Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years? - <AUTHOR> As everyone else on the planet I'm sure, I would like to become a millionaire and within a tight time constraint: 3 short years. HN is a constant source of excellent articles, amazing intelligent advice and smart people, so how would you go about it? Saving, Stocks etc etc?
And also, please don't ask as to why I want to have a net worth of $1M and why I wouldn't just want to get 200k and live comfortably etc. I'm just interested in hearing people's thoughts about this idea :)
Thanks <comment><USER4> Get a job as a software engineer at a large company. Rent a small room, don't own a car, don't eat out, don't go to Hawaii for vacation, whatever it takes to save $250k in three years.

Then go to Vegas and put everything on red twice. (Metaphorically speaking -- I don't know if they'd allow a $500k bet in Vegas. But in the wonderful world of contemporary financial markets, there are instruments to make any kind of bet one might desire, and probably the house's cut will be even lower than in roulette.)

The obvious downside of this strategy is that it only works with the probability slightly less than 25%, otherwise you end up broke. But quite frankly, I doubt other ideas presented in this thread (make something people want, get on a TV show etc.) have better success rates. If there was a sure- fire way of getting from $0 to $1M in three years everyone would be doing it.

If you're OK not only with ending up broke in case of a failure, but even being in debt, then you can increase you odds of success even further by using leverage.

<comment><USER5> I like this method but just increasing the time span to 12 years. 100% success rate.

<comment><USER6> I hope this post and the upvotes were sarcastic. Trying this method 4 times means that you have a 68%* success rate. You'd have to try it 8 times to even get to a 90% success rate.

* To calculate this, chance of success after 4 tries = (1 - chance of failing 4 times in a row) = 1 - 0.75^4 = .68

<comment><USER5> I meant without gambling. Obviously 25% * 25% * 25% * 25% != 100%.

<comment><USER6>
      25% * 25% * 25% * 25% != 100%

You're doing it wrong...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Start with $5M. Invest in a bunch of Web 2.0 startups, preferably ones blessed by Y Combinator. If you are lucky, you will still be a millionaire at the end of it.

<comment><USER8> +1 for making me laugh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm going to go and replace 3 years with a "short time frame". Some things to focus on:

\- Market opportunity- a million dollars isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly is a lot if the market opportunity is not large enough. Even if you put Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as founders in a new venture with a total market size of 10 million, there is no way they could become too wealthy without completely changing the business (ie- failing).

\- Inequality of information- find a place where you know something that many undervalue. Having this inequality of information can give you, your first piece of leverage.

\- Leverage skills you know- You can go into new fields such as say Finance, but make sure you're leveraging something you already know such as technology and/or product. Someone wanted to start a documentary with me. I said that would be fun, but it would be my first documentary regardless of what happened. There was a glass ceiling due to that. If I do something leveraging a skill I know, I'm already ahead of the game.

\- Look in obscure places- We're often fascinated with the shiny things in the internet industry. Many overlook the obscure and unsexy. Don't make that mistake. If your goal has primarily monetary motivations, look at the unsexy.

\- Surround yourself with smart people- smart people whom are successful usually got there by doing the same and have an innate desire to help those do the same. it's the ecosystem that's currently happening with the paypal mafia and can be traced all the way back to fairchild semiconductor.

\- Charge for something- Building a consumer property dependent upon advertising has easily made many millionaires, but it isn't the surest path. It takes a lot of time and scale, which due to cashflow issues will require large outside investment probably before you are a millionaire. Build something that you can charge for.

\- Your metric shouldn't be dollars- If you're going after a big enough market and charging a reasonable amount, you can hit a million dollars. Focus on growth, customer acquisition costs, lifetime value of the customer, and churn.

\- Get as many distribution channels as possible- There is some weird sense that if you build something they will just come. That a few like buttons and emails to firstname.lastname@example.com will make your traffic explode + grow consistently. It fucking won't. Get as many distribution channels as possible. Each one by itself may not be large, but if you have many it starts to add up. It also diversifies your risk. If you're a 100% SEO play, you're playing a dangerous dangerous game. You're fully dependent upon someone else's rules. If Google bans you, you will be done. Replace SEO with: App store, facebook, etc.

\- Go with your gut and do not care about fameballing- Go with what your gut says, regardless of how it might look to the rest of the world. Too often we (I) get lost in caring about what people think. It usually leads to a wrong decision. Don't worry about becoming internet famous or appearing on teh maj0r blogz. Fame is fleeting in the traditional sense. Become famous with your customers. They're the ones that truly matter. What they think matters and they will ultimately put their money where their mouth is.

\- Be an unrelenting machine- Brick walls are there to show you how bad you want something. Commit to your goals and do not waver from them a one bit regardless of what else is there. I took this approach to losing weight and fitness. I have not missed a single 5k run in over a year. It did not matter if I had not slept for two days, traveling across the country, or whatever else. If your goals is to become a millionaire, you need to be an unrelenting machine that does not let emotions make you give up / stop. You either get it done with 100% commitment or you don't. Be a machine.

\- If it's a "trend", it's too late- This means the barriers to entry are usually too high at this point to have the greatest possible chance of success. Sure you could still make a lot of money in something like the app store or the facebook platform, but the chances are significantly less than they were in the summer of 08 or spring of 2007. You can always revisit past trends though.

\- If you do focus on a dollar amount, focus on the first $10,000- This usually means you've found some repeatable process / minimal traction. ie- if you're selling a $100 product, you've already encountered 100 people who have paid you. From here you can scale up. It's also a lot easier to take in when you're looking at numbers. Making 1 million seems hard, but making $10,000 doesn't seem so hard, right?

\- Be a master of information- Many think it might be wasteful that I spent so much time on newsyc or read so many tech information sites. It's not, it's what gives me an edge. I feel engulfed.

\- Get out and be social- Even if you're an introvert, being around people will give you energy. I'm at my worst when I'm isolated from people and at my best when I've at least spent some time with close friends (usually who I don't know from business.)

\- Make waves, don't ride them- There was a famous talk Jawed Karim gave from youtube. He described the three factors that made youtube take off. I think they included (1- emergence of flash, so no codecs required 2- one click upload 3- ability to share embed). Find those small pieces and put them together to make the wave. That's what youtube did imho. The other guys really just rode the wave they created (which is okay).

\- Say no way more than you say yes- I bet almost every web entrepreneur has encountered this: You demo your product / explain what you're doing and someone suggests that you do "X feature/idea". X is a really good idea and maybe even fits in with what you're doing, but it would take you SO FAR off the path you're on. If you implemented X it would take a ton of time and morph what you're doing. It's also really really hard to say no when it comes from someone well respected like a VC or famous entrepreneur. I mean how the fuck could they be wrong? Hell, they might even write me a check if I do what they say!!!!! Don't fall for that trap. Instead write the feedback down somewhere as one single data point to consider amongst others. If that same piece of feedback keeps coming up AND it fits within the guidelines of your vision, then you should consider it more seriously. Weight suggestions from paying customers a bit more, since their vote is weighted by dollars.

