[HN Gopher] One year as a solo dev building open-source data too...
___________________________________________________________________
One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without
funding
Author : revorad
Score : 521 points
Date : 2022-06-21 09:13 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (datastation.multiprocess.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (datastation.multiprocess.io)
| richardfey wrote:
| Are GitHub stars a good metric for success?
| jensneuse wrote:
| Thanks for this writeup, I can relate 100%, especially the part
| on the supportive spouse. I've built WunderGraph
| (https://wundergraph.com/) as a solo-dev for multiple years until
| I reached a similar point like you. It's weird to say, but my
| wife kind of accepted that I'd work on weekends between 1-3 pm
| when the kids sleep. What helped me get out of this "solo-time-
| drain-thing" was to find the right Co-Founders to help me. I've
| found a really nice guy to help me with Marketing, and another
| one who helped me develop the Product. "If you want to go fast,
| go alone. If you want to go far, find a team." I hope you can
| find some way of financing so that you can push through this
| wall. For me, it was working a full time job and building
| WunderGraph at night and on the weekends, but it's making you age
| quickly. I wish you the best for your future.
| varispeed wrote:
| Having a supportive spouse probably does wonders for mental
| health. After 5 years in a relationship I decided to spin up my
| own business and learned about something I didn't know about
| significant other - she didn't recognise working for oneself as
| a legitimate work. For her I was "pissing away" my and her time
| and I should look for a second job if I wanted to make more
| money. I managed two years of constant berating, being laughed
| at and threatened. In the hindsight I wish I had ended the
| relationship the first time she demonstrated the lack of
| support. My project would have taken less time to get it to MVP
| and my mental health wouldn't be in a state it was. After my
| project started making money she was of course sorry and wanted
| to get back together. But I am not sure if I ever would want to
| be with someone else, this is not the first time I have been
| burned, but first time it hurt so bad. I feel so much better
| alone.
| jensneuse wrote:
| I know exactly where you're coming from. My family didn't
| understand or like what I did for a long time. For them, I've
| wasted my time on what wasn't really "work", because I didn't
| get a salary. I'm from Germany, you're expected to have a job
| here. Being an Entrepreneur seems wrong. Luckily, my wife was
| very supportive. But there are also limits. Let's say that
| everyone around me had to suffer to some degree so that I was
| able to pull this off.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| > Let's say that everyone around me had to suffer to some
| degree so that I was able to pull this off.
|
| Even solo entrepreneurship isn't really "solo". Takes a
| village to raise a {business|baby}.
| jasfi wrote:
| Where did you find your co-founders?
| jensneuse wrote:
| The marketing guy, I found on YC Startup School Co-Founder
| Match (https://www.startupschool.org/), the Developer was
| creating GraphQL Open Source projects that were related to
| what I was building, so I've got in touch with them.
|
| I can definitely recommend Startup School, it helped me build
| a lot of useful connections.
| jasfi wrote:
| How did you determine how to split equity?
|
| Edit: I'm not looking for actual %s, just the factors
| involved.
| jensneuse wrote:
| You know you've got the right equity split when everybody
| thinks it's fair and the team can focus 100% on
| execution. Factors can be time spent on the project,
| experience, who "owns" what, connections, etc... But in
| the end, if you have to discuss this topic too much with
| someone, you know it's not going to work. If the Co-
| Founders cannot easily come to the same result, their
| mindset doesn't align well enough, which can be a risk
| for the whole operation. So, I'd advise against haggling
| too much, for both sides. Also, I'd suggest to discuss
| this topic very early on. Don't waste time if you don't
| know their expectations are in the same ballpark as
| yours. If you get the right people to commit helping you,
| I'd rather give them more equity, when the other option
| is to keep doing this on my own forever. Ideally, you can
| all "start" at the same time and split equity equally,
| but the reality is that you don't have all the stars
| aligned on day one.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Would like to know as well. This is tricky, as all your
| assets are probably intellectual property and hard to put
| a price tag on. Also some people have a hard time
| accepting that they are eligible for a smaller piece of
| the cake than you are.
| leetrout wrote:
| Random thought on this: I do not personally believe the
| owner of the idea is worth more than 10% of equity. They
| have to be contributing something to get more. It may be
| capital, it may be sales but it has to be something.
|
| I dream to start a company where I am able to steer
| almost every decision and the company shares
| automatically reduce my ownership over X years until a
| kind of coop forms and most employees have enough equity
| as a group to control the company. Give away control to
| put the right incentives on hiring. Also none of this 1
| year cliff vesting nonsense. If you are willing to join a
| startup I am willing to give you equity immediately.
| pirate787 wrote:
| >none of this 1 year cliff vesting nonsense
|
| It is foolish to give immediate equity to a new hire who
| hasn't proven themselves as a good worker and good fit.
| leetrout wrote:
| And they do not have to be there for a long time to start
| providing immense value.
| mns06 wrote:
| a cofounder and I used this system for a previous
| company: https://slicingpie.com/ It worked pretty well
| for us, but we were also pretty well tuned to each others
| expectations in advance.
