Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/03/breaking-microsoft-walks/ <comment><USER2> Personally, if I was a Yahoo shareholder I would be calling up my lawyers to start suing the Yahoo board. Financially this deal is clearly good for shareholders coming at a 60% premium.

I can't personally see why Yahoo would be worth $38 a share. The job of the board is to do what's in the best interest of shareholders but ultimately it personally seems this deal was not rejected because of the numbers but because of the sentimental attachment to Yahoo independence.

Expect some litigation

<comment><USER3> Nothing personal, but that's the kind of shareholder that ruins good businesses. The language of Ballmer's letter is clearly intended to cause precisely that kind of action from Yahoo! shareholders.

The shareholders sue the management, the management spends its time defending itself from lawsuits rather than leading innovation and increasing stockholder value, department projects go awry and more employees leave, and the stock drops. Microsoft makes the same kind of offer a few years later, but at an even lower price. The new management, seeing what happened to their predecessors, will take the offer, and Microsoft gets all of Yahoo!'s assets at a bargain price.

It's absolute short-sightedness on the part of stockholders. Surely the mere fact that Microsoft was willing to buy the company at a 70% premium indicates that the stock was undervalued to begin with, and that people with the tech & business knowledge to see the big picture (not just the Microsoft execs, the Yahoo! execs too) knew the value of the company could be increased.

Even if the management at Yahoo! can defend itself from these lawsuits, they'll have been put on the defensive, on every front. No major initiatives, no bold new plans, no big mergers or acquisitions that could actually help the company; if they rock the boat a second time so soon again, they won't avoid being tossed out. So while they stay the course set by the backseat drivers who don't even have a full view of the road, Microsoft is free to out-compete.

<comment><USER2> >"Nothing personal, but that's the kind of shareholder that ruins good businesses. The language of Ballmer's letter is clearly intended to cause precisely that kind of action from Yahoo! shareholders."

Perhaps you are right. But shareholders rarely hold stock to build good businesses they are there to make money. They would happily invest in a bad company if it was about to be bought out for a huge premium. Once you go public, few things matter other than the numbers.

Plus 72% of Yahoo shareholders are professional money managers, arbitrageurs, and regular investors. These people are likely to want this deal to go through.

<comment><USER4> I cannot think of a better advertisement for staying small and profitable. Why work so hard for financial and creative indepenence, and then have money- hungry shareholders take that away for their own motives?

It's not only bad VCs that can do this, apparently bad shareholders can too.

<comment><USER5> Or to sell both A and B class shares :)

<comment><USER2> Yer....I think Google did this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if they are walking away from the deal so the stock tumbles, and they can come back in a quarter or two and try and nab Yahoo then. I think Oracle actually did this with Peoplesoft?

<comment><USER7> This definitely puts the spotlight on Yahoo to start performing PDQ. If they are the same track six months from now that they are on today, you can expect some real gnashing of teeth among the shareholders.

On the other hand, Microsoft comes out of this looking pretty good (among the none geek crowds). They tried to buy this poor company at a 60-70% premium.

I wonder if MS has another acquisition target in their sites .

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing's for sure... this news is great for startups! Having MS and Y! combined would have reduced the number of exit points for startups. Also, it would have resulted in massive layoffs which would have further reduced the number of acquisitions that they would have made as a combined company. At least now you still have three major players to negotiate with.

<comment><USER9> Maybe. But the other way to look at it is, MSFT has an NIH culture and isn't a prolific acquirer; MSFT-YHOO combined could have produced more acquisitions than MSFT and YHOO apart.

<comment><USER10> I don't follow your logic: if Microsoft has an NIH culture why would the combined Microsoft+Yahoo do more acquistions than Yahoo did independently? Remember who would be consuming who here. Isn't it more likely that the larger Microsoft would replace Yahoo's culture than it would be that Yahoo's culture would mollify Microsoft's?

<comment><USER9> Acquiring cultures get co-opted by their acquired companies all the time; think VW and Audi.

In this case, a much-needed culture shock to Redmond was almost an explicit perk of the deal for MSFT. It's not hard for me to imagine that a MSFT with a revitalized web strategy could go on to acquire more companies than they will on their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yahoo was in the headlights before. Now they're just roadkill.

I think a MSFT+YHOO merger would have been massive fail, but it's Microsoft that ends up dodging the bullet here. Yahoo just takes one. Where exactly is Yahoo relevant anymore?

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm probably way off base, but it seems like MSFT is doing this to decrease the price of YHOO.

1\. Pull out offer 2\. Shareholders complain 3\. Markets kill YHOO 4\. MSFT comes back and buys cheaper?

</comment><comment><USER13> This is extreamly unfortunate to yahoo shareholders. At the current state I don't see how yahoo can create value in the company. I wonder how bad the stock will fall starting monday

</comment><comment><USER14> Ballmer says clearly in the letter that they will not be pursuing a proxy nomination battle. Do you think he is telling the truth?

<comment><USER15> His explanations seem credible. There are a lot of "poison pills" that Yahoo can swallow between the start of a proxy battle and the installment of MSFT- friendly management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> And that is a lesson to us all that we should have private companies.

<comment><USER17> Really? How does that follow?

<comment><USER10> I think he means you can't (AFAIK - please correct me) do a hostile takeover of a private company, at least not in the same manner. because in a privately owned company there are no public stockholders to appeal to; the owner and the manager of the business are one and the same.

Really though, what this really is is an example of why you should have a dual-class share system where there are "investment shares" and "voting shares", and investing doesn't give you automatic voting rights. Yahoo for some reason didn't have that, and it put the board especially at risk to hostile takeover.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. Founders tend to think that the holy grail is going public but then you'd have to worry about shareholders and short term growth.

It would be perfectly fine to stop right before going public and run the company the way you wanted.

Cargill is a private company with $67B in revenue in 2004 so it's not a question of generating the money (<http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/21/5ZUZ.html>).

<comment><USER18> Founders want to go public to cash out, not because they want to run a publicly traded company. In fact, many leave the company after IPO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the best thing that could have happened for everyone (MS, Yahoo, Yahoo's stakeholders, Google, Apple and all new startups) ... there are 3 major stakeholders (shareholders, employees and end users) and two out of 3 stakeholders weren't happy with the deal - it would have been irreversible disaster if MS bought yahoo by borrowing money from outside...i think MS knew that Yahoo won't come below $37 and walking away is the best face saving tactic - it was like heads i win, tale you loose... it seemed that MS was having cold feet after realizing that yahoo brains and end users may leave the company after acquisition. Also it was uphill battle to integrate 2 businesses with totally different culture and technology. MS can do much better with $45Billion.

</comment><comment><USER20> I believe Microsoft just couldn't afford Yahoo because of Vista. If Vista sold well and there was mass adoption then MS would have had the free cash flow to aquire Yahoo without having to borrow. If Yahoo next year is at $20 a share, Microsoft may try again. (edited to cut out unimportant sections)

<comment><USER21> "They can't pull out all of there investments right now, it would devastate the stock market."

Really? Their balance sheet doesn't show a huge amount of long-term investments. And yesterday, $1.9 billion worth of Microsoft stock alone changed hands -- it would be very hard for them to upset the market selling gradually. In addition, they're generating at least $4 billion in operating cash flow each quarter, which would support a lot of debt at a low rating.

Finally, they could issue stock. Free cash flow is not the issue.

<comment><USER20> If Microsoft issues more stock it would dilute it's shares which causes some people to pull out of the stock further sending it's price down. I really don't believe they would wipe out hundreds of millions / billions of shareholders value for Yahoo.

You just can't take billions of dollars in investments out without proper planning. Just because they can cash out doesn't mean that is a great idea. They would have nothing in reserves. One of the founders of Microsoft, Paul Allen was really big on having reserves that they would not spend and I would be suprised if that attitude didn't still prevail today.

Yahoo doesn't throw of enough cash either. Microsoft would have to fire half of Yahoo's employees (think Compaq computers), which would cause customers to run for the hills expecting the worst to happen to customer service and other functions.

Yahoo right now is just too expensive for MS.

<comment><USER10> Curious. What do you think - has Microsoft been so successful in business at least in part _because_ of its insistence per Paul Allen of keeping large cash reserves, larger than most companies keep on hand? (MiniMSFT blogger said something like, "Why? We're not a bank!")

Or is it simply that Microsoft has held a very lucrative monopoly position for many years and just makes more money than it knows what to do with? I.e., perhaps its habit of keeping large cash reserves are just an effect of its success and not any kind of cause of it?