\- Be so good they can't ignore you- I first heard this quote from Marc Andreessen, but he stole it from Steve Martin. Just be so good with what you do that you can't be ignored. You can surely get away with a boring product with no soul, but being so good you can't ignore is much more powerful.

\- Always keep your door/inbox open- You never know who is going to walk through your door + contact you. Serendipity is a beautiful thing. At one point Bill Gates was just a random college kid calling an Albuquerque computer company.

\- Give yourself every opportunity you can- I use this as a reason why starting a company in silicon valley when it comes to tech is a good idea. You can succeed anywhere in the world, but you certainly have a better chance in the valley. You should give yourself every opportunity possible, especially as an entrepreneur where every advantage counts.

\- Give yourself credit- This is the thing I do the least of and I'm trying to work on it. What may seem simple+not that revolutionary to anyone ahead of the curve can usually be pure wizardry to the general public, whom is often your customer. Give yourself more credit.

\- Look for the accessory ecosystem- iPod/iPhone/iPad case manufacturers are making a fortune. Armormount is also making a killing by making flat panel wall mounts. Woothemes makes millions of dollars a year (and growing) selling Wordpress themes. There are tons of other areas here, but these are the ones that come to mind first. If there's a huge new product/shift, there's usually money to be made in the accessory ecosystem.

\- Stick with it- Don't give up too fast. Being broke and not making any money sucks + can often make you think nothing will ever work. Don't quit when you're down. If this was easy then everyone would be a millionaire and being a millionaire wouldn't be anything special. Certainly learn from your mistakes + pivot, but don't quit just because it didn't work right away.

\- Make the illiquid, liquid- I realized this after talking to a friend who helps trade illiquid real estate securities. A bank may have hundreds of millions of assets, but they're actually worth substantially less if they cannot be moved. If you can help people make something that is illiquid, liquid they will pay you a great deal of money. Giving you a 20-30% cut is worth it, when the opposite is making no money at all.

\- Productize a service- If you can make what might normally be considered a service into a scaleable, repeatable, and efficient process that makes it seem like a product you can make a good amount of money. In some ways, I feel this is what Michael Dell did with DELL in the early days. Putting together a computer is essentially a service, but he put together a streamlined method of doing things that it really turned it into a product. On a much smaller scale, PSD2XHTML services did this. It's a service, but the end result + what you pay for really feels like a product.

<comment><USER10> Love this post, but I'm going to argue against one of your points:

 _If it's a "trend", it's too late_

I disagree. In fact, if something is a trend, it's a guarantee that a market (of some kind) exists and it can save you a lot of time and research. Most big markets have large numbers of high value competitors and they're not all pioneers. Indeed, most companies with significant turnover were not pioneers in their field - they came in with "me too" products that merely improved upon the existing popular ones before they became too entrenched.

The trick is to get in when something _becomes_ a trend but before the _masses_ realize it's a trend and you have hundreds of competitors making similar improvements to the core products and services as quickly as you are. As well as being my belief, it's one of the core tenets of Michael Masterson's tackily-named (but a great read nonetheless) "Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat."

With your reference to the App Store, I suspect you might agree with this, but have a different idea of what a "trend" is. I consider the App Store and developing iPhone apps to have been a trend in late 2008, not long after the earliest developers were starting to share revenue/sales figures, but _before_ the masses had figured out it was going to be a giant cashcow. Now developing iPhone apps is just "what you do" rather than a _trend_ , IMHO.

<comment><USER9> That point could really be a post all by itself and it certainly varies situation to situation. Semantics + defining "what's a trend" also play into it. There's mass market everybody knows about it trends and then there's emerging trends. The mass market trends ones are the ones to avoid like you said.

The good thing is what you said: market exists. There's money there, just make sure it isn't all taken up already.

<comment><USER11> My problem so far has very much been that all of my ideas and efforts have been towards big, pie in the sky, breaking new ground type things. And of course, they usually don't get finished.

I've been trying to get far more disciplined in looking for the more practical, boring problem/solutions that follow market trends etc.

I just find it so hard to do because it doesn't excite me as much, even though I know there is so much opportunity out there.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps an example of how "small" a trend can be could excite you enough to look out for things that are "bite sized" enough to try.

I'm pretty deep in the Ruby world. A trend that has emerged (and is almost becoming a cliché) over the past 18 months or so is selling Ruby related screencasts. Peepcode started selling screencasts about 3 years ago but no-one followed on in a serious fashion for quite a while (until Peepcode "proved" it could work, I say).

Now, there are at least 7 - 8 unique vendors of Ruby related screencasts I can think of. None are Peepcode scale at all, but I've seen sales figures and know that some of them, at least, have done reasonably well. Even the people behind the more humble attempts are happy, see: [http://codeulate.com/2010/03/how-to- sell-a-hundred-screencas...](http://codeulate.com/2010/03/how-to-sell-a- hundred-screencasts/)

Now, "Ruby screencasts" is a _crazily_ tiny niche. Not only is "programming" a tiny niche in the world of business, "Ruby programming" is a MINISCULE niche in the world of programming.. and Ruby programming screencasts is ULTRA CRAZY MOLECULAR LEVEL TINY!

If people have picked up on a trend in such a miniscule market and are making money with it, that's says, to me, that there are _millions_ of teeny tiny niches in which you can start to perform very simple "tests" that make money and which, ultimately, could lead you to that million dollar concept or market.

Picking up on these teeny, tiny "trends" can be tricky, but is a lot easier in fields you're already absorbed in. If I had to pick out some trends just from reading Hacker News recently, these seem like a few areas someone could make some bucks in now/soonish: node.js consultancy/screencasts/books, Posterous theming, Flash-to-HTML5 tools/consultancy/screencasts/books, non-college oriented compsci education.

<comment><USER12> I somehow got myself in producing open source video games for freelancing cash.

I first got my starts by trying to blog about video games. Then I started a wiki which I bootstrapped off my own saving. Now it produce maybe 20-30 bucks each year. Not a whole lot, but I bootstrap my way with that money in addition to programming work that I started working.

I am hoping to go back in automating the maintenance of my wiki and create new sites in that niche to generate a bigger income, which then will be used to bootstrap other sites.

The way I figure it is that for each domain, I only need to make about 15 bucks to be profitable. Basically, they serve as buffer money used to fund new mini-ventures.

<comment><USER13> I hope you missed a "k" after that 20-30 and 15...