| ushakov wrote:
| > working a full time job and building WunderGraph at night and
| on the weekends
|
| this is actually a terrible advice, although i'm glad it worked
| out for you!
|
| this type of side-hustling can quickly turn into losing your
| startup or your job (or both)
|
| better approach is to save some money, leave for a year and
| become profitable from day 1
|
| profitability will decrease your chances of failure
| dramatically
| varispeed wrote:
| > better approach is to save some money, leave for a year and
| become profitable from day 1
|
| In many Western economies, the level of taxation is designed
| to prevent you from doing that. It would take many years to
| save enough money to sustain yourself for a year without
| changing your commitments much. So either way you are in a
| bad position. I mean it's possible if you don't have a
| family, share a flat with others so your bills are low and so
| on, but you may end up just as burnt living in such
| environment.
| jensneuse wrote:
| I actually lost my job. I'd also advise against replicating
| what I did, but it was my only option really. I'm not born
| rich, single income dad, paying off the house. I wasn't able
| to afford to "leave for a year". It's also a timing thing.
| The right time to do WunderGraph is now, not in two years. So
| I had to decide to give up a dream or work through this and
| risk my job. Luckily, I've found the right people to help me
| and first customers at exactly the right time. But trust me,
| WunderGraph was at tables-takes for a long time.
| heisenbit wrote:
| This is really the one challenge in Germany: High fixed
| costs and high taxes making it hard to sock away seed money
| yourself.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > profitability will decrease your chances of failure
| dramatically
|
| This kinda feels like saying a small loan of a million
| dollars increases your chances dramatically.
|
| The challenge is in getting to that point.
| ushakov wrote:
| this is why you should focus on a business offer from get-
| go and start making money from launch
|
| majority of us cannot afford to retire at home for years
| not making any income
| krageon wrote:
| > become profitable from day 1
|
| "just make some money" is not good advice. It trivialises the
| entire problem and even worse, it's the core problem of
| _everyone_ in this space. This reasoning is dismissive of
| their struggle and doesn 't help them move towards where they
| need to be. There is absolutely no good reason to treat other
| people like that.
| ushakov wrote:
| i didn't mean to say that
|
| i'm suggesting to try to make money as soon as you can,
| else you'll just drown like many others
| jensneuse wrote:
| I agree with this. What most developers, like me, love to
| think is that you can do "one more feature" and they will
| come, or another refactor, or anything. But I've learned
| this lesson. Building a startup us very little about
| coding, and more about all the other things that make up
| a business. What's your value proposition? How do you
| sell? How do you acquire users? etc... In the end, I've
| wasted way too much time on the things that didn't make a
| difference, but I think I've learned from this.
| Sytten wrote:
| I am currently building Caido (https://caido.io) without
| funding and the best decision we ever made was to build it as a
| team. The second decision that I made differently from my first
| attempt at a startup was to drop all my freelance contracts and
| only focus on that project. You need a lot of mental space to
| build a business and I found I almost burned myself out when I
| tried to build it while working on other projects. Last
| decision was to move back to my parent's place to cut cost and
| live frugally for the year (<300$/month). Not possible for a
| lot of people, but I don't think it would have been possible
| otherwise since I don't have savings.
|
| Same as the author we tried to get funding and mostly failed.
| In the end I think it is for the best as I am not a fan of the
| growth at all cost, I much prefer to build a smaller
| sustainable business if that is still possible. One thing that
| I wish we had is a more experienced person in the team since we
| burned time and money for stuff we didn't know better ( _small
| tear when I see my lawyer bill_ ). It is a great experience
| otherwise, I just hope it will go somewhere.
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| A good team is worth its weight in gold.
|
| This is great advice, also take the time to find people that
| are passionate about what your are doing.
| yayr wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this.
|
| Regarding funding - I think this is a very crowded space and it
| is hard to see, how data station will get 10x better than other
| toolings. E.g. on the self-service side there are solutions like
| Alteryx, that are progressing quite quickly. On the dev oriented
| side e.g. for automated productive integrations you have various
| toolings available e.g. in the could platforms. Yes, they all
| cost money, but they deliver also value.
|
| There will be a niche certainly for this tool somehow, but I
| think this path needs to be approached together with customers.
| So if you find someone who is willing to pay $$$ for a certain
| addition to the tool, you'll have some light into the direction
| this could head to be self-sustaining.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > That in-browser app is still around and supported today, though
| I kind of wish it wasn't since it means more code to maintain and
| test.
|
| Why not sunset it, given it presents an opportunity cost?
| eatonphil wrote:
| Because it's the only 0-download/install demo environment and
| it's hard (impossible?) to tell from analytics if it's a useful
| funnel.
|
| Also, it can be convenient for testing/development since it
| requires no server.
|
| I'm indecisive.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Fellow solo developer here. Making https://gainknowhow.com/ .
