[HN Gopher] In search of organic software
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In search of organic software
Author : pketh
Score : 53 points
Date : 2022-05-16 11:38 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pketh.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (pketh.org)
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| I'm in a similar boat with https://mailpace.com
|
| No funding, just a simple business that I enjoy building.
|
| If you create great software that delights your users, what more
| do you need?
| kaba0 wrote:
| Very nice landing page and product.
|
| Can't help but ask, do you really not have an API for Java?
| Just seems strange that much smaller languages have example
| codes, yet such a behemoth doesn't.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| We don't have a Java library, yet, to be honest I haven't
| worked with Java in 10 years. But we'll build one soon, watch
| this space!
| altdataseller wrote:
| "I'm open to the idea of selling ~5-10% equity in Kinopio for to
| live a smoother life right now."
|
| And what would we get in exchange for that equity? Would you have
| a plan to give dividends to equity holders?
| pketh wrote:
| yup that'd be one good option, I'm sure there are others as
| well.
|
| I think fundamentally rethinking the default assumption of
| investment models from taking many risky bets on 20x-100x
| return, to taking less risky/more-informed bets on 2-4x returns
| may also be something to look at
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I'm a fan of dividend model. All I really care about is my
| 8%. Although, with inflation, this will change.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| Something more like the dividend model would be interesting
| to me. I'd be willing to do some small scale funding like
| that.
| Animats wrote:
| This is what, in the UK, is called a "nice little earner".
| jabo wrote:
| One trait I've seen in "non-organic" software is the use of the
| Enterprise SaaS playbook.
|
| Start bottoms up, give away free or low/no margin services, gain
| adoption, capture the market, then with the pressure to grow,
| they start moving upmarket, go after 100K+ deals and raise
| prices, and eventually price out / fire vast chunks of their
| early adopters.
|
| Been personally bit by this a few times, so these days I tend to
| very cautious about adopting non-organic software, at least not
| without a backup plan.
|
| I'm a founder myself and this is one big concern I have about
| raising VC funds. Wrote about this here recently:
| https://typesense.org/blog/why-we-are-not-raising-funds/
|
| I've also started to use the term customer-funded (similar to VC-
| funded), instead of "bootstrapped", since the latter seems to
| give off an impression of early stage whereas the former is a
| conscious choice and state of being.
| pketh wrote:
| > these days I tend to very cautious about adopting non-organic
| software
|
| I've noticed the same thing happening to myself and hope to
| avoid a future where consumers only feel like they can
| trust/adopt software developed by FAANG type companies)
|
| Really great blog post and 'Customer-funded' is a really good
| term. I agree, much better than bootstrapped
|
| UPDATE: read even more of your posts/product page... if/when I
| add full data search to kinopio, I'll be looking at typesense
| first :)
| jabo wrote:
| > UPDATE:...
|
| Let me know when you do!
| [deleted]
| polote wrote:
| This is clearly not the enterprise playbook. The enterprise
| playbook is to sell on slides, iterate with a few customers and
| go after even bigger customers.
|
| Start small and trying to go upmarket is the normal playbook
| for a b2b smb company that is not growing anymore. Managing
| enterprise customers is easier than managing thousands or small
| companies. And it also create a natural barrier to entry
| jabo wrote:
| > The enterprise playbook is to sell on slides, iterate with
| a few customers and go after even bigger customers.
|
| I would call this product discovery and development with
| early adopters, something I hope every startup is doing. I've
| also seen this be called a Lighthouse program.
|
| > Managing enterprise customers is easier than managing
| thousands or small companies. And it also create a natural
| barrier to entry
|
| I definitely get the appeal. To build a billion dollar
| revenue (not valuation) venture scale company, you can either
| get 1000 users paying you 1M dollars each, or 1M users paying
| you $1000 each [1].
|
| It's just painful as a relative early customer to get priced
| out and no longer be the target market for a company,
| especially when it has set its eyes on exponential growth and
| starts to see the SMB market as a means to an end.
|
| [1] https://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-ways-to-
| buil...
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I love this, and you can consider Adama as organic (
| https://www.adama-platform.com ).
|
| Basically, I'm retired and focused on building up a few products.
| My first step is a deep-deep investment in a back-end superpower.
| I'm wandering with no real user-focused goals, and the key reason
| it is early access is that I want to get some feedback. I am
| slowly working on a few improvements and building a roadmap for
| some neat things that I want to try, but I'm enjoying life now
| (and recovering physically).
|
| I'm tinkering with my next step which is a new reactive front-end
| template system which binds to my super back-end. I have a few
| theories about getting user value since I am basically do 3-5
| start-ups in one.
|
| Appreciate the write up, and I'll integrate some of the language
| in how I present my "organic" software.
| pketh wrote:
| we don't talk about this enough, or ever, but being retired and
| building software is kind of like a super power in this case
| UnchartedSystem wrote:
| just wanted to say the actual mind mapping tool the author is
| building has is a stylish and cozy piece of software. The wii
| shop music remix attached to the pricing card made me grin.
| pketh wrote:
| thanks I never know how much to self promote on HN :)
|
| if anyone else is looking for the mind-mapping software I
| build, it's at https://kinopio.club and there's no sign up
| required to use it
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I write "organic" software.
|
| In today's software industry, people not only don't care about
| Quality; they are actively hostile towards it. It almost seems to
| be a race to the bottom.
|
| If it isn't scaled into millions of users, billions of dollars,
| or gigantic numbers of GH stars, then it's not worth anything,
| and anyone that works in a way that treats software development
| as a craft, is treated in a rather shabby fashion.
|
| I don't particularly care (anymore), but I probably would, if I
| were trying to make money. It used to make me rather upset, but
| these days, I'm more amused, than anything else.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I've chosen to develop my software as removed from the financial
| world as possible. I volunteer my time to work on it, and it
| receives only non-financial support for the most part. The only
| exception I've made is paying for web hosting, which is only a
| few hundred a year.
| pketh wrote:
| I did this a couple times before building and focusing on
| kinopio.club full time. In my own personal experience,
| volunteering only worked with side-projects. If you can do more
| through volunteering effort that's very impressive.
| ozten wrote:
| I think your vision aligns with some of the new bootstraping-
| friendly funding options like: TinySeed[1], CalmFund[2],
| Indie.vc, Earnest Captiol, etc.
|
| https://tinyseed.com/
|
| https://calmfund.com/
| pketh wrote:
| Thanks ozten, ya I agree these both sound interesting and I'll
| investigate more
| drewcoo wrote:
| Software that "grows organically" is usually used derisively, as
| opposed to software that was actually designed.
| pketh wrote:
| The 'organic' term here is referring to funding, not design.
| That said 'paving the cow paths' can be a very effective way to
| build/design what people want.
|
| Another post of mine addresses this directly:
| https://pketh.org/how-i-build.html
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