[HN Gopher] You're a little company, now act like one (2009)
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You're a little company, now act like one (2009)
Author : tosh
Score : 263 points
Date : 2025-05-24 14:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (longform.asmartbear.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (longform.asmartbear.com)
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Personally, I like hyphens, a lot. I don't understand the trend
| of removing them. But whatever.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Missed opportunity to say that you're a hyphen-enjoyer.
| OJFord wrote:
| Understanding-absent of the removing-them trend.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| You know, I re-read my comment before submitting it, and one
| thing I thout was- I'm not using enough hyphens in this
| comment! But alas I submitted it anyway.
| cut3 wrote:
| I do as well which is why im trying something new in a new
| project. Hard to start but im getting there
| layer8 wrote:
| Me too, as they improve readability when used correctly. They
| are there for a reason. In the quote in the article, the
| hyphens in "risk-analysis" and "decision-support" are
| incorrect, however. Know your hyphens!
| f30e3dfed1c9 wrote:
| I've been complaining that nobody knows how to use hyphens
| anymore for ten or fifteen years. I used to send a friend
| examples from pretty big, well-known publications like Time
| magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and others. I've given up
| hope and accepted that this is just the way things are now.
| pesfandiar wrote:
| Perhaps it looks less AI generated without perfect punctuation.
| dmje wrote:
| Great, that.
| jmkni wrote:
| Reminded me of the Paul Graham essay "Do Things that Don't Scale"
| - https://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html
| landgenoot wrote:
| Being small is a unique selling point. Lately, I was talking to a
| small business owner who runs his business over Whatsapp. He was
| interested in creating some kind of customer portal.
|
| I advised him against it. No digital concept is going to beat
| that customer experience.
| mnahkies wrote:
| I've been a bit of a skeptic around that, but recently had an
| amazing experience with a small motorcycle rental company where
| we arranged everything over Whatsapp.
|
| They had a basic website that outlined their general terms and
| bikes on offer etc, but then actually arranging the booking
| dropped into WhatsApp which allowed me to outline my specific
| needs and get a useful steer. Throughout the trip I was able to
| continue messaging as things came up and it felt more like I
| was borrowing a bike from a mate than renting one from a
| business.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| At that point I would prefer a phone call. And I don't like
| unnecessasry phone calls, but protracted discussions over
| chat is awful.
| collingreen wrote:
| I see where you're coming from but a text record you can go
| back and review is very valuable to me in these situations
| as well.
| dmd wrote:
| Counterpoint: If I had to talk on the phone with the
| company instead of using text, I would choose a different
| company.
| lostlogin wrote:
| You prefer the AI slop that pours out?
| mnahkies wrote:
| Phone call was available, but I choose chat in this
| instance. It wasn't a particularly complex conversation - I
| outlined my experience, and my doubts from my research and
| he came back with availability and some direction. I was on
| holiday with family in a different part of the country
| whilst arranging it, a few weeks out so there was no real
| time pressure. Tbh I'm also somewhat adverse to phone calls
| for no good reason.
|
| At a higher level, this small business offered multiple
| channels and was able to meet me where I wanted to
| communicate. This is an advantage small business have
| because the volume is manageable. At larger scale it
| becomes more tricky to do economically and so you need to
| focus on self serve journeys (which may include chat bots,
| etc)
| drewcoo wrote:
| A text record of what happened isn't just useful for new
| hires, not just useful for async comms, but for people like
| me who want to be sure we followed along.
|
| Spur-of-the-moment phone calls and meetings (especially
| camera-on ones with some uncaptured visual elements that
| the blind can't follow) tend to foul that up. And trigger
| the autistics who are likely hiding amongst the rest of
| you. We are legion. Treat us gently and we will likely do
| all manner of scutwork, refactoring old nasty untouchable
| code, and pager duty. i love debugging!
|
| [Edit to add: Never trust a manager who likes to give
| directions in impromptu, unrecorded/unrecordable sessions.