<comment><USER14> "k" and "bucks" are rarely used together, so I think kiba means dollars. While the amounts might be small to you, be careful of putting it down - <USER2> has to start somewhere, and better to be _excited_ to be making anything at all than depressed that it's not much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My advice: forget the deadline. Imposing a deadline on a result that is largely beyond your control will serve no constructive purpose. You should only set deadlines on things that are within your power to control, e.g. I will finish X by time Y. But putting a deadline on the market to respond is just silly.

If you want to be a millionaire, here's the procedure:

1\. Pick an activity that you think will make you a millionaire within a reasonable time frame.

2\. Engage in that activity for that time frame.

3\. Are you a millionaire? If so, you're done. If not, figure out what you did wrong in step 1 based on the information you acquired while engaged in that activity. (Often this turns out to be some kind of mistaken assumption about market dynamics, sometimes about your abilities.)

4\. Iterate.

This procedure is not guaranteed to terminate. But it does tend to converge.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but picking a deadline means that you put a time limit on the effort, and have a good guide on when you should just give up. If it is not working for you, you should give up and try something new, but when you are involved heavily in something, it can seem like the payout is just around the corner.

<comment><USER17> You have way more information on whether the effort is likely to succeed when the deadline rolls around than when you initially set the deadline. If the payout really _is_ just around the corner, it's silly to give up on it just because an arbitrary deadline rolled around.

I found it's much better to establish firm _hypotheses_ when I begin a project, and then as I plan out the project, make sure that the hypotheses will either be validated or falsified along the way. If the premises under which I began the project have been proven false, _then_ it's time to quit and do something else. But if all the premises hold yet it just takes twice as long to do everything as expected (which is fairly typical), it's worth sticking with it until the end.

<comment><USER16> Yes, well of course. But you can get yourself into the situation where the payout always seems to be just around the corner, when get into the sunk-costs trap.

The deadline should give you a change to step back and properly evaluate your situation at a specified time, hopefully with some external help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Start by being a Billionaire" \-- Sir Richard Branson, on how to become a millionaire in the aviation industry)

<comment><USER19> Ok. So how do you become a billionaire?

<comment><USER20> Enter the stock industry as a multi-multi-billionaire.

(Of course, you already ruined my entrance:

"How do you make a small fortune in the stock market?"

"Start with a large one." )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looking for incredibly boring, yet painful problems in industries like healthcare, oil/gas, real estate, and ecommerce.

Build a solid product using .NET or Java. Charge massive consulting fees and hire some slick salesmen.

I know several people who got rich doing this, but they were straight up businessmen, and thrived on solving boring, yet lucrative problems.

<comment><USER22> Any pointers on how to find these incredibly boring, yet painful problems in industries?

<comment><USER6> Talk to people. Work in those industries. Be ever-vigilant for inefficiency. Et cetera.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In parts of Africa you can set up a artesanal diamond mine with a shovel and a strainer. Spend a few weeks there finding diamonds, then smuggle them back to the US and sell them. Document this whole process on video, then sell the rights to a documentary and do a book deal when you get back.

Estimated time to completion: 4 months.

<comment><USER24> how do you not get arrested after publicly admitting you did something illegal?

<comment><USER25> You move to a country that doesn't extradite to the USA. I hear Myanmar is nice this time of year.

<comment><USER26> Whoah, no need to delve quite so far into fascism. The list of countries which do not have an extradition treaty with the USA is longer than most people think ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_extraditi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_extradition_treaties)) UAE is probably your best bet if it's a developed nation you are after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 1) Get on a reality TV show like Big Brother.

2) Do something _ridiculous_ that will get you in the news. Leave your dignity at the door.

3) Get a publicist and milk your infamy for a couple of months.

<comment><USER11> You forgot the sex tape.

<comment><USER28> I'm pretty sure that's covered by his (2).

<comment><USER11> No, I think it's moved on from ridiculous and just become a mandatory step at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why? Why do you want to be millionaire? A little introspection and self knowledge might lead you to your real goals more directly.

I've always been wildly successful at my goal - which was to be happy.

<comment><USER28> Being happy won't buy a car, a house, health care for you and your family, happy won't buy vacations or trips (though they in turn _do_ buy more happy & health), etc.

Happy is good. Wealth + happy is even better. :)

<comment><USER30> I personally don't think happiness works that way.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

I've said this before: statistically speaking you are highly unlikely to achieve this.

In fact in my experience those who set out to earn discrete amounts in a discrete time with _no idea how to do it_ are those most unlikely to achieve it.

The truth hurts.

Others have said that setting a deadline is a good idea; which it usually is. Here is just limits your scope - very few things can earn you an initial $1Million in 3yrs, and most of them rely on luck or a lot of skill (and if you have that skill why are you here asking the question).

With that out of the way there are sure fire ways to make a million:

\- work in corporate of finance positions, you can be on $100K+ in a few years with minimal effort and on bonuses shortly after. By living frugally you can earn $1Million in 5-8years no problem

\- find someone willing to "invest" $1 Million in you. Making another $1 Million with that is fairly easy if you are smart.

But, ultimately, I think this falls well into the category of _pipe dream_ :)

<comment><USER32> Asking is a strong way of pursuing things. If you are able to ask yourself and others like you then you are doing it right. Don't be afraid of those who think that this is impossible. Ask yourself how to avoid thinking that it is impossible as a first step to make it possible.

<comment><USER31> > If you are able to ask yourself and others like you then you are doing it > right.

Maybe. In a _very_ small number of cases. Most of the time it is people either a) struggling to come up with ideas or b) trying to figure out a way to solve their dream with minimum effort.

> Don't be afraid of those who think that this is impossible.

It's not technically impossible. But setting out to make $1Million in 3 years is _generally_ a non-optimal approach.

I'm a realist in the sense that I figured out a long time ago that truly impossible goals are worthless and, generally, counter productive. Here's an example of how to fix that; one of my long term goals is to go into Space. This is technically feasible now, but to do it I'd need a few million $'s - <USER3> that's a good hack, I can work to achieve my goal through some means and the money should be incidental to that. But it is _not_ limiting because I may find another way to achieve this goal without the cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Get a job on Wall Street. If wealth is the only goal, that's the easiest way.

</comment><comment> clark-kent First thing you need to do, is determine how much income you want to be making. Are you happy with $1M net worth (in stocks and real estate) or do you want to make $1M USD annual income. I would rather have $100,000 monthly income than a $1M net worth on paper.

I am not a millionaire yet. I would like my annual income to exceed $1M. I don't care much about net worth.

Once you determine how much income you want to make, you can then decide how you are going to do it. Best way is a startup in a sizable market. Just my thoughts.