The reason I pose the question is that I have been forming a layman's theory that in fact it is all about the cash, even as much for a huge company as it is for a small mom and pop store; that as long as a company has cash on hand it can go on, and when it runs out of cash the end is coming even if it takes years in a downhill slide. If you take corruption as a given, I suspect that all the accoutrements of big-company strategies like pursuing growth over profitability, borrowing money to run at a loss, etc., are nothing more than smokescreen thrown up by upper management to make it look like they're doing a good job when they're really bleeding the company. Rather than being a waste of resources, I rather wonder if keeping a large cash reserve is like a protective armor to keep a company from having to borrow at interest during rough periods. Is this completely off the mark?

<comment><USER22> An indirect reply: Managers usually favour large reserves for it gives them more power and they do not have to beg for capital. Shareholders do not usually want to have cash layin around more or less idle.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Failed SaaS post-mortem: validate your pricing model like I didn't - <AUTHOR> https://elliotbonneville.com/blog/validate-your-pricing-model-like-i-didnt/ <comment><USER2> > _I just spent about three weeks bootstrapping a SaaS as a solo founder. For > context, you can read my description of it here, and I've talked about the > inspiration behind it and motivations here and here._

... wow, that's crazy fast. I'd argue you didn't validate anything with that time frame. It takes months to build a reputation or awareness around a product to give people time to make a decision. As SaaStr says, give your product/startup TWO YEARS.[1]

Three weeks isn't enough time to even pretend you're bootstrapping. That's a vacation from work...

> _The basic concept was solid: provide an insanely simple way for business > intelligence consultants to manage project data._

... ESPECIALLY IN B2B.

\---

[1] [https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-going-to-do-a-saas-start- up-...](https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-going-to-do-a-saas-start-up-you-have- to-give-it-24-months/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, not sure on this. If the problem is solving is big enough, I would think people would bite as soon as they're able to validate the software solves their problem. Check out how Jason Cohen founded WP Engine as a counterpoint.

I mean, perhaps ALL of software is so saturated there are no places where this can happen, but I'd rather spend a couple of years discovering that then spend a couple of years learning that one solution I tried to sell isn't valid.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying it's _impossible_ ; just because it _might_ have worked for Jason Cohen doesn't mean you should expect such a short timeframe to work for you. That was also his 4th startup, I believe...

As Jason says in his interviews, if it were that easy, then we'd all have 1000 customers and bootstrapped startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Conversely, because it _probably_ won't work, is that a good reason not to try? Given the asymmetrical nature of the risk (three weeks is not a huge chunk out of my life, unlike three years I spent on a previous startup), it seems like a reasonable investment. If it does work, the payoff is worth the risk imo. Or at least, it was in this case -- which is why I took the risk.

<comment><USER3> While drastically decreasing the amount of risk you take, you're also drastically decreasing the likelihood of success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Generally speaking, I agree... but does it really apply here?

Wouldn't I be taking a risk in not taking a risk, thus decreasing the likelihood of success... which should then increase the likelihood of success?

I only say this for the sake of argument and I think there's something wrong with this logic, but for the life of me I can't find it.

<comment><USER2> I think the point he's making is that you didn't take enough time to validate either way. If you do this with every idea you can launch and shut down 12 companies a year and not give any one a real chance of validation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I get the impression that you're rushing - rushing to build it, rushing to get a customer, rushing to get to some MRR. Why?

Why the 90 hour weeks? Why make critical business decisions without any metrics after hearing some guy on the internet talk about $50/user? Because he's famous?

Most experienced people know to have patience: patience to find the right solution, patience to find the right users and patience to make the right connections. It all takes time and you only gave it 3 weeks?

Sorry but you sound like you want to make a quick buck and retire early, or maybe you need the money now. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not really a "SaaS post-mortem", it's more of a "I don't have the time or patience to invest in this SaaS".

All I can say is, have more patience, don't rush into things and don't throw your hands up in the air and give up when it's not going as well as you imagined in your mind. You have to persevere if you're going to run a startup. Good luck!

<comment><USER5> In the article they say they want to make 2k MRR in 2 months so it seems like there's some external pressure present.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You gave up after 3 weeks dude? You will never succeed at founding a startup with that attitude. I've been bootstrapping my startup for 2+ years and after several pivots we are just now finding our stride with ~$10k MRR.

I also completely disagree on the assumption that pricing had anything to do with your failure. Your startup didn't fail because of the economics, it failed because your product didn't provide enough value to customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You gave up after 3 weeks dude? You will never succeed at founding a startup > with that attitude.

Well, I've also done it the other way where I spent three years at a startup and couldn't find traction. I'm just trying to hit the other extreme as well, and so hopefully land somewhere in the sweet spot in the middle.

> you failed because your product didn't provide enough value to customers.

Hmm, this is another great way of putting it -- value translates into pricing pretty directly, so if you can't charge enough there's probably not enough value. I think that's another way of saying the same thing.

<comment><USER7> > Well, I've also done it the other way where I spent three years at a startup > and couldn't find traction.

There is a massive space in-between those timeframes =P In this case, it doesn't seem you even actually built out a real MVP (not just the front-end) and tried to sell to customers. You hadn't actually validated whether people actually wanted the product for real, and just killed it because of one person's experience delivered in a talk?

If you're taking PG's essays to heart, your _only_ concern at the beginning should be building the thing and finding customers that really want it. The pricing stuff is the easiest thing by far to change (checkout patio11's stuff on this, if you haven't).

Maybe this one really would have been a bust. But if your goal is to reach $2k MRR in 2 months, there's little chance you're gunna get there by building 3 week projects and gaming it out in your head instead of just selling to people. Choose 1 thing that you have a customer lined up for that really really wants it, and spend those two months building that out and making them happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is... bullshit. The insights are forced – the rules for new businesses aren't so fixed that the advice from an internet persona and a brief questioning of the business model would kill a business.

And to call it a post-mortem? Forgive me, but post-mortem analyses are valuable when slow – these insights come too quick, without enough chewing going on.

<comment><USER9> For some reason, this article really aggravated me.

The conclusion about the pricing model feels the most forced to me. What he's really saying is that he wanted to limit the number of customers to 25 or so and achieve a $2k MRR within 2 months. The reason for this was to have more time for other pursuits, such as homeschooling the imminent child or other pursuits. Implied there is some amount of time required that is << 40 hours/week.

Reading his initial blog post, he doesn't mention the pricing model at all. He does mention taking a week to build a POC that his dad can show to his co- workers as well as contacting a few hundred BI folks via LinkedIn. That doesn't seem like a terrible approach. Build something, see what resonates, etc.

Reading the article, what really seems to have happened is that he spent a week creating a UI POC, shopped it to 30 BI folks on LinkedIn over two weeks, and didn't get traction. I'm not sure what happened to the 20-30 reach outs per day.

The real reason for the failure wasn't the pricing model, it was that the developer wanted something that would earn $2k/month with little to no effort on his part. The main reason the project failed was because he did no research in building it, and then decided not to continue it. The "pricing model" comes in when he decides what # of customers he can support in whatever amount of time he was willing the spend. He then extrapolated a number from that to get $2k MRR. Then, and only then, did he actually look at what comparable products on the market charge.

The more I think about it, I'm pretty sure the whole exercise, including the "pricing model" conclusion, was simply an exercise in content generation. If so, well played, sir.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey -- very interesting that this article aggravates you. I'd really like to know more about what resonated with you personally, even if that resonation was negative.

You've given me a lot to chew on, and I really appreciate the unbiased, perhaps even adversarial, response.

> _The conclusion about the pricing model feels the most forced to me. What he > 's really saying is that he wanted to limit the number of customers to 25 or > so and achieve a $2k MRR within 2 months._

I think this is an incorrect assumption. The idea going in is if I can get to $2k MRR within two months, that'll free me up to quit my day job by extending my runway significantly. Then I can spend all my time working on the SaaS, working on the more time-consuming parts like marketing, organic content generation and outreach, etc.

> _Reading the article, what really seems to have happened is that he spent a > week creating a UI POC, shopped it to 30 BI folks on LinkedIn over two > weeks, and didn 't get traction. I'm not sure what happened to the 20-30 > reach outs per day._

Well, I had started doing those 20-30 reach outs per day, but on like day two I found Jason's video and it blew my mind enough to disrupt me from that course of action immediately. I stopped doing outreach to think about it (why would I want to bother people about something I may not even ship?).

After spending some time thinking about it and discussing whether or not I should continue with a couple of my mentors and my dad, we all agreed that my time could be better spent elsewhere.

> _The real reason for the failure wasn 't the pricing model, it was that the > developer wanted something that would earn $2k/month with little to no > effort on his part._

I hesitate to call this "failure" anymore after reading the other comments on this post, which have been really helpful in shaping how I think about this whole story.

