[HN Gopher] A 20-year-old small company
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A 20-year-old small company
Author : wulujia
Score : 99 points
Date : 2025-01-28 01:23 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hacklook.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hacklook.com)
| wulujia wrote:
| Even though we're now 20 years old, we've always been a small
| company. Over the years, many colleagues have come and gone, and
| we currently have only 50 employees. Perhaps this is the reality
| of most startups - while many dream of going public, creating
| groundbreaking products, or being recognized globally, few
| achieve it. We can only do our best.
| mihaaly wrote:
| The difference sounds to be in the intents and focus. This
| sounds like focusing on making product for the people. Others
| may not. This may not be in the focus for others.
|
| I was interviewing for a position at a startup in the alley of
| my profession a few years ago where my opening question was
| when my turn came: where do you see the company in 5 years?
|
| - Sold!
|
| Came the answer without a moment of hesitation. And that was
| it, the full answer.
|
| Well, they got sold recently, I nod to that. But I did not want
| to become a salesman, so we wouldn't have get to an agreement
| even if the position was offered to me.
|
| Getting to be stuck in a long running small organization that
| has the main purpose of getting big and be sold sounds a
| terrible life.
| ozim wrote:
| Being sold is not always bad.
|
| Company I work for was sold by the owners mostly because they
| had huge fights.
|
| We were bought by company that is in similar business but
| they were not good with tech so we are their ,,innovation"
| center instead of them spending years to build innovation
| from scratch.
|
| We are still separate business unit and continue our thing
| but they get customers from their network to use our
| software.
|
| Downside of course being a business unit we have to adjust to
| some of their stuff and our boss has to explain expenses and
| deal with all kind of red tape.
|
| It is 3-4 years now since we were bought out and this year
| company will be 10 years.
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| which company is this? what are their products? anyone got the
| link?
| dearroy wrote:
| I know one of their company's products, it's https://zsxq.com/.
| But it came out in 2015, and I've never tried any of their
| other stuff.
| wulujia wrote:
| Thanks. We build software and sale it to big companies at
| first,and then develop anti virus software etc.
| wulujia wrote:
| We also try some new things such as https://note.slax.com and
| https://r.slax.com
| wulujia wrote:
| It's a company at China, at first we dev software on windows
| and sale it, today we run am app name knowledge planets, url
| zsxq.com(in Chinese).
| hank1931 wrote:
| We're a 33-year-old small company, with thirty employees. I
| started the company in 1992 to do custom programming (VB and MS
| Access) and network support (Novell NetWare). I slowly grew to
| five employees. In 2000 I did not enjoy billing out our hours, so
| I decided to develop a product -- a web-based issue tracking
| application to help with IT support. The transition from a
| services business to a product business was much more difficult
| than I anticipated, but we made it. Now Issuetrak is doing fine.
| From what I read on Hacker News, there are nice aspects to
| working in a small company. We have no outside investment, so we
| call our own shots. Everyone is close to the customers. We listen
| to all team members' ideas. Everyone knows who is contributing.
| We can work from home. After 25 years of taking customer
| suggestions, our product is robust. We provide prompt, very good
| telephone support. We win deals (and lose them too) against
| competitors that are 400 times our size. One of the biggest
| satisfactions is that when we survey our customers after each
| support encounter, it is not unusual to hear them say that
| Issuetrak is the best software company they've ever dealt with.
| My salary is probably less than that of many FANG engineers, but
| life is good.
| afitnerd wrote:
| On top of that, y'all are great in the community. You've hosted
| my tech meetup before and I know you host others as well.
| hank1931 wrote:
| Thanks for the comment. To think, a Hacker News person was in
| our offices. How cool!!
| slyfox125 wrote:
| You are doing things the right way; never doubt yourself in
| that regard: money isn't everything.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Congrats. Love to read this.
|
| The notion of "what is small" is interesting. I think of small
| mom and pop shops. But compared to the "giants" of which there
| are several 30 is really small.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also what is medium. Currently working with company having
| couple hundred employees. Doing consulting and own products.
| Small compared to thousands or tens of thousand of large
| companies in field. But not anymore small even by EU rules...
| efsavage wrote:
| For me the line between a small and medium business is if
| you have HR.
| Ruarl wrote:
| I think a company is small whilst all the employees could
| conceivably fit into a house party. That is perhaps a better
| metric here in the UK where there are fewer colossal houses.
| But hopefully you get the idea.
| portaouflop wrote:
| I would say below 50 employees is small, not quite mom&pop
| but small enough that you know everyone and there aren't
| different separate "departments" in the company.
| dugmartin wrote:
| The US SBA (Small Business Administration) has a table of
| industries with their definition of small using either dollar
| amount of receipts or number of employees:
|
| https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/Table%20of%2.
| ..
|
| Here are some software related codes/sizes where $ amounts
| are in millions: 541511 Custom Computer
| Programming Services $34 n/a 541519 Other
| Computer Related Services $34 n/a
|
| So, according to the SBA you are small until you do $34
| million in business annually with no specific number of
| employees.
| hank1931 wrote:
| This link is fascinating. I had no idea that the U.S.
| government definition of small business was so elaborate. I
| asked ChatGPT, and it turns out there are 978 industries,
| covered by 102 different size standards! Why did they come
| up with this? If a company meets their criteria, it can
| qualify for government contracts, loans, grants, advocacy
| programs and more.
|
| According to ChatGPT:
|
| To come up with this list, the U.S. Census Bureau provides
| detailed information on industries, including employment,
| revenue, and business structure. SBA economists analyze
| factors like average firm size, capital intensity, and
| industry concentration to determine reasonable thresholds
| for "small businesses." They study the competition between
| small and large businesses in federal procurement,
| considering small businesses' ability to compete for
| contracts. The annual budget for the SBA is $1 billion.