| It's my take on how to keep everyone on the same page at growing
| organizations. My basic premise is that the current data
| structure to store documentation in folders is not ideal. A
| better data structure to store knowledge in a graph of connected
| ideas. Storing knowledge in this manner ensures users understand
| context when learning skills. I'd love your feedback.
| mayormcheeseman wrote:
| This looks pretty cool! May I ask what tech stack you use? I
| always find that info curious.
| streetcat1 wrote:
| If you can, it is always better to go full time.
|
| If you hourly rate is 150$ (in the market), and you can work 300H
| a month (including weekend) (It should be 400 hours - 13 hours a
| day).
|
| Than you are basically making around 70-100K a month (in value),
| but paying only 4K (in cash, your living expenses).
|
| Of course, if you are 2X, 3X , 4X engineer , you are basically
| making 300K a month for 4K cost.
| solumunus wrote:
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I'm not sure this makes much sense. If you work for a large
| corporation you can easily make 100K+ a year and work a very
| reasonable 40 hours or less a week and live off of 4K a month.
|
| Unless you're actually realizing those gains and earning 300K a
| month, you are not "basically making 300K a month for 4K cost".
| You are making 0 dollars a month for 4K cost.
|
| Further, if you think that it will pay you back in full in the
| future (instead of making the money right away), you will have
| to invent a wildly successful product and/or customer base to
| backfill the pay for all the previous hours worked.
| _Realistically_ , you'll probably make nothing for your first
| year unless you start with a plan to secure funding. You'll
| also bust your ass for a year while losing money in the hopes
| of a reward in the future. I know they say time is money, but
| it's not money the way you seem to be equating it here haha.
| dahart wrote:
| You are saying never start a startup? If you don't want to take
| a risk on a startup, you're _much_ better off taking a salary
| job than trying to get a high hourly contracting rate.
|
| Strange analysis, these numbers mostly don't add up. People
| contracting at an hourly rate almost never get constant
| consistent work, otherwise you'd get hired on a salary. You
| have to spend half your time looking for work, and you're not
| accounting for that at all. At 400 hours/month, you are
| suggesting working 90 hours per week for 365 days per year.
| Having worked this many hours before for stretches, I know
| first hand this is a recipe for complete and total burnout and
| depression within a few months. And even 90 hours per week at
| $150 per hour doesn't add up to 70k/month, it's 60k/month.
| 2x/3x engineer is usually referring to productivity, but not
| pay. You generally can't increase your pay by being more
| productive. Pay scales that you're talking about ($300/hr,
| $450/hr, $600/hr) are extremely rare in engineering and come
| only with niche software markets. Almost nobody is making
| hourly rates like that, there's nothing basic about it, this is
| an unrealistic goal.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Advice regarding VCs: Don't ever talk to them if they randomly
| approach you saying they "really like what you're doing". They
| will gladly sent an associate to talk with you about your
| business in the greatest detail and ask you to share
| presentations, demos and metrics. Anything you give them will
| then get passed along to their own portfolio companies in your
| space. So don't feel flattered when they feign interest in your
| company, they're mostly just doing reconnaissance. Ignore it as
| chances are you're feeding them information they'll use to kill
| your company.
|
| If you're really interested in VC funding you should proactively
| approach VCs (ideally using introductions by your network) that
| seem suitable. And you should check beforehand that they don't
| fund your main competitor.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. In general anytime someone is approaching you, unless you
| are specifically seeking their services out, its probably for
| their benefit and not yours.
|
| A VC seems impressive but they are just another company trying
| to make money. It's the founder version of getting LinkedIn
| Recruiter Spam.
| justinclift wrote:
| > A VC seems impressive
|
| Err... why?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| But isn't the conventional startup wisdom "Don't worry about
| people stealing your idea, if your idea is any good you'll have
| to shove it down people's throats"?
|
| If your idea can be so easily stolen, no one will want it
| because others can also steal it. Also, someone has probably
| thought of it and tried it. Also, it probably means your vision
| not ambitious enough to be a unicorn, and you would have better
| spent your time climbing a corporate ladder.
|
| That said, there's wisdom in not assuming that VCs want your
| company to succeed, even if you get funded by them.
| cloverich wrote:
| Its not sharing your idea thats the problem, its sharing your
| data, implementation plan, research results, which features
| are getting traction, etc.
| jka wrote:
| If you believe in the product/service that you're creating,
| should you worry about someone else building it more
| effectively?
|
| (self-response: maybe, if they're going to cut corners in
| some areas to provide a more popular but somehow value-
| compromised alternative)
| amacneil wrote:
| Your advice is correct, but the reason is wrong. If you want to
| raise money, then inbound VC interest is a great source of
| leads (led to out series A, similar to sibling comments).
|
| But VCs employ armies of people to trawl the internet for new
| companies, and as an early stage founder you are time poor.
| Tell them that you are focusing on building right now but would
| love to chat when the time is right, add them to a spreadsheet,
| and go back to work.
|
| The time to start taking calls is when you are actually ready
| to raise a pre-seed/seed, or ~6-12 months out from your series
| A (by this point you should have a team who can keep building
| while you are networking).
|
| Also as the author noticed, treat the VC calls like a phone
| screen, and ask questions to filter out bad matches. If they
| don't lead rounds at your current stage, or don't "get" your
| product or market, move on.
| sirspacey wrote:
| Great advice on parent and this one.
|
| If ever founder followed this advice, there would be a
| revolution in the funding landscape.
| stewx wrote:
| What's stopping you from asking them to sign an NDA before
| disclosing any details of what you are doing?