| That means for some reason they want to be off-record. Or
| don't understand management. Either one of those is
| trouble.]
| csomar wrote:
| You'd be surprised but in SEA for 1-4 persons small
| businesses, that's how you do business. There is no website,
| offers are sent as pictures. Whatsapp is also used for
| everything else. I had one rental take a photo of the deposit
| and sending me the picture.
| AaronAPU wrote:
| One of the best decisions I made as a solo founder was putting
| a note on product pages to contact me to request a loyalty
| discount for existing customers.
|
| I get emails on a daily basis and people take that moment to
| give positive feedback, occasionally bug reports, and I get to
| see their email signature to get a sense who my customers are.
|
| It's genuinely enjoyable interacting with customers and most
| people are so easy to get along with if you just listen and
| show respect.
| danenania wrote:
| Great post.
|
| Another benefit of this approach is it's simply much easier. If
| you're trying to act like some smooth corporate salesperson or be
| overly formal or whatever and that's not really you, interacting
| with customers and prospects and... everyone... will feel tiring
| and painful.
|
| But if you drop the pretense and just act like yourself? Minimal
| extra energy required. As a bonus, it opens you up to make real
| connections with people who you click with as you run your
| business.
|
| So it works, it's easier, and it's more fun. And has basically no
| downsides. But still something that most founders seem to have to
| learn the hard way for some reason.
| ednite wrote:
| I agree with your comment and couldn't agree more with this
| article. It's solid advice for anyone just starting out with a
| product or service.
|
| Speaking authentically and admitting you don't have all the
| answers is genuine, not weak. That kind of honesty has always
| worked best for me.
|
| People respond better to real conversations, concrete examples,
| and the feeling that you're building with them, not just
| selling at them.
|
| In my experience, working with smaller businesses has opened
| more doors than chasing big corporate clients. Smaller
| companies tend to be more curious, open to new ideas, and quick
| to take action.
|
| That said, "dress to impress" can work, but in my experience,
| it's often a short-lived win. It grabs attention, but rarely
| builds lasting trust or real traction. Not a playbook I buy
| into.
|
| For example, I recently sat through a 3-hour pitch from a so-
| called "AI consultant." The presentation was packed with
| buzzwords, vague promises, and a sleek slide deck. Every time
| someone asked how AI would actually solve a specific problem,
| the answer was basically: "AI will handle that," followed by
| name-dropping a popular AI company like it was the solution to
| everything. It was clear the consultant didn't fully understand
| the tech, but the leadership team still ate it up.
|
| This article was a great reminder that trying to sound big and
| impressive might get attention early on, but it often backfires
| later. Being honest and straightforward has always been my real
| strength, even if it keeps me small.
| treetalker wrote:
| Taleb has written about dressing to impress and looking the
| part: https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-
| like-surg...
| ednite wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, packed with solid insights.
| 3dsnano wrote:
| vulnerability can be a superpower if leveraged correctly... i
| think it leads towards more authentic conversations and weeds out
| the folks who don't "get it" yet
| locallost wrote:
| Heh, I'm kind of in the same or similar boat. I changed jobs
| specifically last year to join a smaller company, thinking we'll
| get a lot done without a lot of fuss and stakeholders, which was
| bothering me in my previous job -- it was impossible to get
| something going. But it turned out my new small team spends a lot
| of time trying to do the work of 50 people with 1/10th the
| resources, essentially cosplaying a large brand. I said we're not
| X, we're Y, and let's be that because it has its advantages, but
| people are busy with case studies, UX, patterns etc. The funniest
| part is they are laser focused on a competitor and a lot of the
| talk ends up being "do it like competitor X does".
|
| So yeah, you're a little company, act like one.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I worked at a medium sized company attacking a market dominated
| by one or two gigantic FAANGs and it was really sad how focused
| our leadership was on copying them feature-for-feature and
| watching them closely to do whatever they were doing.