<comment><USER34> This got downvoted, but I think it's pretty insightful. If you're wiling to live in abject poverty, just work any six-figure job and you will be a millionaire in under a decade. If you want it in three years, make sure the job pays more than $300k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Don't make something people want. Instead take away a problem that people don't want to deal with. The uglier and stinkier the problem, the better. Then price very high and look for markets where people have more money.

<comment><USER36> Can you name some ugly, stinky problem that we haven't already farmed out to the third world?

<comment><USER37> Visited the Gulf of Mexico lately?

<comment><USER36> Which brings up something I was wondering about. BP is compensating Americans. Are they compensating Mexicans, Guatemalans, etc...

<comment><USER38> From the maps I've seen (e.x. <http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/oilspill/>) it doesn't look like the spill is anywhere near any country except the US yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Find something in one field and apply it to another.

Disciplines tend to put up barriers to knowledge flowing in from other disciplines, if you are 'cross domain' you can easily capitalize on that.

Becoming a millionaire in three years seems 'doable', after all it's only 300K per year or thereabouts, that's a little over $900 per day. You have to factor in taxes though, and that's where the catch is.

</comment><comment><USER40> gotta love the ambition. here's a possible plan:

1) develop a skill, ie code a lot

2) try out a bunch of ideas quickly and find one that can make you rich. ideally, you want to find out if an idea will or will not work asap, ie 1 to 4 weeks. expect this to take many trials, like 10+. it doesn't matter when one don't work, you'd gained experience. the key is to find out quickly and not waste your whole 3 years on it.

3) when you find that one that works, juice it like no other.

4) get rich or [keep] trying

<comment><AUTHOR> Number 2 is an interesting point, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What do you have to start with? \- Your talent? \- Your experience? \- Your capital? \- Your connection?

Once you have a good assessment of yourself, we can talk.

</comment><comment><USER42> Great question. I believe that almost everyone here in HN is trying to reach the same goal.

I don't have $1M, but can't imagine that you would reach this goal (I suppose of having $1M available, meaning that you paid already your apartment and car) without learning how stocks work.

I would say that you should learn do be "one day trader" first, and once you master that you could start investing in the long term, with a portfolio of stocks, bonds and other investments.

This is how I imagine that one could have that sum of money. Anyone agree?

</comment><comment><USER43> This I wonder : are there many millionaire who planned to become a millionaire ? Or is it just something that happens to people who pursue other (healthiers?) goals ?

</comment><comment><USER44> If you are starting with '0', or even say 50k, you have one option: get lucky. There are no legitimate (meaning non-lucky, legal) investment returns available that will get you to $1mm in three years. Sorry!

Time honored 'get lucky' options that make you look brilliant:

1) Options trading

2) Buy highly (say 100%) leveraged real estate just before a boom

Now, let's say you have no money, but great social capital: awesome trading skills, and good connections, we can add an option:

3) Become a trader, running other people's money. Make good money.

Now let's say you have awesome entrepreneurial skills, good social capital, and no money. We can add an option:

4) Buy a business with other people's money, taking a smallish cut. Grow the business / tart it up for sale. Sell it.

There is a very rarely successful variant on this, which is 'buy someone's idea, and build it out and launch it with other people's money.' This is called doing a startup. Think of it as 4a. For most people, it's equivalent to just getting lucky.

Now, let's say you're hot and super sexy, and you have a thing for the older guys/gals. We can add what is pretty much the final option if you aren't going to inherit:

5) Marry it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Make enough money so you can save $333,333.34 each year.

<comment><USER46> It doesn't have to be $333,333.34 if you know how to invest. Or pick a high- interest savings account if you don't :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> "Be so good they can't ignore you- I first heard this quote from Marc Andreessen, but he stole it from Steve Martin."

I'm pretty sure this is also a reference to Ender's Game.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's funny how a lot of people say it's not possible, though there are hundreds of thousands of people on the internet who've done it (and I don't mean just exceptions).

For example: affiliate marketing and the whole internet marketing scene is making teens millionaires. I've been in London on this guy's conference:

<http://www.georgemontagubrown.com/>

He's become a millionaire in 2 years, starting when he was 17. Sure, he is somewhat "special", but I've been following internet marketing and there are 15 year olds that are making 5k$ /month just with affiliate marketing.

You think you're at least as capable as 15 or 17 year old? I sure think I am. Though there is a bitter taste to it all - the above guy made 100k$ with a method, then he sold the method to the public and made himself a millionaire.

Browse a little through IM scene and you'll see it's a totally different world. But it might not be your cup of tea. ;)

<comment><USER49> You wasted your money going to his conference.

He is obviously playing on the get rich quick mentality that many people seem to possess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Work at a startup on a founding team. So not as founder or cofounder, but person #3 or #4. If the startup sells for $20M then you've made $1M, assuming equity of 5%.

You'd have to prove to the founders that you're on their level, in passion and a combination of domain knowledge, contacts or skill/intelligence/talent, and that you're willing to go the long haul.

Why not do a startup yourself? Risk, time and momentum.

If making a million is like reaching the top of a building, you'll have to start climbing stairs. Find some people that have already created an escalator, and then with them create an elevator.

These are some YC Startups, <http://workatastartup.org/> but you could just as easily go through crunchbase (eg the new additions) or something similar (a launch blog) to see what excites you.

</comment><comment><USER51> Your desire to not answer the question on why you want the money, your choosing a relatively ambiguous goal (millionaire), and the rather short time frame (3 short years) makes it really difficult to answer the question.

How many million exactly would you want? what are '3 short years'? Would you be willing to put in 5?would you be willing to put in 10?

What would you do after you had this money? Is it conceivable that you could make your millions doing what you 'dream' of doing right now instead of waiting for after you've made your money?

Why do you have such a weak way of putting it - 'just want to hear people's thoughts about the idea'?

Are you committed to it or not?

Final question - Would you like to make a ton of money without working hard? actually that should have been my first question.

Unless you start asking different questions you're setting yourself up for failure.

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't want to become a millionaire but if there's one advice I can give you is stop reading HN and JFDI

</comment><comment><USER53> I would not even think business, takes longer. Think infomercial. For example: That star wars sword thingy was just a flash light on the end of a plastic tube and made the guy a million so I heard.

</comment><comment><USER54> Wall street is the only way. If money is the goal, then LEVERAGE is important. The highest leverage given to a mans brain today is the Wall Street. In every other endeavor you have to personally do a lot of things right to even dream of the same leverage.

But I guess, if u get the other things(Jason covers all of the things that I can come up with) maybe technology offers a similar leverage.

</comment><comment><USER55> If all you care about is making a million dollars in three years, just franchise three or four restaurants.

<comment><USER56> You would need to already have a million dollars to qualify to franchise three or four restaurants.

