authority, trying to
| hustle some business.
|
| Anyways out of curiosity I go to the site and it's a business
| that's built around a single api call that my organization uses
| internally. I'm simplifying a little, but I can't believe
| someone built a business around this thing that, to me, is
| incredibly simple. (I understand it's more complex than that,
| and we have entire teams backing the goings on behind this api
| call, but still). From their "who's using us" block on the
| landing page they look successful. It's interesting to learn
| how small businesses can find success in the most surprising of
| places.
| superasn wrote:
| You're damn right about that. Just take a look at ipinfo.io,
| site is generating millions for something maxmind had complete
| dominance for decades.
|
| People give waay too many points to having an original idea and
| very little to marketing - yet it's the latter that is
| responsible for the lion's share of any project's success.
| [deleted]
| OJFord wrote:
| And especially if the would-be competitor is so crap, as
| described? I don't really understand the leap from 'oh
| something like this already exists but it sucks' to 'no point
| shipping any more my life is over blog about it instead'.
| kevsim wrote:
| Exactly. In fact, it's even a bit of validation that maybe the
| market you're trying to address actually exists.
| scottndecker wrote:
| Not the saddest; just the most recurring "just ship it" story
| ever.
| zild3d wrote:
| yeah this is the "just ship it" story with 1000 faces, not the
| saddest by any means
| LVanguard wrote:
| I had this experience a couple of months ago when I noticed a gap
| in the shopify app ecosystem. I saw some comments discussing this
| need, found nothing in the store, and had a friend starting a
| shop that could potentially use it as well.
|
| Worked on the app for 2-3 months, polishing, coding, learning
| tailwind and a bit of formal UI design in the process. Kept
| thinking "It's not ready yet. Just needs this hook into the UI.
| Needs React. Needs a Rails backend. Needs built in email
| support"... As you can guess, I never shipped.
|
| Fast forward 7 months later and I found myself browsing the store
| again, and yep, found TWO applications in the store that solved
| the same issue I was attempting to solve months earlier. With
| installs, _and_ reviews! Got pretty down on myself for a couple
| of days with the author 's same sense of happiness, doubt,
| sadness..
|
| I'm working on another application where the same 'hesitate to
| ship' tendencies started rearing their ugly heads. I've started
| experimenting with just setting deadlines for shipping, feature
| complete, etc.
|
| I'm submitting the app to Shopify today. And no, I don't consider
| it anywhere near 'ready'.
| rukuu001 wrote:
| The most affirming thing in the world is making something and
| then selling it.
|
| The second most affirming thing in the world is watching
| someone make the exact thing you thought of and then selling
| it.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Why is selling it affirming? I never got a huge amount of
| satisfaction from selling things. Giving things away always
| brought me more satisfaction.
|
| In fact, putting a price tag on something I was giving away
| always seemed like step 1 towards no longer caring about it.
| hgomersall wrote:
| On the other hand, be pleased the thing you wanted was
| implemented and you have no hassle supporting it.
| sillycube wrote:
| Always focus on your advantages. When they launch earlier, of
| course they can enjoy early users.
|
| As a late comer in the market, you can observe what they miss
| and compensate their weaknesses. You save yourself time because
| you can study from them
| pueblito wrote:
| I had this great idea to make a Linux distro with a ranching
| theme centered on containers. I had a great little basic system
| going with tons of fun ranching puns; I called the containers
| cows and so there was roundup and branding and slaughter etc. I
| even put ASCII barbed wire fences comments to divide sections of
| code. Man I felt so defeated when I found out RancherOS was a
| thing, but without the whimsy
| goatcode wrote:
| Having experienced this very thing, I can say: there's a good
| chance the other guys had already made their app in some form
| long before this guy did. Don't worry, bro: everyone has had a
| cool idea (all of which are very cheap -- ideas, that is) and
| then seen someone else doing it later. The good news is this
| though: if you're dishonest and connected enough, you can still
| make your app succeed. Especially if it's worse than your
| competitors'. I have a strong suspicion that that's how it's
| usually done.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| "The MVP was ready in a few days. I'm not that good of a coder,
| it's just a simple app."
|
| This sentence is incredibly important. If a MVP is ready in 3
| days, then how valuable can that product be?
|
| When literally everyone has access to tools that they believe can
| result in something marketable in only a few days, then we have
| achieved the time when nobody makes money from software.
| Thoughts?
| Multiplayer wrote:
| The MVP is just the beginning of the journey. A toe-hold in a
| market space you are about to explore.