| Surprisingly, they also had far more process and red tape in
| place slowing down routine things than I encountered in
| BigTech. They were always agonizing over easy product
| decisions, and second guessing themselves and waiting to see
| what FAANG does when they should have been taking risks and
| differentiating themselves. Like, come on, guys, use our few
| advantages over them and do something great and unexpected!
|
| Nope, it was always stuff like: we need to do another grand
| redesign because we want to change our brand look and feel
| again.
| myflash13 wrote:
| There are exceptions. For example in fintech or anything in
| finance that requires trust, you want to seem bigger than you
| are. In contrast to OP, I've lost customers in the early days
| when they found out I was a solo founder. It's more "normal" to
| share your financial data with huge companies who don't care
| about you, but it's scary to give it to "some guy".
| jmkni wrote:
| This is a good point.
|
| I was involved in one startup in particular where "trust" was
| important. They didn't understand why I was pushing to build a
| native Android/iOS app and have it on the app store, as opposed
| to a PWA.
|
| It's because, like it or not, having an app on the app store
| makes you look legitimate, it makes you look like a real
| company.
|
| It was a pain in the ass, a PWA would have been way easier, but
| I still maintain it was the right call.
| neilv wrote:
| I would've liked to hand articles like this to someone, when I
| was making related arguments about not pretending to be a big
| company.
|
| One seed startup (where I had our prestigious flagship enterprise
| customer running with thus-far-perfect uptime in critical
| production, but we needed a second customer before we could
| raise), and which was down to a few people, I tried to convince a
| biz person to let me pitch in on sales.
|
| (Seeing as how, although I dislike doing sales, it was what most
| needed help right then, or there wouldn't be a business, and I
| could also use product insight into what actually resonates with
| customers. And I've done a bit of sales before, and my dad was an
| engineer-by-training salesperson (osmosis!). My mindset is I
| don't try to pretend I'm not a nerd. I instead convey that I'm
| genuinely aligned with their success, I'll listen and understand,
| and I'll deliver successful solutions like competitors can't.)
|
| Nope, we need a glossy Web site including video. Biz person needs
| to reformat our security assurances document into a brochure
| before it can be handed over to prospect's IT for vetting. And
| biz person needs to introduce me on a customer call as "one of
| our software engineers" (when I was the only one, working the
| usual technical cofounder miracles). :)
|
| Like all startups, there were many mistakes, but I think one of
| the mistakes that time was thinking we had to fake it till we
| make it, when that undermined our strengths. (Well, slick
| artifice fit _some_ of our sales prospects, but we didn 't land
| those anyway.)
|
| In hindsight, I think we should've focused on presenting
| ourselves as an exceptionally skilled and credible team that is
| 100%+ committed to the pilot project being a success for that
| particular customer (and for our champions there).
|
| Competitors' salespeople couldn't deliver that, nor fake it very
| credibly, and there wasn't yet an obvious enterprise CYA
| alternative (nobody ever got fired for buying IBM).
| ivape wrote:
| What are the incentives for sales for allowing you to do that?
| What incentives do people in agile or product development or
| management have to let developers partake? There's nothing to
| gain and everything to lose. See, I would love to live in
| Disneyworld too.
|
| The only lesson to be learned from all of this is when you
| build your next company, don't allow these people in. I'll keep
| beating that drum to eternity, because I saw first-hand how the
| work of tech people is leeched off by so many.
| neilv wrote:
| In an early startup, there shouldn't be fiefdoms nor (intra-
| company) empire building.
|
| Everyone should be focused on the shared goal of the startup
| being successful.
|
| What you're working on is triaged constantly, with everyone
| contributing what they can, learning as necessary.
|
| Everybody wins, or everybody loses. And if you don't work
| together as a team, it's probably the latter.
|
| (These are not just empty platitudes. For example, when I say
| everybody wins, that means I expect everyone to have
| meaningful equity shares -- not a successful exit makes the
| founders filthy rich, while everyone else gets a small
| consolation prize for contributing.)