<comment><USER55> Yeah, but it doesn't have to be your money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You could make a web game that guarantees someone to be millionaire in 3 years. You have to make the game in such a way that you will be the one to get the price. That is you must be able to plan de game and how to take control of it.

Some hidden seed can be the initial advantage to win.

</comment><comment><USER57> Do something you like. Life is too short not to spend on stuff that makes you happy. I believe chances are stuff you like will also pay you reasonably. 3 years is a long time to waste chasing a million dollars doing something you do not like.

</comment><comment><USER58> In the first year, save up 100K. In the same year, learn Options and Futures Trading from Pros and Paper Trade religiously for the first year. If you do well there, then start with real money in the second year and see how far you go.

<comment><USER59> thinkorswim is an excellent broker for this specifically -- they not only have an excellent options trading platform, but you can sign up for free and papertrade with a 15m delay. It's all Java-based so it works great on Linux.

That said, don't force it. It takes talent and dedication to beat the market. You will probably fail. I lost quite a bit of money trading single options, but I never traded money I needed and never borrowed money that wasn't closely guarded so I came out unscathed. I still suck but without a doubt a few people reading this post can succeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Move to Zimbabwe.

<comment><USER61> This was a brilliant idea but unfortunately they no longer use Zimbabwean Dollar anymore, instead the economy has fully moved to USD (now they are legally allowed to do so).. Previously you would get paid in billions.. Zimbabwe's $100 billion banknote could buy you 3 eggs on its release date.

<comment><USER60> Ah, too bad :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> One way is not by working for someone else ... unless you get very very lucky and the company is the next Google and IPOs.

<http://www.marshallbrain.com/million.htm>

</comment><comment><USER32> If you are able to convince others that you know the secret to become millionaire in 3 years, you can sell it to yours readers and do it real. You can bet that you will get 1 million in 3 years.

</comment><comment><USER63> Make something people want.

<comment><USER28> Yes and to refine that notion:

* make a $1 priced thing that 1 million people want

-or-

* make a $1 million priced thing that 1 person wants

<comment><USER64> make a thing of $1 of _profit_ that 1 million people want

make a $1 million of _profit_ selling a thing that 1 person wants

<comment><USER28> thanks, but yes, that was assumed, and speaking in rough terms to convey the core idea ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Why three years? IMHO, you're focussing on the wrong part of it all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question.

But why not 3 years?

As we all know, let's say if we are given an assignment for college to do and we are given a week to complete it, almost always, I will start the assignment about 3/4 days into the week and then as the deadline looms closer, the real work happens! So in answer to your question, if I said 10 years, I would be focused on 10 years :)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law>

<comment><USER66> The analogy doesn't hold. The problem is not so much that your school assignment is 1 million times easier. There's also:

1) There's not such a huge variation in the time necessary to complete an assignment. Your professor knows that some people can finish it in a couple of days but others need a whole week. But it's much harder to estimate the time to get $1M.

2) You can finish a school assignment on your own. Assuming you have access to the necessary resources (books, net, etc) it depends only on you. You don't need any luck to finish it. But to get rich you need favorable market conditions, meeting the right investors, hiring the right people, the government not screwing you up, etc, i.e. "luck".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> 1\. Devote your life to golf for 3 years. 2\. Win the 2013 U.S. Open.

<comment><USER60> Ah, but it is generally accepted wisdom that it takes 10 years to become really good at something.

<comment><USER68> not 10 years but 10 000 hours of practice

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Start with 10M, become an angel investor with 9M of it.

</comment><comment><USER70> Steps:

1\. Learn to come up with your own ideas.

2\. ...

3\. Profit!

<comment><USER71> 2\. And then a miracle happens.

<comment><USER71> Really? No one's seen this?

[http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/then-a- mira...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/then-a-miracle- occurs-cartoon.png)

I'm not positive on this, but I think my comment's parent was actually referencing it.

<comment><USER72> No, this looks like the Underpants Gnomes formulation.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> A slightly different approach:

!. Marry Warren Buffet

2\. Divorce Warren Buffet

But all kidding aside, 3 years is too unrealistic..

Most do it in 5 to ten years..that is Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, etc

</comment><comment><USER74> Come up with your own Acai Weight Loss Rebill with good affiliate payouts and connect with a network. You're going to be beat up with chargebacks and product manufacturing issues, but you can make a million dollars a week if you get enough affiliates.</comment>


Facebook Flips The Switch On Real-Time Search, Goes After Twitter Where It Hurts - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/facebook-flips-the-switch-on-real-time-search-goes-after-twitter-where-it-hurts/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry, and I think I'm not the only one that feels this way, but facebook is pretty much completely dead to me. Twitter has supplanted it.

Twitter is great for exactly the reason that most people hate it. It fills the void while I'm sitting in line at Fry's or something; I can immediately see what some of my friends are doing simply by looking at my blackberry, as well as give them totally pointless updates like "omg I HATE THE LINES AT FRY'S!" (you can see all of my stupid, inane tweets here: <http://www.twitter.com/blhack>).

Facebook also just feels like there is _too_ much going on...twitter does exactly one thing and it does it very well.

For instance, I have a really fantastic pocket knife that a good friend bought me a few years ago. It has all sorts of tools, one of them is a screwdriver. Needless to say, it is not as good as...well...a screw drive. Facebook's status updates, and twitter's "tweets", while similar, just aren't really the same thing.

Finally, there are a few people that I "stalk" on twitter that most likely have no idea who I am. One of them is a Poet from the UK...I get to see things like "I am release a few limited edition first run CDs from my original demo...get them while they're hot" (he is actually a rapper...but got started doing poetry jams. I feel dirty saying I follow a rapper). There is somebody called "Yuffster" (I thinks she is a famous dev of some sort? I don't know there was a post on here a while ago of "must-follow" twitterers and she was one of them...actually she was the ONLY one I kept following, everybody else tweeted like 100 times a day.)

Sorry, facebook, but you have lost my eyeballs. Twitter offers a superior (and pretty much completely different) product.

<comment><USER3> Twitter and Facebook are targeting different needs and communities, whether they know it or not. With Facebook you can find out what your friends are doing, but not much else. This is great for people who have a small and cohesive social network that largely communicates among its own members (e.g. young people.) Twitter is more of a broadcasting platform; you can learn what your friends (and random people you follow) are eating for breakfast, but you can also get the latest news out of Iran or the most recent viral meme that everyone will be blogging about tomorrow. Everyone seems to think "real-time updates" is a single category, but Twitter and Facebook each seem to be better at different facets of this info stream and I am not sure that either will make much of an inroad into the other one's turf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't want to search what my sister ate this morning, I find more important what peers are working on and what they have to say about new technologies or even tech trivia.

Twitter wins.