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| How are you going to know they betrayed you?
|
| If you know, how are you going to prove it?
|
| If you can prove it, how are you going to litigate it?
|
| NDAs only real usefulness is for big players to legally bribe
| and contain small fry.
| tofuahdude wrote:
| They literally won't sign an NDA, especially at that early of
| a stage.
| stewx wrote:
| Why not?
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| cause that's the way the world works
| pirate787 wrote:
| Because your ideas might not be unique at all but signing
| an NDA will expose them to litigation if they launch or
| fund a competitor.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| I'll agree with both of the peer comments.
|
| Had a random contact and ended up securing funding.
|
| Had hundreds of random contacts with junior VCs who were just
| fishing and looking to fill their calendar.
|
| Nowadays I just decline these meetings as they are quite boring
| after the 10th time and have a low hit rate.
| streetcat1 wrote:
| The markets are huge (I dare to say endless). Nobody is getting
| killed.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Or better, tell them all the ideas that you've had that seemed
| great, but just cost you thousands of hours of pain before you
| found out why they were unworkable.
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| If intel in your company will kill your business you don't have
| a defensible business.
| svnt wrote:
| Basically no one has a defensible business prior to a funding
| round (or decent cash flow).
| hklgny wrote:
| This may be true after a certain point, but is certainly NOT
| the case when you're just getting started.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| I think you're overestimating how effective gossip is. Because
| that's what it is, when I chat with a VC and they're telling me
| something about another company they talked to.
|
| It's great gossip, don't get me wrong. It can even sway
| decisions. But a fifteen minute call between two people about
| another call one of them had isn't really the tell-all people
| might think.
|
| At best I learn that so-and-so is using this tool, or spending
| money with this vendor, or do such-and-such process in-house.
| If gossip about another company convinces an executive to make
| big moves, the gossip was a very small part of that energy.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >But a fifteen minute call between two people about another
| call one of them had isn't really the tell-all people might
| think.
|
| You can also just promote your business without disclosing
| your secret sauce. If you can't handle a meeting with a VC
| without accidentally handing over company secrets, you've got
| bigger problems.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Founders are excited to talk about their business, and like
| with any skill it takes practice to learn what and how to
| share.
| james_impliu wrote:
| Had this happen (random outreach). Led to a series A.
|
| Respectfully disagree - I don't think competitors copying is a
| significant risk early on, compared to running out of money
| whilst trying to hit product market fit.
| hklgny wrote:
| While both are anecdotes, I think the original warning is the
| more important one as it's not the one new founders will
| expect to encounter. Nothing wrong with taking the call, but
| be aware of the risks and do a bit of homework before you
| share anything mission critical.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Fair point, maybe I formulated that a bit drastically, though
| I have seen this kind of reconnaissance increase quite a bit
| recently, so maybe I'm just fed up with it.
| upupandup wrote:
| based on your anecdote against hundreds of thousands of
| founders getting spied on. I've seen it happen.
|
| Basically if somebody wants to invest ask them: $ and t+
|
| If they try to dodge or make up excuses, MOVE ON. IF they say
| if you give me A,B,C and then we can invest, ask them to put
| them in writing and put an exit fee. If they do not invest,
| they give you 1% of the proposed amount.
|
| Somebody who is serious and has the balls won't waste time.
| Unfortunately rare.
|
| I've wasted a two years of my youth because a VC on HN
| reached out to me, who ultimately just used my product/coding
| services.
|
| Any dumb fuck can be a VC if they can raise cheap capital.
| Remember, there is very small group of VCs that know what
| they are doing. The rest are just in the game to spray and
| see what sticks on the wall (most of them do not make it
| during a downturn)
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| It's hard to draw conclusions one way or another because
| there are so many variables. A good heuristic is that if you
| aren't speaking with a partner, your risk of having your time
| wasted (at best) is far higher.
| j45 wrote:
| Brain rape is definitely a real thing:
|
| https://youtu.be/JlwwVuSUUfc
|
| People with money don't usually know where to put it but can
| buy the time of many people in their 20s to roll the dice with
| their time.
|
| It can be a mutually productive relationship if eyes are wide
| open.
|
| If it's one way it can be tough.
|
| Mentors/Investors have always said to me to seek investors (or
| individuals who care about you and your mission (before being
| part of a VC portfolio) and can help you navigate a world that
| is going to be foreign.
|
| VC portfolios are focused on their return or outcome in a
| specific timeline. Decisions may need to be made as a result
| that might be the wrong ones because of that pressure and not
| enough insight from the market. Still it can be positive and
| productive in a healthy relationship.