| This does not include $50 billion in various loan programs.
|
| Here's a link to the ChatGPT session: https://chatgpt.com/s
| hare/6798e036-7f9c-8008-9190-b704d1cde5...
|
| The U.S. Small Business Administration is a big operation!
| PretzelSweat wrote:
| Shoot, you hiring Sys Admins?
| silexia wrote:
| We are a 15 year old small company with 250 full time employees.
| I completely bootstrapped the company and never took a dime of
| debt or any investor money. We do web design and online marketing
| work. I tried building some products, and though they were game
| changers internally, they never took off externally. Now
| Coalition Technologies is services provider with a good
| reputation for standing behind our work. Though I do hate telling
| people my email address on the phone... C o a l I t I o n T E c h
| n o l o g I e s dot com. Why couldn't I have named it Pin or
| something haha.
| Fritatta wrote:
| This is called a successful small business and something to take
| great pride in outside of the SV bubble.
| darkstar_16 wrote:
| I'd guess that outside the Silicon Valley bubble (and few big
| names in other countries), most software companies are like this.
| Small, profitable and without a lot of debt.
| uoaei wrote:
| I worked at one of these. Turned out it was a nepotism grift that
| flew under the radar. CEO came out of retirement to get an
| ironclad contract through his college buddy to do basically
| nothing and get paid for it.
| webprofusion wrote:
| Man, I got that beat by 5+yrs and -49 employees. Most businesses
| are small businesses. 89% have less than 10 employees.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Can't think of anything I'd like less than working at a company
| that has 100 employees after 1 year and then 200 the next year.
| Talk about mostly being occupied with moving desks, onboarding
| people and having growth other such growth pains. Not sure why
| people idealize working in this sort of environment. Other than
| that it can be lucrative to get in early in a growing business,
| what's the pull?
| DavidPiper wrote:
| Alternatively:
|
| Can't think of anything I'd like less than working at a company
| that has 10,000 employees after 10 years and then 15,000 the
| next year. Talk about mostly being occupied with moving desks,
| onboarding people and having growth other such growth pains.
| Not sure why people idealize working in this sort of
| environment. Other than that it can offer lucrative salaries in
| a growing business, what's the pull?
| alkonaut wrote:
| Yeah same thing. Such a company is just 100 different 100
| people companies. Plus a lot of big enterprise bs. Working at
| a 100 ppl company that has 105 people next year, that sounds
| great. Or even a 1000 people company that has 1000 or 1050
| people next year.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Firms are not run for the benefit of their employees (unless
| they are also the majority owners, which is pretty rare), so
| it doesn't actually matter what we prefer unless it impacts
| hiring (aka the cost of sufficiently useful labor) which it
| largely doesn't as most employees don't have pricing power on
| their labor (they are price takers, not price setters) and
| unions (the purpose of which are to give them that power) are
| out of the question.
| sausagefeet wrote:
| I hope to be able to write this blog post in 20 years. My co-
| founder and I started a bootstrapped company 3 years ago do IaC
| orchestration and we are slowly but steadily growing. We love
| being small. We love being accountable to our customers. We love
| having the freedom to make decisions. Yes, it's not always easy.
| We explicitly don't want to be a billion dollar company. We want
| to make a product that serves our niche exactly how they want to
| be served. We're definitely making less money than if we worked
| at another company. But we feel we can make it to our goal and
| think we'll be happy when there.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I praise you.
|
| It is a good feeling reading this. The mentality that is
| (apparently) so rare today with the many ego pushing disrupters
| disrupting (obstructing actually, obstructers is the correct term
| here) life for everyone else. The providing service for others -
| shortly: creating actual, real value instead of appearances -, is
| not a typical and mainstream behaviour nowadays, the stability
| over fame, no, but the pushing spectacular sounding (made up for
| the purpose of sounding spectacular) elusive agenda on others for
| heaping up wealth is.
|
| Manipulation instead of serving others is the norm.
|
| Based on what hits the broad audience. Under the radar fair
| services like this are hidden from the public eye.
| yshui wrote:
| CodeWeavers, which I am very lucky to be part of, is also an
| (almost) 30-year-old small company! We make Wine, Proton, and
| CrossOver, you might've heard of them. And I think we are hiring
| as well, please have a look!
| jacknews wrote:
| There's a point at which you can be _too_ serious, simple, low-
| key, understated, etc.
|
| What is this company, what does it do? There are no links to a
| main web page, or anything other than these few blog posts.
| stevoski wrote:
| I feel that 50 people is not a small company!
|
| It's all relative, of course.
|
| But 50 people is big enough that as the business owner, you'd
| need to be permanently in hire mode, just to replace people
| moving on for various reasons. And you'd be frequently be exposed
| to your employee's personal issues.
|
| I prefer running a _really_ small company - just 5 people.
| apercu wrote:
| My dream was always a very small practice of tightly focused
| services and a humane work cycle due to low overhead. During
| crunch time you work hard and during slow times you relax and get
| paid a lot less.
|
| But every time I had partners or colleagues there is this idea
| that growth is super important, everyone needs an assistant, and
| overhead grows to the point that you need $100k every month to
| make payroll. So everyone has to grind, and you have to take
| lower margin projects and it's 40 hours a week, except during
| crunch time where it's, well, a lot more than that.
|
| I helped grow my second company to a profitable 20-person
| company, but I thought that was too big (and a lot of us worked
| crazy hours).
|
| I joined and grew another company to around 30 people (I was not
| the owner so just following orders).
|
| I was never able to find the right people at the right phase of
| life, with the right skill sets, so I have been a solo practice
| for a decade. But I always thought a 8-10 person, highly focused
| consulting practice is where it's at.
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