<comment><USER5> Twitter wins _for you_. A critical distinction. I don't see the value in Twitter on its own, especially for a technical audience. Why not just use RSS feeds? Facebook's network is its major appeal, and that applies to everyone, not just techies.</comment></comment>


The World Wants Less Tech. Amazon Gives It More - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/amazon-doubles-down-new-alexa-products-echo-loop/598906/ <comment><USER2> _> Yet customers keep buying what Amazon's selling._

Yeah, I don't know about this "the world wants less tech".

It seems like the average user doesn't care about the privacy scandals as much as the author wants them to.

<comment><USER3> That's me. I really like my facebook portal.</comment></comment>


Video shows Tulsa police killing man as officer uses gun not Taser 'by mistake' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/12/video-shows-tulsa-police-pursuing-and-shooting-man-killed-in-alleged-mistake

<comment><USER2> Why the hell would he even have needed to be tasered?!

Even after he is shot, a police officer is kneeling on his head while another is holding him by the neck. How the hell can any of these officers be allowed to keep their jobs, let alone not face criminal charges?

Yet another disgusting example of police brutality.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's absolutely ridiculous. And I don't get why this isn't upvoted more. There have been several much less serious cases been recently on the front page.

I guess HN voting is simply tilted all the way. (Note to myself: Need more fake accounts)

<comment><USER2> I suppose when you see this kind of thing so often it's possible for many people to become apathetic, conditioned to accept it; it becomes 'normal'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, but intelligent people react to new qualities - and this case is super-weird and gets even more tasteless when you see the cops on the clip and how the act. It just doesn't make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bates has apparently given thousands of dollars in materiel to the Tulsa cops over the last few years: [http://m.tulsaworld.com/newshomepage1/sheriff-s- office-reser...](http://m.tulsaworld.com/newshomepage1/sheriff-s-office- reserve-deputy-who-fired-fatal-shot- was/article_3d1f3fe7-43cd-5fa1-9e8c-d8b3aefe2504.html?mode=jqm&hc_location=ufi)

This isn't police brutality, this is bloodsport.</comment>


PR on Websites: Press Area Usability - <AUTHOR> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/pr.html <comment><USER2> _Websites must be painfully clear about a company's purpose, products, and services. Websites for high-tech start-ups are particularly notorious for presenting generic, buzzword-filled mission statements that could apply equally well to both their worst competitors and companies producing completely different products._

Good advice that I've often found disregarded.</comment>


Try faster TCP free for 2 months - <AUTHOR> http://www.supertcp.com

<comment><USER2> Obvious scam is obvious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Obvious!</comment></comment>


How i stopped worrying and loved the backdoor - <AUTHOR> http://mickey.lucifier.net/b4ckd00r.html <comment><AUTHOR> this is written by mickey shalayeff, a former, long-time openbsd developer.</comment>


The Making of Alto's Adventure - <AUTHOR> http://www.harrynesbitt.com/blog/the-making-of-altos-adventure/

<comment><USER2> I really enjoy playing Alto's adventure. It's very relaxing to have headphones on during a rain storm, the sound is excellent! I think they have tweaked the mechanics a bit since launch as well. It's seems more fluid and you spend less time in very dark (more challenging) levels at night.

</comment><comment><USER3> Truly an epic game. This is an interesting story to me because so many projects go this way - small scope at first, then a platform shift and eventually it takes 4x longer than planned. Especially with a game, this can be a lot of risky effort to release something that you don't know people will love. This is what led to the MVP movement, but sometimes products just need to be polished and full featured before they can be successful. Alto's Adventure is like that and their hard work certainly paid off. Props for the determination!</comment>


Ask HN: What are you working on for Launch-an-App Month? - <AUTHOR>

Any launches planned? <comment><USER2> After using Jenkins at work, I felt "it sucks" and came with it's own bunch of problems. So I'm working on a Hosted Continuous Integration service and scratching my own itch. I work on weekends and completed a bare prototype at a hackathon on the first weekend this month. Working on polishing it and releasing it by this month end.

My status: I just added support for private projects this weekend.

P.S: The app is at hotbuildapp.com but pardon me, I havent updated the online version since the hackathon so the landing page sucks (there's a lot of development going on tho).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I made an app that puts a feedback form on a website and emails the developer with user feedback. I know there are more sophisticated feedback management tools out there, but I wanted something simple.

You can see it at <http://threecents.elevenbasetwo.com/signup/>

Appropriately, feedback would would be great.

</comment><comment><USER3> Limits App ( <http://limitsapp.com> ) - An iOS app to track what drinks you have and discover when you're over/under the current drink driving limit. Just a fun app so we can exercise some freedom on all those little big details that clients seem uninterested in.

<comment><USER4> "But your Honor, my iPhone told me I was sober enough to drive!"

<comment><USER3> We've got a good disclaimer for the few that decide to go down that route. As an aside, I've seen the police use this formula for "back counting" alcohol consumption.

<comment><USER5> Love the subtle weed reference on your splash...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I launched DashPoll about a week ago, its a free API for polls and surveys, took a total of 10 hours to build - <http://dashpoll.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://metroia.com> \- a show and tell plus marketplace for indie game developers.

</comment><comment><USER8> I must have missed the original thread in which this idea was proposed. Anyone have a link?

<comment><USER9> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180321>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I was looking for. I could only find last year's thread.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's phone update to feature driving mode - at-fates-hands http://www.myfoxny.com/Story/23684342/microsofts-phone-update-to-feature-driving-mode

<comment><AUTHOR> People are just going to look at their phones more often if they can't hear or feel notifications.</comment>


Always Finish - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturebent.com/2011/07/always-finish/

<comment><USER2> Actually, I have an alternative theory to explain what happened. There is a lot of research documenting the mental benefits of exercise, especially on aspects like focus, planning, discipline, etc. These are just the sorts of aspects the author found began to wane.

Therefore, I theorize that actually it was the decrease in regular exercise that caused the change, not a vague changing habit of "completing things." After all, finishing what you set out to do can often be beneficial, but it can also be foolish when it later turns out that what was begun was unwise or low-priority.

Something doesn't seem quite right about the "always finish" theory to me, since I know many very successful people make a point of being able to stoically change priorities when necessary rather than getting mired in pointless completion of no-longer-useful goals.

The hard thing is that although we ARE ourselves, we do find ourselves reduced to theorizing as to why changes in ourselves are happening-- looking around to find a cause.

How would one test the "finishing things" theory against the "exercise increases focus" theory? No problem-- try going back to a better exercise schedule but letting things slide as needed in non-health related areas. I predict it'll be fine, suggesting it's exercise/health specifically that is affecting habits, not some sort of "getting into a bad habit of not finishing things" effect. If it's not, that suggests I'm mistaken and provides evidence in favor of the author's theory.