| agrippanux wrote:
| I think this is an overly dire warning, but the core of it is
| correct. If you get a random reach out, it probably means a
| discussion with an associate who is building out their
| network/pipeline and doesn't have much, if any, sway within the
| company yet.
|
| It's not necessarily a bad thing to meet with an associate, and
| doesn't mean they are seeking to kill your company. An intro
| meeting with an associate will take time you could be spending
| elsewhere, so it's up to you to determine if it's a good use of
| it.
| noduerme wrote:
| First code in Brython?! I'd never even heard of that but wow,
| that looks like a monstrous unholy way to write a GUI.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Just the panel eval implementation for Python code panels, not
| the actual app.
| rubenfiszel wrote:
| Your story is very inspiring and it mirrors closely my experience
| with building windmill.dev as a solo founder, an OSS project for
| multi-step automation from minimal scripts. I got lucky enough to
| get into YC this batch and if this is of any interest to you, we
| could really use someone with your experience in the founding
| team. Shoot me an email if of any interest: ruben@windmill.dev
| eatonphil wrote:
| Actually it was because of your post a month ago getting in
| that made me apply to YC in the first place. Nice work
| yourself. :)
| donkeyd wrote:
| DSQ seems pretty interesting. I don't have a use for it right
| now, but I'm sure it's something that'll be useful in the future!
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Pursued funding unsuccessfully, zero patrons, only reason its
| still open source is because they couldnt monetize with venture
| capital, got lucky in getting internet points, now interviewing
| for a job
|
| Exactly why you dont do this too
|
| Saved you some time
| eatonphil wrote:
| I mean it's not a success story but it was fun and I've got
| cooler interviews lined up than I have ever had before, got to
| speak with VCs for the first time, learned a ton, and got out
| of it an app I've wanted for years. :)
|
| I would actually recommend this sort of sabbatical if you can
| afford it and were in a similar situation as I was, basically.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Thanks for sharing it! These are great parts of a tech career
| hahnbee wrote:
| You have a broken link to your repo - I believe
| https://github.com/multiprcessio/datastation-documentation should
| be https://github.com/multiprocessio/datastation-documentation
| ilikerashers wrote:
| Really impressive that you kept going through all those peaks and
| troughs. While not financially rewarding, it must have been great
| exercise for your resilience!
| badpun wrote:
| > How do you query this data or join or filter across such
| disparate sources? The only two solutions today are to put ALL
| data into a warehouse or to write custom scripts.
|
| Isn't this whole problem space already addressed by a bunch of
| multi-source query engines (falling under the buzzword "Data
| Virtualization"?)
| calltrak wrote:
| itake wrote:
| Is it possible to do more SQL over CSV in the browser? I'd love a
| simple browser app that I could drop a CSV file into and write
| SQL against. Right now I use `j`, but its a bit clunky.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Yeah! app.datastation.multiprocess.io supports this!
|
| Here's a demo video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7LEV3ZeQWU&feature=youtu.be
| itake wrote:
| Ooo! that is cool. The UX took a second to get used to, but
| it meets my needs.
|
| Does this work with larger datasets (10gb+)? Does it upload
| the data to a server?
| eatonphil wrote:
| It's purely in-browser/in-memory. So no this version won't
| work for large datasets.
|
| The DataStation desktop or server app will work better for
| larger datasets but it takes a while to handle data larger
| than 4GB. It should handle 10gb+ eventually but it will be
| slow.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| Brilliant Idea! I hope you succeed wildly! Upvoted and Favorited!
|
| (Now, as a side note, if funding decisions were up to me, I'd
| suggest _not_ using VC, _never_ using VC, staying as far away as
| you can from VC, treating VC as if it were a highly addictive and
| intoxicating substance, like alcohol is to some people: _" When
| friends don't stop friends from using VC..."_ (you know, like
| those old Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) ads from the
| 1980's <g>)
|
| "VC" above = "Venture Capital" (system) not "Venture Capitalist"
| (person).
|
| (You know, like "Love the sinner, but hate the sin..." or more
| colloquially in recent times, "Don't hate the playa, hate the
| game..." <g>)
|
| You might want to read the following articles:
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/06/03/fixing-venture-cap...
