[HN Gopher] The saddest "just ship it" story (2020) ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-12 23:00 UTC)