I'd be interested in the results.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm glad particular attention was given to the gym example in this article, or more in general "health".

These days I'm generally quite disciplined with sleep and exercise, but I've been down that path of "if I skip the gym this time I'll have more time/energy to work". After a few days I find I'm much less productive than I am when I'm consistently going to the gym 5-6 times a week. It's a nice reminder.

I wonder how many successful entrepreneurs are highly disciplined about their exercise/health?

<comment><AUTHOR> When Richard Branson was asked how to be more successful in business his response was - "Work out"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for the motivational reminder. I've been getting hardcore into my product development and sacrificing the time I'd usually spend going to the gym and other activities. I've found that I can mix social occasions with work by bringing my laptop, but with gym I can't really do that. So I better hit the gym now and get it out of the way.

</comment><comment><USER5> For me, the gym, sleep, and work all tie together literally; when I don't get the exercise I need, I can't sleep as well (or get to bed as early), and hence, my performance suffers the next day.

<comment><USER6> I find that it's really easy to fall into the trap of skipping the gym because of work demands, until it gets to the point that I'm not going at all. It's really hard to get to the point where you value your own health as much as your work -- it requires constant conscious effort (for me, at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This may sound a bit frivolous but, I've found that the quickest way to change your life for the better is to develop a nice set of abs. No better anti- depressant. I do get the urge to skip, of course, but I can usually convince myself not to by putting on workout clothes and running shoes and waiting until I feel like exercising.

<comment><USER6> That's only EVERY MAN'S DREAM... and the reason that Men's Health manages to stay in business. Any tricks you can suggest on the ab front? :)

<comment><USER7> Sure. The trick is to get to 10-12% body fat, which takes a little bit of time to get to, but it's easy to maintain once you're there.

First, a standing desk. I always get fat when I'm sitting down for too long.

Then, as soon as you wake up in the morning, eat scrambled egg whites, a can of beans, with a splash of olive oil. Take a multivitamin, and a garlic pill. Drink a lot of water.

Then workout, repeating a circuit of exercises for 25 minutes. I do 4-day splits, (out of habit, mostly) so 4 days in a row I'll exercise, and on the 5th, I rest. I just steal circuits from the 'net every two weeks or so. The key is intensity. The more intense you make the workout, the better you'll do.

Here's a sample circuit:

Pullups x 5 | Ab Wheel Rollout x 10 | Pushups x 15 | Squats x 20 | (no rest between circuits)

The rest of the day, I eat as much as I want of meats(yum), vegetables, and legumes, and I drink a lot of water. I pig out when I'm out with friends, which is every once in a while. Opt for liquor instead of beer, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a complete non-exercise guy, I'm still trying to find ways (like a solid walk through SF hills) to try to get some exercise in - is there a good site / idea for working out "for the rest of us"?

<comment><USER9> Sounds like you need a FitBit - <http://www.fitbit.com/> I've got friends who literally won't go anywhere without theirs now. Their website is pretty great for tracking other health data as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great advice, but I think it could be rephrased slightly:

Make sure to always do and finish that which you'll say you'll do. Especially regarding exercise, as without that, your productivity can drop. And if you can't finish, then you'll learn to be more reasonable.

Anyways, quite solid advice.</comment>


What were the key decisions that Page & Brin made in the early days of Google? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Google-Inc-company/What-were-the-4-or-5-key-decisions-that-Larry-Page-and-Sergey-Brin-made-in-the-early-days-of-Google <comment><USER2> _Larry Page's brother Carl Page had experience with venture capitalists, having sold eGroups to Yahoo for $432 million._

I did not know that.

I did know Bill Gates' mom was on the United Way executive committee with IBM's CEO.

I think these details are often omitted because we like to promote the idea that all you need is hard work and talent and perhaps a bit of luck to succeed.

We tend to not like stories about success as a function of familiar ties. This may have something to do with our distaste for monarchies and aristocracies.

It's also a bit depressing when you're working on a startup but no one in your family is well off, and no one is on a board with the CEO of a huge and potential partner, and your brother did not sell his startup for hundreds of millions.

<comment><USER3> Think of it from Carl Page's perspective, then: _his_ brother had not yet sold his startup for hundreds of millions.

<comment><USER4> You both make good points.

It is still amazing what they did with what they had, despite the fact that they had more than the average person.

However, there is no denying that they were lucky to have that money in the first place so that they could wait until their company was valued more and they had to give less away to VCs. I wonder how many startups had to give away their autonomy for badly needed cash? A large number no doubt.

From Carl Page's perspective: his brother had not yet sold his startup for hundreds of millions. It is quite a feat that he was able to do it by himself. But if Carl Page did have those hundreds of millions as a possible source of funding, could he have kept his startup from VCs longer and had more autonomy in it, and perhaps sold it for billions?

<comment><USER3> eGroups wasn't sold to Yahoo until August 2000 (after it IPO'd, actually), 2 years after Google was founded. Larry Page didn't have any more money available than any other Stanford grad student with a professor dad. He did have the experience of having a family member who'd gone through the VC process, but lots of people know people who've taken VC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This appeared on HN 250 days ago - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1502765>

As pg and paul (Buchheit - Google employee #23) point out, the top answer is inaccurate and misleading about what factors were really important.

As paul said: _Unfortunately it's written in an authoratative style, so people assume it's true and upvote, demonstrating one of the major flaws in vote based systems._

<comment><USER6> Also summary section now contains bogus items which are not mentioned in the answers at all. Way to go Quora.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Discussed pretty heavily here, with a rebuttal to the top post from pg and Buchheit: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1502765>

<comment><USER8> I suggest that one should read the thread completely in that discussion, as I have done just now, rather than arrive at the quick conclusion that this guy is clearly wrong. As far as I understand, the points given are wrong per se, but just that pg and Buchheit just think that other factors were more important.

I think that (unless you're a historian or somesuch) asking what is the most important 1-2 factors in the success of a person and or company is not very profitable, one should have the larger picture so you can emulate it.

From the answers, my important takeaways to emulate are:

1) Single out what you think is innovative/right/awesome, pursue it relentlessly and let no one hinder you (tech pundits, VCs, board, etc)

2) Be knowledgeable with history of other companies (e.g. why they failed- succeeded) and current dynamics (e.g. the Microsoft-Netscape competition mentioned)

3) Create company culture from day one (one problem with the highest answer is that it never mentions this well-known factor) and don't let it get diluted (OK< maybe after 20K employees)

4) Don't sell out when you see a pile of cash (or do quickly, if your belief in (1) is now gone, before others notice too)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was the 4th guy there, only stayed a while because I wanted to do my own thing.