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/07/foreword-to-8220er...
|
| But let's say that despite this, you still want to garner some
| funding...
|
| For whatever reason, after Googling, I can't seem to find a
| comprehensive list of the various types and tiers of startup
| financing capital that are available (for example, there are
| lists of VC's, lists of "Angel Investors", lists of Crowdfunding
| platforms, lists of ways to bootstrap a business, lists of
| financial institutions and interest rates for generic borrowing
| -- but nobody has really sought to unify all of these sources
| into a single spreadsheet showing an amount of capital borrowed,
| and what is owed to whom in return for the capital (i.e., Equity
| (and if so, what %), in the case of VC's, Interest (and what %)
| in the case of Banks/other lenders, Finished Shipped Product (in
| the case of Crowdfunding platforms), or other debts/obligations
| as appropriate).
|
| You could of course, just proverbially "keep the day job", that
| is, finance the startup costs with other employment -- and avoid
| all debt/obligations related to borrowing for your business
| altogether -- at the cost of your time, and working for someone
| else...
|
| If you absolutely positively (you know, like FedEx! <g>) cannot
| go without VC of any sort, then you might wish to consider
| Pioneer's $20,000 for 2% of your company deal
| (https://pioneer.app/)
|
| This might be better than YC's $125,000 for 7% _IF_ (if and only
| if!) you can launch your company for $20,000 or less.
|
| If you can launch your company for $10,000 or less, I wouldn't
| even go with Pioneer, I'd go with Crowdfunding and/or Family &
| Friends funding and/or bank loans and/or revenue from a day or
| part-time job...
|
| At least if you self-finance, the "Pound of Flesh" (the drawback
| or compromise or hook or caveat -- with my apologies to
| Shakespeare's "The Merchant Of Venice") that could have been
| present in your company's future -- will never come due!
|
| It's sort of like, pay now or pay later... pay now with due
| diligence and thrift -- or pay later, when the VC owns you! <g>
|
| Anyway, wishing you well with your blossoming company!
| eatonphil wrote:
| Hey this is my story! It's been a genuinely fun year. Looking
| forward to doing better next time. Datastation/dsq are in a great
| spot and I'm looking forward to them continuing to grow. Happy
| for your suggestions and flames.
| ushakov wrote:
| DataStation looks very promising!
|
| i'd like to suggest you to also build a business
|
| else, you'll end up like countless of other startups and open-
| source projects that existed for a brief moment but failed due
| to not making any money
|
| try working on both your business offer and your software offer
| in tandem
|
| your software product should serve your business, not the other
| way around
|
| this is the approach i'm using right now for Typosaur (.com)
| tmcw wrote:
| Really liked the post! I really admire the attitude & intention
| that's there - at least from an outside perspective it seems
| like you've made the most of the experience and sort of had fun
| with it. Hope to take some inspiration from that.
| svnt wrote:
| You just need (to become, to partner with) a business person.
|
| If you're determined to be CEO get a CEO mentor and an early
| sales VP who can do all the interpersonal stuff you find
| uncomfortable.
|
| If you want to stay in product/dev find a cofounder to be CEO.
| They are late so cofounder doesn't necessarily mean 50/50 here.
| Founder vest.
|
| It's evident your story needs tuning as "I had a hard time
| paginating results" is not the real story here nor is it very
| compelling and just reinforces initial uninformed opinion in
| the space that you're only scratching an itch that isn't
| market-validated.
|
| What are other people doing with your product? That is the
| story. This feels like it could be a really big thing.
| manceraio wrote:
| It looks like your projects resonate with people, and more
| important, you are capable of putting them in front of many
| eyes. Which is even harder than writing code. For that reason,
| don't seek the validation of VCs and figure out a business
| around it. Let your customers be your VCs.
|
| Congratulations on your work :)
| vessenes wrote:
| Thanks for documenting what you've been doing.
|
| My main thought midway through your narrative was wondering
| when you'd realize you're building out a datadog-like tech
| stack - you mention I think splunk at one point in there at
| least.
|
| I think a thorough review of datadog and a competitor or two
| might be interesting for you; the market for 'use SQL for
| everything' is pretty small. The market for 'use dashboarding
| tech to read ALL the data' is really very large, and the
| command line tool you built probably works as middleware.
|
| If I were sitting where you're sitting, I would probably look
| at two things: could I build a niche datadog competitor with
| what I've got? If so, you've got really good market comps in
| public companies and could probably build a pretty great SAAS-
| model lifestyle business at the very least, which would have
| value to own, sell, or get investment in for growth.
|
| Second, if I didn't think I could, I would look into selling
| the CLI-SQL tool in the marketplaces of datadog and so on;
| their strategy is to allow partners to monetize the customer
| base by selling tools - this probably wouldn't be a retirement-
| grade result for you, but I bet the monthly income could
| significantly beat what you've got so far; those BI tools are
| expensive, and so incremental charges don't always register,
| especially if you're bringing new data in the system in a way
| that was difficult to before. In this case, I'd probably work
| on a couple quick hits where your tool brought a lot more
| expressivity to the dashboarding tools. For instance, you can
| pay extra for log ingestion at datadog, but the tools for
| dealing with these logs are somewhat limited in the UI. A
| similarly-priced extension from you that gets better querying
| might be worth a lot.
|
| At any rate, keep it up, and good luck in the next year!
| tosh wrote:
| Inspiring read, congratulations on the progress and thanks for
| the write-up.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I've done various flavors of the "solo founder" thing. What I've
| realized is that _promoting_ a project; and _making the economics
| work_ are extremely different skills than developing the
| software.