|
| Behind the anecdote, there were unusual and complicated
| reasons that someone felt and did some things as they did. I
| tried to carve out a standalone piece for HN, without getting
| into the more sensitive and irrelevant stuff.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Anecdotally this rings true. I'm currently watching a CEO
| destroy their startup by trying to build an empire in a
| team of 15, while everyone else just wants to make the
| company work together. No investor ever speaks to staff,
| nobody but CEO is ever allowed to pitch, or even be present
| at a pitch. All cofounders and most staff have quit because
| it's so ridiculous to try and rule over such a small team
| recursivegirth wrote:
| Understanding this isn't necessarily my audience, I am not a
| startup, instead a freelance consultant. I could call it a
| startup, but that would be stretch, and I am not interested
| in VC funding.
|
| If you don't value your developers perspective in the sales
| cycle, you are fundamentally doing something wrong.
| Developer's don't necessarily hold more product knowledge
| than anyone else, but they sure as shit can tell you how your
| company can make an extra 100k on a sale by just adding 10
| more lines of code.
|
| Sales are incentivized to sell, developers are incentivized
| to provide impact. Include them.
| specialist wrote:
| I honestly can't answer your questions.
|
| I can say, from experience:
|
| 1. Everything gets better the more technical people are
| involved with customers. Sales, biz dev, tech supp, trade
| shows, etc. Probably not as the point person, probably not
| solo, but mosdef involved. And not every tech has the
| aptitude, or desire, to be customer facing. YMMV. Still,
| conversations are shorter, more productive. Customers respond
| very well. It's been a huge win-win, every time.
|
| 2. It's always been hard to convince (commission driven)
| sales people to loop in techs. It's two separate cultures. eg
| Upon success, sales person gets a new Porsche and the tech
| gets more work. Which causes resentment. I don't begrudge
| high rewards for sales (it's a tough gig). But some perks for
| the grunts would be nice too. Just saying.
| gnuser wrote:
| When you've been saving the entire company on the reg and
| get a 1k Christmas bonus and the sales guy gets your entire
| salary as a bonus, yeah, it causes some fucking resentment!
| frr149 wrote:
| I'm experience, that doesn't work if you main clients are big
| corporations. The average corporate drone mistrusts and
| disregards small companies. Not out of arrogance, I believe,
| but out of fear: a generalized version of the old "no one was
| fired for buying IBM" trope. Small companies are seen as higher
| risk.
| DougN7 wrote:
| Yes, I agree. I was honest with a large customer about how
| small we were and although _he_ was willing to take a chance
| on us, he said we absolutely needed look bigger to gain other
| customers.
| p_ing wrote:
| > The average corporate drone mistrusts and disregards small
| companies.
|
| "Garageware" is what we called that type of software. Because
| it truly was, often built using old protocols, outmoded
| security mindset, etc.
|
| It did the job our staff required (and may have been the only
| piece of software to do so) but it wasn't our favorite to
| deal with from a technology perspective.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I mean, small companies _are_ higher risk. When you 're
| small, is it better to find customers who are explicitly
| accepting the real degree of risk, or customers who are
| underestimating it because of how you presented yourselves to
| them?
| neilv wrote:
| Agreed, but being a small company can still work for some
| big-company customers, depending on how you approach it, and
| mostly how lucky you are.
|
| Our super-lucky big first customer, it probably helped that
| we spun out of an established small engineering firm that did
| notable R&D work for huge companies, and also that we
| partnered with a huge hardware tech company, who had an
| evangelist who put in a good word for us at times.
|
| And after a successful launch for a prestigious big company,
| we could point to that, to increase our credibility with
| other big companies (especially those in the same and similar
| markets).