Instead, it's a thought-through decision to put my effort in elsewhere.

If I can spend the same amount of time building a POC and getting 25 paying users, with all else being equal, why would I want to spend that time building a POC for which I can charge less? Isn't it natural to build a startup where I can charge more, if that's within the realm of possibility?

Given the fact that I was only three weeks in, I wasn't suffering from sunk cost fallacy of "well, I've come this far -- might as well keep going now!".

> _The "pricing model" comes in when he decides what # of customers he can > support in whatever amount of time he was willing the spend. He then > extrapolated a number from that to get $2k MRR._

Actually, the $2k MRR comes from picking a somewhat arbitrary goal that I thought was slightly out of reach, and significant enough. I think there were a couple of people that mentioned hitting $2k MRR within 6 - 12 months in Indie Hacker podcasts, so I thought -- if they can do it that fast, is there any reason I can't do it faster?

My thinking here comes from that quote Tim Ferriss likes to share, "why not six months instead of ten years?"

So... why not give it a shot, ya know?

> _Then, and only then, did he actually look at what comparable products on > the market charge._

Actually, those numbers came up in conversations I was having with the people I reached out to on LinkedIn.

They started talking about price, and I watched Jason's video, at around the same time.

The reason I didn't mention anything about price in my first article was simply because I legit hadn't even thought of it at all.

Once I did think of it -- well, I'll end with asking this rhetorical question again: if I could build something and sell it to 25 people for either X or 2X, why would I build something I can only sell for X? It makes sense to go for the 2X, right?

Cheers, and thanks again for taking the time to write up that comment. It's been helpful to me in thinking about how I went about this and what I will do differently next time.

> _The more I think about it, I 'm pretty sure the whole exercise, including > the "pricing model" conclusion, was simply an exercise in content > generation. If so, well played, sir._

Welllllll... about that. The articles I've been writing about this process are definitely an exercise in content generation. The process itself, though, is just me fumbling my way through this with few mentors and little experience.

<comment><USER10> _if I could build something and sell it to 25 people for either X or 2X, why would I build something I can only sell for X? It makes sense to go for the 2X, right?_

Obviously, if you are presented with two options for things you can sell with similar ease to similar numbers of people, you should pick the higher priced one.

But you don't have another product like that, do you? You have this one. Why not try and sell this one, instead of worrying about some theoretical 2x alternative.

If you find the 2x alternative, why waste your time with _that_ when you could just find a 4x alternative and build that instead!

The end of this road is obvious: just build something you can charge one customer $2k / month for. Presto!

<comment><AUTHOR> > _But you don't have another product like that, do you? You have this one._

You're describing the sunk cost fallacy, and the beauty of having spent only three weeks on this idea is that I haven't sunk very much cost at all. I could very easily go for the one that makes 2X.

> _If you find the 2x alternative, why waste your time with that when you > could just find a 4x alternative and build that instead!_

It's a sliding scale. The higher the price point, the longer the sales cycle. If you sell a $5 widget on your website, a consumer can buy that without a moment's thought.

Selling a $100k/yr enterprise software subscription can take a year. Or two. And require having been in the industry for three or four or ten, as other folks in this thread have pointed out.

My goal is to find the sweet spot between pricing my product so cheap that I can't consistently acquire enough customers on my self-funding budget and so expensive that the sales cycle is too long.

<comment><USER10> That's not the sunk cost fallacy unless sticking with it now is actually a bad idea. I don't think you have enough info to determine that, and it's a lot less work to do so than it is to build something else and validate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> " just spent about three weeks bootstrapping "

Great share but please don't call it "Failed SAAS". I respect what you did but calling an experiment of 3 weeks a failed SAAS is unfair to real SAAS businesses that actually fail. 3 weeks is not enough. You can call it "I tried an experiment for 3 weeks and moving on".

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, what do you think the cutoff that determines a "real" SaaS is?

<comment><USER11> My point is that 3 weeks is not enough time to actually do the hard things: marketing, sales and most important: listening to potential customers. Not to mention all the other stuff that comes with running any business and not just SAAS which are operational, customer support etc etc.

You will only know if the business was a failure until you have done all of that and that takes at least 2 years in my humble opinion.

What you did was an idea validation that you tried for 3 weeks which btw has a great summary in your writing but I would not call it a failed SAAS. You haven't done the actual grinding. I say this as a bootstrapped SAAS guy who has been grinding for 6 years :)

<comment><USER12> > You will only know if the business was a failure until you have done all of > that and that takes at least 2 years in my humble opinion.

But why does that matter? The goal is not to conclusively prove that some particular business is beyond hope of success, the goal is to find the one which is successful.

I'm not necessarily saying that 3 weeks is just the right amount of time to spend on a single idea. But if you want to maximize your chances of achieving success in, say, 3 years, what _is_ the right amount of time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! That's the question I'm asking myself too.

I'm erring on the side of moving on too quickly, rather than waiting too long, because I like to move fast and I've already made the mistake of spending way too long on something.

I think it's really non-obvious, and there aren't a lot of good heuristics that measure how long is long enough -- and it's my belief that most heuristics simply aren't aggressive enough. One of my mottos is "most limitations are conceptual and self-imposed," and I see a lot of self-imposed limitations in the SaaS community, mostly because people have no idea what can be achieved when you set really high goals... not sure why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a fellow bootstrapped founder, you don't have to worry about drowning in support requests. Simply offer two pricing models, a $10-20/month without support (just work once on a good FAQ that answers the majority of questions), and a bigger $49-$69/month plan that comes with email support. Just because you're offering email support does not mean you're going to get lots of emails, you will be surprised how much a good FAQ reduces support emails.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! I've dealt with customer support for a SaaS in the past and a good FAQ definitely helps.

I think I placed too much emphasis on the pain of dealing with support in my article. The other motivation was really just that, having thought about pricing, the whole idea of charging more and dealing with support less sounds more appealing than the opposite, and given that I could elect to follow a path that leads to that with little latent cost incurred, why not do it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amazing job on building something, but you're giving up way too soon. With respect to Jason, there's no guarantee that every SaaS charging less than $50 / month is going to drown in support costs. Let's do the math, shall we?

Suppose you want to make $10k MRR with this. You need 500 monthly users, right? Realistically, a good chunk of them aren't going to even use the product very often, despite paying for it. This is even more true since it's cheap. You could easily end up with fewer than 100 of the 500 logging in and using the product on any given day. Of those, maybe 5-10 are going to actually need support, and you could easily cover half of that with an FAQ, training videos, etc. So on any given day, you might get 2-5 emails from your 500 customers. Even if it's 10x that, you could probably churn through 20-30 support emails in 1-2 hours just by yourself, or you could hire someone for $500 / month to do it for you. And support requests are going to drop over time as you improve the product, fix bugs, etc.

For the record, none of this is theoretical. I've run multiple profitable saas / recurring revenue projects and I've never had to deal with "drowning" in ongoing support requests. Supporting _free_ users is a different question, and freemium can genuinely be challenging in terms of support requests, but even there it's not _that_ difficult to handle larger volumes of support requests with automated methods to cut down 90% of it. And if you have a handful of problematic customers who are a constant source of stress, you can fire them. They're not worth your sanity, especially for $20 / month.

A better question might be: why are you giving up so quickly? Is it really that you think it's not possible? Or maybe something else going on here?

</comment><comment><USER14> > you needed to be charging at least $50, closer to $100, per month, per user, > in order to make it as a bootstrapped solo SaaS founder

Here's the lowest monthly price plan for the TinySeed 2020 batch companies currently on the front page [1]: 950, 250, 159, 149, 49, 49, 29, 27, 25, 10, 9

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23033623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23033623)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting! Thanks for taking the time to pull those numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hum, that's not really why you failed in my opinion.

I feel like you think building a company is only about following the good rules. This is wrong, there is best rules to follow to create a successful company, you need to take risks and do new things. Following the 'best practices' is the best way to no be successful.

Regarding your pricing, you are selling to individual developers, so, to people who never buy any professional products, and as other have said, after 3 weeks you can only say that you have not waited long enough to know if you are failing or not.

Also you are too sure about what you are doing. If things are that obvious for you, it means you are very likely missing something

My advice to you, forget about money, build something which satisfies your target users for free an when you will have several of them you will understand what they are willing to pay for. Startup life is long, you need to be patient and persistent, you have not failed, this is only the beginning ;), good luck

</comment><comment><USER16> > At that rate, I'd need to get between 500 and 1,000 users in order to reach > an MRR that would let me go full-time. With that many users, as a solo > bootstrapper, I'd be spending all of my time on support.