|
| The MVP gives you your first data set to work with.
|
| I know very few people willing to commit to the long journey of
| making something. Even fewer that will bother marketing it.
|
| There is lots of money in this banana stand!
| [deleted]
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > If a MVP is ready in 3 days, then how valuable can that
| product be?
|
| How long do you think it took to come up with a prototype for
| Tinder?
|
| A bunch of photos, a blurb of text, geolocation/distance
| calculation, you like or dislike a profile, and a messaging
| function.
|
| The slight, simple spin on grindr - showing a stack you HAD to
| make your way through - instead of grindr's grid - launched
| them into the stratosphere.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| I agree. But the use of the phrase MVP in place of the phrase
| "initial prototype" is what I am probing. I think that the
| misuse of "MVP" distorts the understanding of the long and
| difficult process of developing and marketing a "viable"
| software product.
| lostcolony wrote:
| If you stop at the MVP, agreed. The implication is either what
| you have in an MVP is good enough no one will compete, or that
| you'll keep moving forward with it once you get any sort of
| validation.
| DethNinja wrote:
| Why not release it regardless? Many SaaS offerings have
| competition, you don't have to aim for a field where competition
| doesn't exist. In fact, no competition is usually red flag about
| the idea.
| steffs wrote:
| The realness here is palpable
| masto wrote:
| Mine was when the iPhone SDK was released. I'd made a small Mac
| thing and gone to a few WWDCs, and really wanted to be an app
| developer. I brainstormed some dumb ideas, but one day I was
| meeting up with some friends in the city and while waiting for
| them to show up, I thought "there should be an app for this".
|
| It felt like I got a lot of blank stares when explaining the idea
| to people, but I went ahead and built a prototype app where you
| could invite friends to share their location for a limited time,
| and it would show you where everyone is in realtime on a map. I
| did a simple backend server to coordinate sending the updates
| between devices. There was a chat built in so you could tell
| people your train was running late. I sent it to a few people, we
| tried it out, I got busy doing other things, and never finished
| it.
|
| My memory may have distorted the timeline, but it felt like a
| long time before I saw apps like Glympse, Apple's Find My
| Friends, or Google location sharing show up. I could have easily
| gotten that over the line while it was still my idea. Entirely my
| fault, though.
| johnhenry wrote:
| Don't feel bad. Even if you had continued with the idea, it may
| not have worked. In 2013 there was a company called "Twist"
| that invited users to share their location temporarily so that
| co-workers could know if they would be on time to meetings. At
| some point they shuttered most of their employees and decided
| to pivot into bitcoin as "BitGo". (Note that https://twist.com/
| is an entirely different company now).
|
| I joined shortly after the shuttering. One funny thing was that
| the company still owned twist.com and would continually get
| emails for an unrelated sex club, twistsf.com.
| hbn wrote:
| Now young people are just sharing their location all the time
| on Snapchat and they use that to track each other's
| locations.
|
| I've heard of people in relationships where their SO expects
| them to always have their Snapchat location on to keep track
| of them, which is insane to me.
| bitexploder wrote:
| And before that one of the founders of BitGo was at Google
| and and wrote much of the HTTP/2 and SPDY :)
| johnhenry wrote:
| Is that you Mike?
| bitexploder wrote:
| Lol nah. Met mike doing a project for them a few years
| ago when BitGo was young. Always thought it was kinda
| neat :)
| brundolf wrote:
| I'm waffling on when to "ship" the programming language I've been
| working on for the past couple years. I think it could be
| something real and useful, but there are still things I want to
| add/redesign/fix before I officially thrust it out into the world
| as an alpha version.
|
| But I'm worried about killing the initial spark of enthusiasm
| when people try to use it and it's still broken. Or when they
| start building on it and then I redesign some language feature
| and their code doesn't work in newer versions.
|
| I wonder if it's a different question for something like a
| language, or whether I'm just getting sucked into the classic
| fallacy
| danenania wrote:
| Shipping isn't a binary and it isn't something you can only do
| once. If the project is still very rough, "shipping" may just
| mean emailing it to 20 people you think might be interested.
| Getting reactions from real people is the key thing, not
| publicizing it far and wide--in many cases it _is_ smart to
| wait on that until you 've gone through a bunch of iterations
| with a small number of early users.
|
| For example, you could post a link to your language right here.
| Not that many people will see it, but some of the ones that do
| may give you useful feedback and start keeping tabs on the
| project. There isn't much downside.
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