|
| For some co-design work leading to pilot we landed (intending
| to lead to a pilot), we worked together with their in-house
| product design team, on big brand-involved technology changes
| to their non-computers-tech advanced products, and also
| planned out the manufacturing and distribution logistics
| integration. (I think this one probably would've gotten to a
| pilot, after some delays, but we'd stretched our runway until
| it snapped, and there were various reasons we didn't get a
| bridge and didn't raise.)
|
| For some prospects, we got access to CEOs or other execs, and
| the message came downwards to work with us. (Which seemed to
| nevertheless often have people below thinking in the usual
| CYA ways. But our foot was in the door, and our size had at
| least a provisional OK. Though some of those devolved into
| too many stakeholders being roped into meetings, which meant
| more use cases to be satisfied, including by people who were
| half-hearted about it, and this probably wasn't on their
| KPIs.)
|
| Other prospects included smaller companies in some categories
| (e.g., a founder grew a sustainable business designing and
| making a high-quality physical luxury product). I think those
| were probably fine with us being small, and that they liked
| the direct access and our willingness to work with them and
| adapt to what they needed. The challenge there might've been
| finding PMF with a customer who understood every aspect of
| their company, who feels every dollar, and who didn't get
| where they are by introducing costs and complexity they
| weren't sure they had to. (By contrast with large companies
| as customers, anyone who's had to use some of the products of
| enterprise SaaS purchases knows that large companies aren't
| always that discerning in what they spend money on or what
| complexity they introduce.)
|
| Bigger companies were also easier for one of our sales
| tactics, because their products had the popularity and volume
| to show up significantly in some bespoke data acquisition
| stuff from osint that we developed, which we used to prepare
| reports for cold call prospects that showed a money-losing
| problem they had, which maybe they didn't know about.
| w10-1 wrote:
| This 2009 advice to be accessible when small is highly relevant
| for the many outside work who haven't managed to catch the AI
| wave, or for those AI companies targeting micro-niche.
|
| But I suspect that early adopters are different for AI companies
| than technology infrastructure: AI early adopters want the
| benefit, but have no insight into how to push things forward.
|
| So if there is backflow of information from your customers,
| exactly what information do you need to improve?
| eszed wrote:
| My company is medium size, at least within our industry, and I
| _actively look_ for little companies. Every complex platform has
| bugs and un-considered edge-cases and poorly thought out
| engineering choices. Large companies don 't fix them; small
| companies do. (That's overstated, obviously, but not wildly so.)
|
| I'm the sort of client that wants to help you improve your
| product, and can - if you'll let me. When I'm allowed to talk
| directly to engineers (possible at small companies, _vanishingly_
| rare at large ones), we both end up better off.
|
| I've seen the whole cycle, though, and it gets frustrating. Small
| and ambitious company works closely with me to build something
| really great; raises money / goes public / gets acquired; early
| employees cash out (good for them!) or get outsourced (disastrous
| choice); development stalls and features break. Now I'm back
| looking for a new small company to work with again. It's
| dispiriting, and so, so wasteful.
| fuzzzerd wrote:
| Sounds like you are had some experience that might leave you
| with some unique insights into markets underserved by small
| players that can deliver continuous improvements.
| isaachinman wrote:
| What services do you offer, exactly?
| latchkey wrote:
| Small companies are hungry.
| specialist wrote:
| Have you ever negotiated having the source code (etc) put into
| escrow, should the vendor abandon the product?
|
| Working in healthcare (electronic medical records), that was a
| standard line item for our customers.
|
| Good thing too; after acquisition, our grandparent company's
| execs quickly found a new leprechaun to chase after, and our
| product died on the vine. Despite first mover advantage, great
| revenue, and pipeline of prospects, our tiny effort was less
| than a round off error to the grandparent (Quest Diagnostics).
| latchkey wrote:
| Previous discussions:
|
| _You're a little company, now act like one_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1395164 (June 1, 2010 -- 153
| points, 14 comments)
|
| _You 're a little company, now act like one_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795976 (August 31, 2009 --
| 240 points, 53 comments)
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