Sure, maybe initially as you work out the bugs and missing features. But you don't go from zero users to a thousand overnight, so users 1-10 will probably have more support requests than 990-1000 because you've worked the kinks out as you go.

Also, if you're able to find people that are willing to open their wallet _for any amount_ then you have very engaged users. As they fully integrate your product into their workflows, you can find ways to increase the value you provide to them with upgraded, higher-priced plans, pushing your average monthly revenue per customer up.

</comment><comment><USER17> Your objective was to close a sale. If you closed a sale you could keep learning. If you close a sale it validates you're solving a problem people are willing to pay to solve. At that point you're already ahead of 30% of startups.

Jason Cohen's essays are a major influence on me and I've been doing this SaaS stuff for over twenty years. But you can always raise your price, especially after doing a lot of learning with a handful of early customers. But it's very difficult to lower your price after losing the sale the first time, I've got first hand experience here.

Three weeks is a ridiculous amount of time to judge success of a startup, you need to invest a minimum of two years and at times during that period it will be an absolute grind. That's why you need to be absolutely in love with your idea or you won't have the energy to continue.

</comment><comment><USER18> My opinion is that you don't really have a product here, hence it can't have failed. Your site doesn't even have a landing page explaining what the product is, why you'd use it, how much it costs, or user accounts (it's free access?). It barely qualifies as an MVP. That means you didn't even had a chance to capture any leads, which in turn means you can't take any conclusions about _anything_ , especially pricing.

> you won't find many BI developers who are keen on trying to expense a > monthly $75 bill

You really won't, because $75 is way too low to bother with the expense process in any medium sized business. Maybe start at $750 instead? If you don't feel like you could charge that, is the product really offering value?

</comment><comment><USER19> Good post - pricing is so very critical (although I do agree with others here that three weeks is such a _very_ short timeframe). It's interesting to think about pricing from a "what's my per-user cost so I can reasonably bootstrap this myself", but it's usually more reasonable (and profitable) to think about it the other way around - "what value am i providing to my user?".

The book "The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing" was a real eye opener for me as I don't come from a business background. The crux is that don't think about it in terms of costs, but how much value (e.g., time saved, leads generated, etc) you are providing and if the price is worth it from the user's perspective.

</comment><comment><USER20> > _" I just spent about three weeks bootstrapping a SaaS as a solo founder"_

> _" Plus, my goal is to hit $2k MRR in the next two months"_

Why that fast? Is that the right pace?

I wonder what's the right balance between validating things fast and persisting until you make it work.

I am more inclined to the position that he should/I would have worked to make his $20/month product grows into the value of a $100/month product.

People are never keen to spend $75 a month, unless is an investment in something that will make them, for example, earn $500 more a month.

At the same time, there were signs that it could be an idea that he would keep trying for an year and a half, and end up in the same place (I've been there).

How to make this decision?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Why that fast? Is that the right pace?

My timeline is determined by my wife's due date currently. I have no idea if it's the right pace, but I also have no idea that it's not.

Unless somebody comes along and points out why I should spend more time in a really convincing way, I'm going to set an unreasonable and if I hit it, great! If not, I'm probably still progressing more quickly than other people with more modest goals.

> People are never keen to spend $75 a month, unless is an investment in > something that will make them, for example, earn $500 more a month.

Very true. I'm just not sure the value I can deliver with this product was ever going to be sellable at $75/mo, given the pricing the rest of the market exhibits...

> At the same time, there were signs that it could be an idea that he would > keep trying for an year and a half, and end up in the same place (I've been > there).

I've been here too (3 years on one startup, never got off the ground). I'm trying to land in the other extreme now -- moving TOO quickly. Hopefully doing this will help me find some middle ground that's not where my preconceptions paint it to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm working on my SaaS solo and I expect to work on it at least 1 year before releasing a beta. And after that I don't expect making some profit for at least another year, probably two.

Working 3 weeks on something and expecting it to have some value is totally unrealistic. Yeah, maybe someone somewhere pulled that off, but it's one in a million chance and the lowest hanging fruit has already been taken years ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why did you decide to spend a year building something before releasing it? Wouldn't you want to validate the value your product brings to the table before spending that long on it?

> Working 3 weeks on something and expecting it to have some value is totally > unrealistic.

Agreed -- the conversations I was having based on that were more about projected value it might offer rather than the current value. I wanted to see if I could people invested in the idea and my capabilities to deliver it, more so than the actual product as it existed at that time.

<comment><USER21> > _Why did you decide to spend a year building something before releasing it? > Wouldn 't you want to validate the value your product brings to the table > before spending that long on it?_

One year is not that much for a one man band but a) I believe I know the value it brings and b) even with a valuable idea you're still _very_ far away from a successful product/company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am a solo founder with over 900 customers, and I get bored because they have very few issues or support requests.

You should at least give it a try...

I have a public slack where people help each others most of the time, and I also handle all support requests on the chat.

</comment><comment><USER23> As a solo founder, what if I were to flip the pricing model on its head.

Let us assume I need $100 per month to survive, my Google adwords budget is $40, my AWS /bill is expected to be $45, my overheads are $50 -- how do I price my product ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the $50-$100 figure is a rule-of-thumb, and Jason goes into some great detail on how he arrives at those numbers in the video.

Something else which might seem more appropriate in that case is to determine your price based on the value you deliver rather than the cost it takes you to deliver that value.

If your value delivered is less than what it costs you to deliver that value, you have a broken pricing model and there's no way to make it work.

<comment><USER23> >> If your value delivered is less than what it costs you to deliver that value, you have a broken pricing model and there's no way to make it work.

You raise a good point. The challenge is how do you quantify the value. Should I be using the cost of alternatives or substitutes ? Or do you evaluate the actual value delivered by improved efficiency or revenue etc. This could turn into a very deep rabbit hole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Do they pay for other software to solve this problem?

What are the painful problems of the people with purchasing power in that market?

At the initial stage I would be looking for them to pay you anything or agree to pay and optimize the pricing model later.

</comment><comment><USER25> It seems like maybe you gave up a little early.

Also, 150 users seems like a ridiculously small number for any type of company doing custom software (non F500).

...but perhaps I'm just not very learned?

<comment><USER26> I agree that it sounds like he gave up too early, but I just wanted to say: It is difficult for any early-stage product to get even 1 paying user, let alone 150.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's challenging to develop a product without having first-hand domain knowledge. Kudos for taking on the challenge.

</comment><comment><USER28> > My goal is to hit $2k MRR in the next two months, before my first child is > born in July.

You're about to go through a crazy experience. Instead of choosing startup life, consider making your wife and child the most important things in your life right now. You can spend 90 hours prototyping a startup idea any time but you only get one chance at this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: I didn't run the numbers to understand how to price my bootstrapped SaaS as a solo founder, and after building an awesome tool, I had to throw it out.

Key learnings:

\- You need to include pricing as a critical failure point from the very beginning when vetting your startup ideas.

\- You should be charging somewhere between $50 to $100/mo per user as a bootstrapped startup founder.

\- Don't bother trying to bootstrap / self-fund enterprise software.

<comment><USER29> Disclaimer: CEO of a midsize enterprise software company.

Frankly, I just disagree:

* Pricing is mostly irrelevant at the beginning. Even Google didn't figure out its business model and pricing long _after_ they were created. The only thing that matter initially is to gradually converge toward something the market want (it's a journey).

* Charging per user is only one of the many many options. It does not have to be that way. Many very successful software businesses don't charge that way.

* Enterprise software is (comparatively) the easiest to self-fund. Most companies in this area are bootstrapped. It takes a single client to achieve ramen profitability for a team of 2 or 3.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that makes sense. I don't think I have the enterprise experience to land an enterprise client, though, and the iteration length on closing a successful sale where I could learn which tactics work and which ones don't is super long. I imagine it would take many more years of experience than I have to pull that off.

Response to edit: I think you make some great points, but I'm not sure how applicable they are to a self-funded solo bootstrapper... how did you launch your company?

My goal is to reach $2k/mrr in the next two months so that I can go full-time on the startup and apply all of my time to making it better / marketing it better, in order to hit escape velocity where my books are completely in the black without having to work a day job.

<comment><USER29> I launched my company as a self-funded solo bootstrapper straight out of university. I took some love money, that I mostly didn't use, and bought half of those shares back at ~4x the original price a decade down the road.

2k USD per month is nothing to a large company. Forget about the _per month_ part, just charge a flat 100k USD package with 2 or 3 payment milestones over a quarter or two. You can give away IP too. You don't really care, you're not going to build your end-game software product on top of a rushed prototype anyway.