|
| I personally enjoy the software side too much to be a solo
| founder. When I'm in a place where I'm able to start something
| new, I'm going to look rather aggressively for someone to work
| with who can round out my shortcomings.
| froggertoaster wrote:
| Is it bad that the first metric the author shares is a borderline
| vanity metric (Github stars)?
| eatonphil wrote:
| The way I think about it is it's about showing growth by any
| means. When you're starting from nothing you talk about
| anything you can. Only in the last few months have I been able
| to switch from focusing on Github stars in talking to VCs to
| talking about actual usage by humans.
|
| For the sake of the article though it's a hook I figured might
| encourage folks to keep reading. :)
| dahart wrote:
| No, it's not bad, it's good.
|
| Keep in mind the realistic alternative in practice is number of
| users paying for a yearly subscription. Which would you rather
| see more often as an engagement metric - subscription plans, or
| open source users? It would be a sign of vitality for the open
| source community if github stars were a metric that VCs sought
| more often.
|
| All metrics for pre-seed startups are based on popularity,
| that's what VCs ask for: indicators that people want to use
| your product, whether it's monthly active users, monthly
| recurring revenue, or github stars.
|
| When someone is trying to build it via open source rather than
| a subscription model, github stars might be the best, or even
| only available way to track engagement reliably. Also, part of
| the story was about how long it took to reach a certain number
| of stars, and they compared it to other projects that got as
| much engagement more quickly.
| dt3ft wrote:
| I reacted to this as well. I hope he/she gets real value for
| the work they put in. Having worked as a developer and consumer
| of open source work (for huge finance institutions), it pains
| me to see how devs pour their souls into open source projects,
| and consumers (our bosses) don't even know or care who wrote
| the code everyone is using.
| froggertoaster wrote:
| Precisely my concern.
| raunometsa wrote:
| Plausible comes into my mind: how Uku found his co-founder in
| marketing and how things took off from there.
|
| They're now at $1M ARR: https://microfounder.com/blog/cofounder-
| in-marketing
|
| (also open-source btw)
| cube2222 wrote:
| Hey, congrats on the journey!
|
| Especially on the community building aspect, it's really
| impressive that you've been able to spark so many communities on
| various platforms (Reddit, GitHub, Discord, etc.)!
|
| On a more technical note, since dsq is based on the "load it into
| SQLite and query it from there" architecture, have you considered
| integrating with the plugin ecosystems of other existing projects
| based on that same architecture, like Datasette[0]? It seems like
| a way to add a lot of value to your tools without much work.
|
| Just curious, cause I'm thinking about doing something similar
| for OctoSQL[1] (write an adapter for the rich library of plugins
| Steampipe[2] has, as they have a similar gRPC plugin-based
| architecture as OctoSQL), for the reasons I listed above.
|
| On a more commercial note, overall I think tools like this are
| very hard to monetize, because right now they're just a fairly
| niche use case, between - as you mentioned - full blown data
| analytics platforms and observability query systems, as well as
| standard unix tools. Especially since if you need the analytics a
| lot, you'll probably have time to integrate it into your
| preferred analytics solution (like BigQuery). Do you have any
| thoughts on that?
|
| [0]:https://datasette.io
|
| [1]:https://github.com/cube2222/octosql
|
| [2]:https://steampipe.io
| eatonphil wrote:
| Hey Kuba!
|
| > Especially on the community building aspect, it's really
| impressive that you've been able to spark so many communities
| on various platforms (Reddit, GitHub, Discord, etc.)!
|
| Yeah it's been so cool to see so many people come together,
| hobbyists and professionals.
|
| > On a more technical note, since dsq is based on the "load it
| into SQLite and query it from there" architecture, have you
| considered integrating with the plugin ecosystems of other
| existing projects based on that same architecture, like
| Datasette[0]? It seems like a way to add a lot of value to your
| tools without much work.
|
| Interesting idea! I haven't looked into Datasette too much. And
| I haven't thought about plugins too much either. The most I've
| done is extend the SQLite standard library [0] and I hope to
| continue growing that. I'd be curious to hear what specifically
| people like from Datasette they'd like to see in dsq.
|
| > On a more commercial note, overall I think tools like this
| are very hard to monetize, because right now they're just a
| fairly niche use case, between - as you mentioned - full blown
| data analytics platforms and observability query systems, as
| well as standard unix tools. Especially since if you need the
| analytics a lot, you'll probably have time to integrate it into
| your preferred analytics solution (like BigQuery). Do you have
| any thoughts on that?
|
| My idea was always to focus on smaller and less mature
| organizations, probably ones that have been around for 10+
| years. They aren't using BigQuery, they prefer to host
| everything themselves, and they don't yet realize there are
| tools like DataStation that they can easily run to make
| analytics easier.
|
| I've worked at a bunch of companies like this so I know the
| market exists. Actually I have been surprised how many people
| _outside_ of this market showed up in the DataStation
| community. I 've seen Googlers, MS-ers, modern startups, data
| science teams show up interested in DataStation compared to
| what they're already using.