However, you have to meet with prospects (executives). Lots of them. It's tough to even get one call, but once you get there, the one question to ask is: what's your biggest problem? and then improvise. After many meetings, you will see patterns emerge, both in types of problems and potential solutions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Hugo Cornwall" and the Hacker's Handbook (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pmsommer.net/page10.html <comment><USER2> Interesting history - thanks. My 4th edition paperback copy of "Hugo Cornwall's New Hacker's Handbook" by Steve Gold from 1989 is sitting right behind me on the shelf.

<comment><USER3> I had a copy of the 1st edition paperback when it came out[1], I was in my teens at the time. Some of the phone numbers in the book actually still worked, and connected to various services like early online banking. As someone with a Prestel account as well, the whole 'hacking Prestel' thing was quite interesting.

Years later I realised I'd lost my original copy, so replaced it with exactly the same edition, mainly for nostalgia reasons. It's still a fun read if you want an insight into early dial-up stuff - it's got a lot of technical stuff in it too about how all the hardware worked.

\---

[1] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hackers-Handbook-Hugo- Cornwall/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hackers-Handbook-Hugo- Cornwall/dp/0712606505/)

<comment><USER4> I used to work in the engineering centre that supported PRESTEL and TYMNET

Later on after PRESTEL was gone, BT security was visiting and freaked out when they bumped into a developer who they had caught as a teenager hacking Prestel.

Security wanted them fired senior management told them NO :-)

Oh I also had a copy of the hackers handbook</comment></comment></comment>


Freelance rates/help - <AUTHOR> Do you charge a different rate for meetings/reviews vs. the actual technical work?  If a client doesn't ask for your rates, how do you initiate the discussion? <comment><USER2> No. I charge the same rate. For travel to the client's location sometimes I will use a per trip rate instead of a per hour/day rate for trips to the client's site. I stopped discounting rates years ago because it does not help me and encourages the notion that it might be ok to not pay me or pay me less in a client's mind.

Because my rate structure is simple. I can describe it easily: W per hour/day. X markup on expenses. Y per mile travel. Z as retainer applied against final invoice based on my _non-binding_ estimate of the time it will take to do the project based on the client's description (often Z is from 25% to 50% of the initial non-binding estimate). Most projects take at least K hours/days.

I don't wait for a _potential_ client to bring up rates. Once it is apparent that the person is soliciting services, I describe my rates. This avoids wasting both our time when there is a gap between a _potential_ client's economic expectations and my rates. It avoids wasting my time with _potential_ client's who balk at writing me a check to get started...willingness and ability to pay are features of a good _potential_ client. Execution of payment is a better criterion than a signed contract for separating actual clients from _potential_ clients. A reluctance to pay me is a good criterion for distinguishing bad clients.

To put it another way, the essence of consulting is the business of "nickeling and dimeing" clients. And in general, charging money is the essence of business. A reluctance to charge people money is not wrong but it is at odds with trying to run a business.

The flat rate up front replaced my previous system where I would tell the client that I would follow up with a proposal and then spend time researching and pondering and estimating and then putting together a document and then waiting for the client's response or non-response.

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, and the above is important advice, because there is a bias on the part of potential clients. If you do not charge them for what they expect to be charged then that makes them uncomfortable with hiring you. In other words, if your rate is lower or you give them freebies they weren't expecting, then they think you are are having trouble getting work - and what do the other potential clients passing on you know that they don't? Sometimes they think this consciously, sometimes subconsciously. In a way, it is like dating.. your potential date has to feel appreciated, but not so appreciated that you look desperate.

I see this in starting consultants all the time, though usually it is as a discounted rate rather than out and out not charging for somethings. These consultants don't realize that they are telling potential customers 'I value myself at X, less valuable than my competition'. They also don't realize that once you give a customer a rate it is difficult to raise the rate later and retain the customer (it can be done, but puts stress on the relationship).

My advice is to charge what you are worth. One way is to figure out how much you would be making in a corporate job, not as a self employed freelancer. Say $160k. Now, once you go self-employed you will need to pay an addition 6.2% (12.4% total) for social security on money up to $118k, 2.9% for medicare, and to be safe you should allocate 25% to health care costs (seems unreasonable, but it does add up - you can trim here to match your health, but it would be better to sock away any extra in a given year). Back of the napkin, and very roughly, that means you need to be making $261k to approach the same take home (261000-(.25 x 261000)-(.124 x 118000)(.029 x 261000)-(.05 x 261000)). Given that if you work 8 hour days (not likely), and allocated 25% to overhead, that gives 2000 hours * 75% = 1500 hours, and a rate of $174/hour. However, your overhead might be more, and there are other costs (such as liability insurance). Also, you will be better off if you charge by the week, rather than the hour, because your accounting will be much simpler. I am neither an accountant, nor a lawyer, so consider the above my personal opinion and do your own due diligence before starting down this road. It is a great road, and managed properly can be successful. Beware though, it is high stress, and will eat up your time with your family.

<comment><USER4> I would say this formula only derives the minimum reasonable rate as a freelancer. It basically ends up netting you the same as you would in a salaried job (adjusted for risks/expenses). But I would say you should be making at least a bit more this way, for it to make sense as a career path.

For comparison, I'm working as a contractor now and making between 2 and 3 times what I could make in a perm position. That's adjusted for expenses, sick days etc. It does not cover vacation though and it assumes that I am able to line up new contracts back-to-back, which may not always be the case.

<comment><USER3> Agree 100%. I derived my formula just to match what you would make in a salaried job, and there are other pieces to factor in as well that I left out for simplicity. For it to make sense you need to figure out how much more you want to make for it to be worth it as a career. If you are just starting out as a freelancer though, you might be ok with just matching salaried for your first year clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I don't charge for reading an email, I do tend to charge my regular rate for a Skype or phone call. If you don't charge your clients, they will take full advantage of your time, and they need to see that you are a professional and your time is money. If you want to offer your first meeting on the phone for free, like a consultation, on what they want, what your terms are, than that is no problem.

I have made the mistake of not charging in the past, and I don't technically charge to read or respond to emails, though I might factor in some of the work - at least - say something takes me a minimum of 25 minutes to do, I will charge an hour of labor because I've had to take some time out to understand their email and clarify that the work they want is accurate from the information I understood it to be.

In this fast-paced world, meetings can eat up a lot of [your] time. And sometimes you do get those clients who want to meet you in person or they always want to talk to you on the phone. I had one client who kept wanting to meet with me every single week, and I lived close to her business, about 15 minutes away, and the first two or three times, I did not charge her for it. I was naive and just happy to have her as a client, since her business was popular in town. It got old real quick. I decided to charge her her for those meetings, which usually lasted anywhere from an hour to two hours. Once those charges came, the meetings switched over to email or a very brief quick phone call real quick.

I have since trained my clients to send email. Paper trails are much more accurate than in-person meetings or phone calls. They protect me and my client so there are no misunderstandings of what was said vs. what was heard. Clients will usually send me an email with work they want or need. Before I start any work, I normally reply back and inform the client: "Please confirm by replying that it is okay for me to begin an invoice and work on what you want me to do. You will be billed at my normal rate of X per hour."

This confirmation they reply back with is an email of their recognition that I am doing work for them and my billing has begun. While I've never had issues, stating your business clearly of what you are doing, what you are charging, and them agreeing to you doing it, is for your own protection and theirs. An email can protect you as it can serve as a legal contract in the court of law.

</comment><comment><USER6> You have to initiate the rate though you can inquire about their budget.

I wouldn't charge separate rates. As soon as you do this, you open yourself up to needless bickering about how much of your time was spent on x vs y. It becomes complicated to separate sessions that are programming intertwined with technical discussion.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone, it's been helpful to hear how others do things. I already met with the client and exchanged a couple emails. First meeting I'll do free because I want to vet the client as well. But this client asked for another meeting to go over details and still hasn't asked about my rates. In my reply agreeing to this next meeting, I also mentioned what my rates are. Client accepted my terms right away.

I freelance on the side, so I don't do this a whole lot, but this was the first client I've come across that didn't ask about rates at the very first meeting. I've come to suspect, though, he's already financially independent and this business is a "fun" thing for him, so maybe that has something to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER7> An initial call I will do for free, to find out what the client wants, how I can help them, etc. If we agree to move forward, I'll bring up payments with them, part of which is agreeing on a rate.

After that, any significant time is billed, and labeled so they can see where the time (money) is going.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't charge different rates. The way I look at it, when I'm charging an hourly rate, the client is paying for my time. What value the client derives from that time isn't really relevant to the cost.

Or put another way. I know I can sell my time at X in the market, because I have done so before. Thus, it makes no sense for me to sell it at a rate lower than X, regardless of what I actually do.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the top textbooks for data structures? - <AUTHOR> I've been looking at some textbooks for algorithms and I came across the Skeina book and CLRS, but they seem to be pretty advanced.  I've been programming for almost 2 years and never really formally taught myself the fundamentals like algorithms, and it seems as if data structures would be far more useful to learn about BEFORE algorithms (heaps, hashes, stacks, etc...).  I'm looking for a book like SICP, something classic and easy to understand.  Thanks! <comment> wh-uws Algorithms, Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne

[https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/](https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/)

Is my personal favorite.

CLRS is a great reference but learning algorithms from it is like trying to learn English by reading the dictionary.

It's great if you already know stuff and are looking for clarity or in the context of a course / class because someone has structured the curriculum already. But on its own is just a bunch of info.

Sedgwick and Wanye is easier to pickup and play from scratch with.

</comment><comment><USER2> Not a book but from my interview bookmarks:

[https://github.com/kdn251/interviews](https://github.com/kdn251/interviews)

[https://github.com/aakash1104/Graph- Algorithms](https://github.com/aakash1104/Graph-Algorithms)

[https://github.com/google/guava/wiki/GraphsExplained](https://github.com/google/guava/wiki/GraphsExplained)

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked:

Data Structures: A Pseudocode Approach with C

By Gilberg and Forouzan

Data Structures: A Pseudocode Approach with C [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0534390803/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_H...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0534390803/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_HILMDbCCGGXV1)

</comment><comment><USER4> Most algorithms books take time to explain data structures. They are very intertwined topics. CLRS has 2/7 main sections dedicated to data structures and makes a fine reference, but it's also a lot of pseudocode and is quite in- depth. "Mastering Algorithms with C" is split nearly 50/50 between them and has real code examples though I don't care for the coding style.

My personal preference has been Sedgewick's "Algorithms in C" which introduces elementary structures first and more advanced ones with their algorithms. Sedgewick's latest "Algorithms" has Java code if you prefer, and it still rates well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I'll definetly check out the last one you mentioned, I'm far more comfortable with Java and CLRS was a bit too high level of maths for me (senior in hs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Drozdek is a great intro text, imho. Very clear and concise, I wish he wrote more computer science texts besides on this and one on compression

<comment><USER6> Which one on compression?

<comment><USER5> I haven't read it. A list of his books:

[http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/drozdek/](http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/drozdek/)

<comment><USER6> Thank you, I had checked his site but I missed it. I'm interested in a good write up on modern Reed-Solomon implementations. I'll see if I can find out about Drozdek's book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> MIT's "introduction to algorithm" is very helpful in your case.</comment>


Steve Jobs on the "internet startup craze" - <AUTHOR>

"The problem with the Internet startup craze isn't that too many people are starting companies; it's that too many people aren't sticking with it. That's somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That's when you find out who you are and what your values are.<p>"So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they're gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective." [Fortune, Jan. 24, 2000] <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. Great words to read right now.</comment>


Seattle's Wage Mandate Kills Restaurants - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/seattles-wage-mandate-kills-restaurants-11576195087 <comment><USER2> "According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of jobs in restaurants and bars in the Seattle area has grown from 134,000 to 158,000 since 2015"

"Ultimately, workers already employed either saw their take-home pay go up or stay roughly the same while working fewer hours."

[https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/the- highlight/2019/7/13/206...](https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/the- highlight/2019/7/13/20690266/seattle-minimum-wage-15-dollars)

<comment><USER3> Ugh, statistics. Wouldn't you rather hear a few compelling personal stories, hand-picked by the good folks at the Wall Street Journal?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> No paywall [http://archive.is/LnomN](http://archive.is/LnomN)</comment>


Two Google Homes chatting with one another - <AUTHOR> https://www.twitch.tv/seebotschat/v/112486355 <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13336416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13336416)</comment>


Human Gene Editing Receives Science Panel's Support - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/health/human-gene-editing-panel.html <comment><USER2> I would be glad to see a few thousand babies derived from Gauss, Euler, Newton, Da Vinci, and/or Turing being born every year. Assuming there's any DNA preserved.

It brings back the question of how "super-intelligence" will first take form: through biological engineering or hard AI? I am not convinced that one is easier or less ethical than the other (or that either are inherently unethical).

<comment><USER3> > biological engineering or hard AI

Why not both? The future is synthesis, imo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the article: "This opens the door to advertisements from fertility clinics of giving your child the best start in life with a gene-editing packet, and whether these are real advantages or perceived advantages, they would accrue disproportionately to people who are already advantaged."

Germ-line "vaccination" against common heritable diseases may go a long way in decreasing health-care costs over the long-term. My belief is that this is the first area for gene-editing. We should create legislation that allows us to separate cosmetic or "value-add" (Increased IQ, etc.) gene-editing from basic disease prevention.

One thing I would like to note, however, is that the loss of common heritable diseases does not make our population, necessarily, stronger. Many disease genes have been linked to "Hybrid-vigor" type effects, in which case being a disease character makes the carrier more fit.

</comment><comment><USER5> Scott Aaranson once said that he would consider it criminal if he had the option of making sure that his child was as smart as Turing and he deprived her of it. I totally agree.

<comment><USER6> Our ability to understand our genetic code is a bit less than the ability of an Ancient Egypt scribe to understand Haskell. With a bit of effort he could figure out individual letters, with a genius level of insight he could figure out a few words. From here to functional composition or monads it's a long way to go.</comment></comment>


A Future Where Everything Becomes a Computer Is as Creepy as You Feared - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/technology/future-internet-of-things.html <comment> crooked-v [https://twitter.com/internetofshit](https://twitter.com/internetofshit)</comment>


Show HN: A personal Gmail - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,
so I've been building my own Gmail for the past few weeks and would like your feedback.
Find a preview here: http://i.imgur.com/UDz2y.png (Mouse cursor is over the "REPLY" button, to show the hover-effect)
The app you see in the screenshot is what I've been using in the past week and it starts to feel better than the gmail interface.
Just a quick explanation:
- It's conversation-based like Gmail. - Conversations with new emails are on the left. - Conversations may be labeled ... based on predefined filters or manually. - Every conversation stays in the left sidebar until marked "Done" or "Pinned". - Done emails are accessed through the "check"-button next to the "MailApp"-logo. - Pinned emails are moved to the right sidebar. This is basically a to-do list or for future reference. - Both sidebars may be filtered by attributes or labels. - The "list"-icon, next to the filter in the left sidebar, gives you the classic gmail list in the center-panel.
Some technical background:
- It's build with Rails and PostgreSQL. - E-Mail sending/receiving is based on the MailGun infrastructure. - Turbolinks (https://github.com/rails/turbolinks) and Memcache for a speedy UX. - All mail data is saved in a multi-tenant PostgreSQL db and for backup purposes in a IMAP mailbox on MailGun. - Hosted on heroku.
I'm quite happy with the app by now and only go back to Gmail for older emails.
So my BIG QUESTION right now: Would you even consider using the app, in case I'd make a commercial product out of it? Would you pay for it?
Searching HN yielded that quite a few people are looking each month to leave Gmail (for various reasons), but of course there are quite a few gotchas with my approach, especially considering trust-issues.
Let me hear what you think. <comment><USER2> > Would you even consider using the app, in case I'd make a commercial product > out of it?

No.

I use Google because of the stuff that happens in the background, that I never see. Their infrastructure, SPAM blocking, Android app, intrusion detection, seamless support for custom domains, filtering and search, etc.

GMail looks like a simple app, but it's actually a herculean effort on behalf of Google, a multi-billion dollar company. There's a reason they have very little competition in that sector.

<comment><USER3> You say that like Gmail is the market leader here, they're not. Most of the features you mentioned do exist in other services and other services do have features that Gmail doesn't. The OP can definitely make a business out of email, it is far from a solved problem.

<comment><USER4> > You say that like Gmail is the market leader here, they're not.

They are as far as I'm concerned. I'm curious, though, who you do consider to be the market leader? I'm going to have a hard time keeping my composure if you say Hotmail (or "Live" mail), Yahoo, or something similar.

<comment><USER3> In terms of users they obviously are the market leader. I use Outlook.com personally and consider it to be overall better than Gmail. I'd gladly debate this if you'd like.

Never the less, my original point was that all of these Gmail strengths that you think are very important are obviously not very important to people using Yahoo or their ISP webmail. The idea that everyone uses Gmail and any competitor must compete feature-by-feature is just incorrect.