|
| For me it's just been a matter of time (and funding) to build
| out the product to serve these communities commercially as a
| SaaS or enterprise product.
|
| [0] https://github.com/multiprocessio/go-sqlite3-stdlib
| edding4500 wrote:
| Small company here with a data team consisting of 1.5 full
| time employees. I just found out about DataStation from this
| post, immediately installed it and I'm loving it. Great work
| and concepts :)
| eatonphil wrote:
| That's fantastic! Any time you have feedback or ideas,
| please email me. Address in HN profile.
| LukeEF wrote:
| 'The open-source developer tools market is one of the worst
| markets one could possibly end up in... the answer is basic
| microeconomics. Developers love building developer tools, often
| for free. So while there is massive demand, the supply vastly
| outstrips it. This drives the number of alternatives up, and the
| prices down to zero.'[1]
|
| 5 years later and this still feels correct. From one OSS Dev Tool
| founder to another - more power & good luck!
|
| [1] https://www.defmacro.org/2017/01/18/why-rethinkdb-
| failed.htm...
| cskCollo wrote:
| What you have achieved in one year is pretty impressive. I also
| think that there is a potential for a good business somewhere in
| there. If I were you, I would hang in there and change tact a
| bit. For example, have you considered reaching out to some of
| your target customers(organizations) to understand what it would
| take for them to use such a tool? Or what makes them not use the
| tool? One thing to note is that sales process for enterprise
| software is tricky e.g A dev might like the solution but someone
| else writes the check. It's a whole science and it's one factor
| that influences success
| Fiahil wrote:
| > How do you query this data or join or filter across such
| disparate sources? The only two solutions today are to put ALL
| data into a warehouse or to write custom scripts. The problem
| with warehouses are that they are expensive and that the ETL
| process for every new database is expensive too.
|
| > Tons and tons of companies are trying to solve this. You'll get
| lost among all the vendors trying to capitalize on the "Modern
| Data Stack". They're expensive.
|
| Yes, and Yes. However I see a path for a new kind of warehouse
| that isn't a "Git for Data" or a Databricks' product.
|
| "Topics" (Kafka terminology) containing versioned datasets could
| help organise and discover what is available in a given repo. The
| Data versioning would help ensuring reproducibility of any AI
| pipeline consuming those, because artefacts would be kept
| unaltered "forever". And finally, availability would be supported
| by a simple set of read-only replicas.
|
| Your best alternative today consist of stuffing a blob storage
| with parquet files, and giving write access to a proxy (or to
| everyone, if you want to live dangerously). Where are append-only
| semantics ? Conflict-free artefact creation with concurrent reads
| ?
|
| There is massive opportunities here, it's almost exciting !
|
| PS : > I'm particularly interested in ending up at a database or
| analytics company. So if you're a database or analytics company
| hiring managers or developers, feel free to message me!
|
| I see you in the thread, so does a consulting company with a
| massive Data Science arm is of any interest to you ? :)
| nico_h wrote:
| It sounds like you're describing datomic. Though I don't know
| if it has the required density.
| eatonphil wrote:
| > I see you in the thread, so does a consulting company with a
| massive Data Science arm is of any interest to you ? :)
|
| ha, maybe! You have my email.
| cube2222 wrote:
| I think Pachyderm[0] is exactly what you're describing.
|
| [0]:https://www.pachyderm.com
| Fiahil wrote:
| We used pachyderm before MLOps was even a thing, sadly, back
| then they tried to solve everything at once while failing
| with the most basic needs.
|
| If your data versioning "Utilizes a Git-like structure that
| enables effective team collaboration through commits,
| branches and rollbacks", then it means you can only consume
| one version at a time in your pipeline. This is,
| unfortunately, a fatal flaw. Especially when working with
| time series !
| claytonjy wrote:
| I also used Pachyderm pre-MLOps (2017+), specifically for
| time series ML (finance) and didn't see a mismatch between
| what we wanted and how Pachyderm worked. Were you
| overwriting/replacing data over time?
| ushakov wrote:
| > They weren't a fan of me being a solo founder and they felt the
| usage wasn't high enough
|
| i don't understand the logic here
|
| why would you need YC if you have found a co-founder and have
| some usage already? can't you just start making money?
| dvt wrote:
| > why would you need YC if you have found a co-founder and have
| some usage already? can't you just start making money?
|
| YC is primarily looking to invest in unicorns that have returns
| in the 100x-1000x range. Even if you're "making money," you
| might just be a lifestyle business (e.g. selling custom art on
| Etsy) or a small business (e.g. family-run bike shop). And
| while both might be profitable (the owners might even be worth
| 7+ figures), neither of these have any realistic chance of
| becoming the next Amazon.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Solo founder means bus factor is high. You don't even have to
| die. Having a co-founder increases the chances of you being in
| it for the long run. But having a co-founder can pose a whole
| set of problems itself...
| cube00 wrote:
| I would have thought co-founders are more problematic because
| they need to agree on everything but it sounds like a solo
| founder is an overall negative which I found surprising.
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