<comment><USER5> "obviously are the market leader"

Gmail only just recently (October 2012) overtook Hotmail.

<comment><USER3> Typo on my part, meant to say that Gmail isn't the market leader in terms of users, Yahoo is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Open source the app. There's a huge lacking in _good_ web based open source mail clients. Fill it. Offer a pay-for premium hosted version. Have us pay for service, not software.

If you released this, assuming it doesn't suck balls, I'd be running it immediately. I'm currently using Rackspace for my email hosting; check them out. They're good, good be better. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, thanks for your frank words. I actually like your idea for 2 reasons:

1) OpenSource would definitely improve the quality of the app while still maintaining a way to profit from my work.

2) Finally giving back to OpenSource. Always felt kinda bad I haven't contributed much to a great community.

<comment><USER7> There is definatly a lot of service you could provide even if the app is open source. As GP said, hosting and infrastructure, but also better spam filtering, taking not get and remove domains from spam lists (SPF, DomainKeys, checking your domain and custom domains against spam lists and notifying the owner, &c).

Also, a nice export to S3 or a tar.gz or something would be nice if you were a private service.

<comment><AUTHOR> I already backup all incoming mail as JSON on my Dropbox and plan to do the same periodically as MBOX. I'm not entirely sure what to do with the JSON, though. It's a "leftover" from my first prototype, where I stored ALL DATA on Dropbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've had similar thoughts to you, and it looks like a good start.

However, for me, one of the main reasons I'm dissatisfied with GMail these days is the clutter and UX. Unfortunately your app looks too similar to GMail for me to find it an improvement.

For me, the ideal GMail killer would be _simpler_ with more clearly labelled user controls (i.e. less cryptic symbols and more standard UI buttons).

It would also have separate FORWARD and REPLY buttons. (Why on earth these most used buttons are in a drop-down is beyond me).

Don't get me wrong - I think you're onto something - I just think you need to be very careful which parts of GMail you copy, which you improve, and which you axe completely.

If you could deliver a non-bloated, snappy GMail I would consider paying for it. I would probably prefer a cloud solution though (like GMail) because I hate setting up my own email.

Good luck with it!

<comment><USER9> I had the same problems with GMail's UX until I (1) turned on button labels so that buttons displayed the action word instead of symbol and (2) learned GMail's keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts were the biggest help because now I barely ever need to take my hands off the keyboard to perform standard actions.

</comment></comment><comment> old-gregg Wow, very nice! Please reach out ot me: firstname.lastname@example.com I want to make sure you're not paying too much for Mailgun. We love smart and ambitious customers.

<comment><USER10> I just want to say that things like this have instantly added to the respect I have for Mailgun as a company. I know that's unrelated to the OP, and I may get down voted for this, but I feel as though for as much as a complain about an absence of good customer service - I would be remiss not to acknowledge it when I see it.

Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm with you.

I have had a few questions/issues during development and the live-support was simply brilliant. Meanwhile I switched 2 of my Rails apps from Sendgrid to MailGun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here are the first three questions:

1\. Is this something you host, or something I host? 2\. How are you handling searching existing mail, tech wise? 3\. Does this start to slow down after you have 10k emails in it?

If this supports custom domains and is plugged into decent spam filtering, I'd take a closer look at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Considering the hosting: It's currently basically a SaaS.

I initially had a prototype, which used Dropbox-as-a-Database. Basically I stored all emails and metadata (labels, etc) in a private dropbox in JSON- format. It actually worked, but the performance was so bad, that I ditched this approach.

2) PostgresSQL comes with a great full-text search. It's not perfect right now, but it does it job.

3) Honestly, no idea :)

Spam filtering is done by MailGun. CustomDomains are a must, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It looks quite nice. I'd pay for an alternative to Gmail. Here are my suggestions / needs.

* Shortcut keys, preferably the same as Gmail but customizable

* Custom domains

* Both IMAP and ActiveSync support

* Everything stored in an encrypted state, no back doors, privacy and security as core components of your service

* The same or more storage space as Gmail provides

</comment><comment><USER13> This app looks incredible but I have absolutely no interest in using a Gmail look alike without all the Gmail features aka android integration, amazing spam blocking, etc, etc, etc (this list could be extensive and most other people have already covered it).

You have the looks down but what you need to seriously focus on now is the back-end and how you might be able to bring all the gmail features people love along.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. I'm quite happy with how it looks (thanks btw), but such a mission critical app requires a well though-out backend. I'm not even sure that hosting the data myself (on heroku postgresql) is even a viable option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd pay in a tune of $100 for an installable version of this, but would never consider using it as a service.

PS. Though you could probably license it to smaller, well-established email service providers like pobox.com.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would consider using the app and I would pay for it.

The primary motivator for me to change from Gmail is the privacy, security issues. So long as you make for sure everything is encrypted and I only have the key to unlocking that, I would switch in a heartbeat.

</comment><comment><USER16> Arguably the one thing missing from Gmail right now is the ability to pick up the phone and speak to someone when something isn't working.

If you can offer that level of support at the same time, I can't see any reason for a company not to give you money.

Oh, and don't be discouraged by the people saying "no, never!" You can use third parties for handling spam, and it'll be easy enough to get mail onto peoples' phones via IMAP or Exchange. The thing to remember is that plenty of techies will say "no" because they see email as a free service. Regular consumers - and companies in particular - will be much more open to giving you money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words.

Actually: Most of the points you raise have been solved. MailGun has (as far as i can tell after a week of usage) a great spam filter and supports IMAP.

To be honest: I wouldn't even consider building the email infrastructure part myself.

<comment><USER16> _To be honest: I wouldn't even consider building the email infrastructure part myself._

Good plan, especially when there's no good reason to do so.

In all honesty, I didn't go over the technical details you provided in any detail; I just got a bit upset reading the number of "I wouldn't pay for that!"-type responses.

The thing is, I've previously seen a lot of people here claim that there's no money in time tracking tools, or any other market when, plainly, these markets _do_ make a large amount of money. I want to emphasize that any pricing advice here should be taken with a pinch of salt. And when it comes to people who would never pay for a given service, discarded entirely ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To me, this looks like a reskinned Gmail. If it were that, then yes I would use it as it's an improvement over the current layout, albeit marginal. However, there are no ads which Gmail needs and imagine if Gmail didn't need adds they would use their real estate more wisely as in your design.

I use Chrome, which allows you to add styles to custom.css to override the look of any website. As such I'm able to add my own styles to customize the look of Gmail to look cleaner, hide ads and customize like in your mockup. If you package the new look as a Browser Plugin to restyle Gmail, then yes I would use it, but now I would not pay for it.

If you are attempting to recreate gmail itself, then also no I would never use it. Because once again this only offers an improvement in design. Gmail is great compared because of Google. Aka, best spam prevention, far better than Apple, Yahoo and Outlook and scaleability and up-time. There is simply no way you can compete with the resources Google has. Which is why even Apple who has incredible resources and Money and amazing design sense still can't compete with Gmail's infrastructure and servers.

There is a market for retheming however, whether in the web interface or through Apps such as with Sparrow.

So in reality stick with theming Gmail and be aware that Gmail can change their look at any time and that you won't get any direct money out of it but will get your name out there. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think people are leaving google because of privacy concerns. Providing a new service does not change anything from the privacy perspective.

Privacy concerned people want to host their own mail server.

Cheers, Jan

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd consider paying for a clone of Gmail classic, but their new UI sucks IMHO. Another compelling feature I'm looking for is the ability to self-host. It's clear that many governments and cloud service providers don't consider hosted data "really all that private", despite best intentions. It only takes a single national security letter to remind us why it's nicer to have our data reposed locally.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, I totally understand that the people who leave Gmail for privacy concerns, most likely would host their own mail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks really well done, but as a consumer I wouldn't trust a small-timer (no offense) with something as ubiquitous as my email.

As a company looking to self-host, however, your product looks very appealing, but then your battling other players than just GMail. I think in the corporate sector, it would be very hard to dislodge Outlook, which is a shame really.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually my biggest concern, so no offense taken:

Despite Google's privacy policy and ad behaviour (yadda yadda), they ARE still a trustworthy company, regarding uptime , backups and everything technical. Though I remember them losing quite a few accounts about a year back. But still, your point is very valid. Why would anyone trust a small company (or even single hacker) to maintain your precious emails.

<comment><USER20> I think some of the things that could help are:

* A very straightforward exit strategy: make it easy for users to at least extract their mail from your service, if they host it on your servers, and want to have an offline backup.

* Offer an option to license for self-hosting: hosting their own email could take away their fear of uncontrollable downtime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I do pay $40/year for Fastmail because I like having a service I pay for that is separate from anything Google offers. I still use Gmail day to day, but the new Fastmail interface is pretty damn good.

I would definitely pay for a premium email service, but design alone wouldn't be enough for me. The key factor in my decision was trust/reliability.

</comment><comment><USER22> The reason I'm using GMail (as opposed to FastMail) is primarily their terrific integration with Android. The excellent GMail app, the contact and calendaring syncing.

I'd really love to use Fastmail, but I see no way I could sync my contacts in a seamless way.

I can't see how your solution would solve this, so no, I would not use.

</comment><comment><USER23> I personally would use it on top of something reliable like Fastmail. I mainly use Gmail over IMAP and it's painful slow and glitchy.

If what you're building could give me a great UI on top of Fastmail for when I want to use the web, and access to some kind of self-hosted archive, I'd probably go for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I pointed out further down, that my initial prototype ran completely on Dropbox. Right now, I backup all incoming mail instantly to Dropbox in JSON format for backup purposes.

I might want to look into a "on top of X"-solution. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you can give a trial, and nice transition option, as well as backup option to mbox format, I'd pay around the same rackspace is asking for managed email. [Added on a second thought]: I'd also consider to pay a license fee for a domain or several domains for client websites.

</comment><comment><USER25> Very cool idea. I'd like to use the app but my main concern is spam blocking. Maybe you can partner with someone like Cloudmark? I think Cloudmark has an API or something you can use to block spam effectively.

</comment><comment><USER26> Clickable: <http://i.imgur.com/UDz2y.png>

Also: Turbolinks: <https://github.com/rails/turbolinks>

</comment><comment><USER27> Yes. I would surely love to use this as an email client if it works well with my Google Apps account.

And I would definitely be willing to pay a nominal amount for a year long license or a lifetime license.

What I like about your app -

* UI

* Well thought-out panels

* Utilization of white space

What you can possibly work on -

This is one feature that is not there on GMail and I really really crave for it. Sometime I feel the need to create a _note for myself_ for a specific email I have received. But I can't do that. It would be a great addition to the Mail App.

</comment><comment><USER28> Kudos on making a slick looking product. I'd say that if your UI was less like GMail, I'd consider using it. If it was just that, a UI for _any_ web mail from any domain, like a Mail.app for the web, I'd definitely pay for it.

And to anyone who says they use Gmail for Security: They're an advertising company who openly mines and sells your personal data. Exactly _how_ is that safe?

Keep on working man. Doing good.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd use it, and pay for it, if you gave me direct and private access to my data, hosted on a third-party. Control and portability are a huge concern of mine, and one of the reasons I'm terrified about keeping my data life with Google where I can get locked out with zero notice.

THe design looks great, and I'd love to see a host that helped me negotiate ways to protect my privacy and portability.

</comment><comment><USER30> The UI looks good - but its not even remotely intuitive.

I had to read your entire post to figure out what the right side bar is. Its very difficult to just focus on the main content (which is what the user should actually care about). Also the title seems disjointed and un-connect from the email, I had difficult determining if they were related, or if the title was some other kind of reminder.

</comment><comment><USER31> Are you kidding me? A "Show HN" to an imgur link of a photoshopped UI? Be honest, this is thinly (poorly) veiled ad for New Relic.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an actual app I've been using for a week now. Apart from the local dev database (wouldn't want to show my actual incoming emails), that's how it looks right now in my browser.

I chose the NewRelic newsletter because it somewhat fit the color scheme. So there's that...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Looks good. I would love to see this as a Rails engine so I can just drop in a messaging system for users of my existing apps.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would use it if I could host it on my own server and run it on top of Gmail using IMAP and Postgres as a cache.

I could pay 30-50$ for it, but I think this would be even more awesome as an OpenSource solution, your product rocks compared to other alternatives as SquirrelMail, and you can always offer a hosted plan as a way to make money from it.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would definitely try it out if something can match Google's spam filters and search.

From a first look, I like the UI however, in my opinion, there's way too much white and it's not intuitive enough. I'd definitely add a little bit of colour, but it looks like a very good start.

You have nailed the visual appeal though. Great job on that!

</comment><comment><USER35> You should disable images in mails by default (the way gmail does it) or at least add an option for disabling them. Images are usually used to track if and how many times you read the mail.

You're also missing the chat.

As for your question. I would not consider switching from gmail or paying money for an email client.

</comment><comment><USER36> I will use it because of the UI (but for free). I love the simplicity. I'm also happy that you are using your own product. It's a good start that you satisfy needs with it.

If it has a very special feature, or will revolutionized the email, I'm sold! And I might pay for a subscription.

</comment><comment><USER37> How did you make the layout? Graphics design is my biggest weakness, all my webapps look like the design is made in Paint. And yours is so clean, the fonts are good, everything looks so professional.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks.

I make extensive use of <http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/> (a godsend for hackers), though I use it more as a style-guide and rebuild most parts myself.

and for icons:

<http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/>

The font is "Open Sans": <http://www.google.com/webfonts>

The ui/ux evolved in this app, which means I started with the bare minimum requirements (it looked bad. really bad) and continually improved the "look & feel" as needed. No photoshop involved.

It's still not finished, but it has come a long way :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Open source it. There is more value in it. You'll attract devs who want to use it and give back to it.

Is that you btw: <https://github.com/jubari> :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As a quick intermission:

This is a GREAT discussion regarding the state of webmail. Although my app clearly isn't "there yet" (regarding going public), I'm having a great time reading your comments.

</comment><comment><USER39> This interface looks really good, but as previously stated, there are a lot of behind the scenes features (security, spam filter and keyboard shortcuts) that keep me with gmail.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is awesome! Forget the haters and keep building it. I don't think I would pay more than $5/mo but I like the direction you're going.

</comment><comment><USER41> Hi,

I haven't seen all of your user interface to give my opinion, but I know that Sparrow (sparrowmailapp.com) had a nice one. They've even been bought by Google.

My 2 cents

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd like it if it was turned into as a drop-in webmail solution, I haven't seen any on the market that look even remotely as good.

</comment><comment><USER43> I have no read on market size, but it seems like there are apps that would benefit from having a fully-baked, built-in email tool.

</comment><comment><USER44> This sounds interesting. I'd have to play with a working demo to know if its something I'd use and pay for, I'd love to see that.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'd definitely at least try it out. I don't have a lot of bones to pick with gmail but an awesome UI can often convert me.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd rather like it into as a drop-in webmail solution, I haven't seen any on the market that look even remotely as good.

</comment><comment><USER46> I would use this if you gave me a product that I can use to run my own mail (and not a service)

</comment><comment><USER47> No, I would not pay for a different design and a few extra features of gmail...

</comment><comment><USER48> Put an email in your profile, so that people can reach out to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done. I've only been lurking & upvoting until now, so thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It is a nice attempt, but I wouldn't pay for it. Used to gmail :p

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Nice design, but I don't see myself paying for it.

</comment><comment><USER51> A lot of people here seem to like gmail.

Well gmail sucks. Its slow, buggy, now has a bad user interface and is generally not what it used to be.

It was awesome when it was first released, but there is better now,much better.

We now have outlook.com(the new hotmail) which is just awesome in every way.

And we have fastmail which I don't use, but the new ui is really groundbreaking.

I left gmail the day outlook was released; funny thing is I didnt even realize how much gmail sucked until I moved.

<comment><USER52> This reads like a bot trying to pass a Turing test? The grammatical structure is so robotic. Obviously also a total pile of stinking anecdotal nonsense.

You switched to Outlook, well, good for you. Something tells you you wouldn't recognize a good from bad ui if it bit you on your SCSI cable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I like it, I think people will adopt it if it was a Chrome plugin that converted Gmail into this UI. Their infrastructure and your skin. You could charge for some features for power users that Gmail does not have.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like your idea as it would eliminate a few of my "bottlenecks". I will check out if a chrome plugin might just do that, OR even see how <http://www.streak.com/> accomplished their goals. Haven't looked into that, yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Awesome UI, but I wouldn't pay for it. Email is and should be free

<comment><USER55> Gmail isn't free. You are paying with data about yourself, your habits, your medical conditions, your employment, etc.

<comment><USER56> How about paying a one time license fee and install the app on your own server/get your own Mailgun account etc. That way you have more control over your data.</comment></comment></comment>


My Spring Break Project - Startup Alumnus - <AUTHOR> http://startupalumn.us

<comment><USER2> Fantastic idea. I can see this being a huge resource and great platform as you continue to build it out.</comment>