The thing that struct me the first time I went into the house in menlo park where they got started was that instead of techy books on their desks, there were stacks of books on hiring. That was new to me, usually the geeks are thinking about engineering and if not that, marketing.

</comment><comment><USER10> I stopped reading after "Early NSA partnership."

<comment><USER3> I think he meant "Early _Netscape_ partnership". Netscape is apparently the NSA now. Who knew?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's my stab (probably about as accurate as any of the misleading answers on quora):

0: realizing that search was important on its own (it wasn't a loss leader or a gimmick to get people to visit your portal where the real content and money making happened)

1: using cutting edge research to improve search result quality based on human factors (page rank)

2: using cutting edge computer science to create highly efficient search systems through sharding and aggressive parallelization.

3: facilitating aggressive parallelization through highly automated data center operations relying on large quantities of consumer grade hardware.

4: continuing concentration on human factors (UI simplicity, search result speed, unobtrusive advertisements, etc.)

All of these together made google a juggernaut, with some of them google would have been successful but maybe not dominant, with all of them nobody could touch google so long as they managed to monetize well. Better search results faster at lower cost per query and with much higher click-through rates for ads. That's a world beating formula right there.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just do it. Now.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not all the decisions we're made by them, you'd probably also have to thank Yahoo and a bunch of other companies for refusing to buy them.

I can only imagine how Yahoo would have destroyed that company.</comment>


Parse is shutting down today - <AUTHOR> https://status.parse.com/incidents/6mpkbscqw6p9 <comment><USER2> During this year-long shutdown/migration process, the open-source and community maintained Parse Server is what most people switched to. Parse is yours now. [https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse- server](https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-server)

<comment><USER3> Something I've been wondering is would you recommend using the open source Parse server for new code or is it more targeted towards projects that were already using the Parse API?

<comment><USER4> It's geared towards legacy. I have used parse in 3 different projects (none of that was my choice, these were existing projects I had to take over) and I would NEVER recommend it for new projects.

The way everyone seems to use it, in my experience, is giving the _client_ credentials to manipulate the _full database_ which is absolutely insane. Obviously this is not good practice but every single parse project I've gotten thrown into _already did this_ and it was a significant amount of work to move it to be more secure and NOT do that. I think the way it's created makes it very, very easy to make bad security choices.

It's also basically a RESTful CRUD. That's mostly it minus some, mostly minor, bells and whistles. You can already do this with about 20 different open source stacks very easily and you're not stuck using this parse technology.

I can't articulate just how much trouble parse has given me. I even took an app and re-wrote its entire backend away from parse significantly faster than doing a handful of updates.

<comment><USER5> Later versions don't let you easily give the client full access. You instead have to do it through Cloud Code (another facet of Parse), so the key never leaves the server.

Not to disagree with your overall assessment. I'm generally wary of these swiss-knife frameworks - they're written for a particular use case in mind, and if your project doesn't fit that, you may go through contortions to get things working smoothly.

<comment><USER4> > Later versions don't let you easily give the client full access. You instead > have to do it through Cloud Code (another facet of Parse), so the key never > leaves the server.

That's fantastic! I never kept track of which version(s) I worked on but I had transitioned one project from Parse to Parse Server and it was still able to work this way but I'm glad they made progress to try and force better security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have seen a fair number of "abrupt" and poorly executed shutdowns on HN over the last few years, and although I don't use Parse, I feel as though the team did a good job sunsetting this over the last year. Thank you for the product, the open sourced version, and for not ditching your community! Best of luck to everyone who worked on the team

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's pretty impressive. YC should consider making it a requirement of funding that the components go open-source if they shutdown without acquisition, etc. Aside from collective benefit, a future, YC startup might get a head start from their docs or components. They seem to fund multiple startups in the same market segments at times.

<comment><USER8> That would likely be overly onerous...what if they use licensed 3rd party components?

<comment><USER9> And in such a case, an Open Source mandate would directly conflict with the financial interests of the investors (the time required for the effort takes away from the liquidation amount of the remaining assets.

<comment><USER7> It would only if the software source or patents compromised the value they gained from the business. This would be the case for some startups. It wouldn't be for others where brand, talent, & existing users were what they were after.

It also wouldn't take any significant time given developers could just push the final source and docs into a Github repo with a license. Or just dump it as a zip on the web. That's nothing. Also a good chance that at least one ex- developer would like to do it just so their work wasn't totally wasted.

<comment><USER10> How many production systems have you come across that could be dumped onto the public without any cleaning? Credentials, build systems, personal information, patent use, are a couple of examples that I've seen in prod code that couldn't or shouldn't be included.

Assuming the cost of open sourcing something is zero, even if it's just a zip dump, is usually not correct.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough. I forgot about the malpractice of putting credentials and personal information in the code itself. Companies doing that would have a hard time open sourcing the code. Others whose build system doesnt cleanly separate 3rd party or internal stuff might also have trouble. Patents I already handled by saying they simply don't release third party stuff that's proprietary. Patent-encumbered code or tech is one such thing.

So, yeah, I'll take those corrections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A little Parse trivia a gathered from talking to (very capable) Parse engineers that now work at FB:

\- Still the world's largest MongoDB user

\- Had 1M apps, largest one with 40M users

\- Server was Rails at first (24 threads max. concurrency), later rewritten in Go

\- >40 MongoDB Replica Sets with 3 nodes each. Storage Engine: RockDB (MongoRocks). No sharding (DB-to-replica-set-mapping). Only instance storage SSDs, no EBS.

\- Write Concern 1 (!) - some people complained about lost data and stale reads (slave reads were allowed for performance reasons)

\- Partial updates were problematic as small updates to large docs get "write amplification" when being written to oplog

\- Experienced frequent (daily) master reelections on AWS EC2. Rollback files were discarded -> data loss

\- Special flashback tool that recorded workloads that could be rerun for load and functional testing

\- JS ran in forked V8 engine to enforce 15s execution limit

\- No sharding automation: manual, error-prone process for largest customers

\- Indexing not exposed: automatic rule-based generation from slow query logs. Did not work well for larger apps.

\- Slow queries killed by cron job that polled Mongos currentOp and maintained a limit per API-key + query combination

\- It was planned to migrate Parse to FB's infrastructure but the project was abandoned

\- Clash of clans used Parse for push notifications and made up roughly half of all pushes

I find this extremely interesting, as we are building a BaaS, too, but have a very different approach (Baqend). Coming from a database background, our idea is that developers should know about details such as schemas and indexes (the Parse engineers strongly agreed in hindsight). Also we think that BaaS is not limited to mobile but very useful for the web.

Also I think that providers should be open about their infrastructure and trade-offs, which Parse only was after it had already failed.

<comment><USER12> > which Parse only was after it had already failed

You just listed some pretty impressive metrics, Parse was acquired for $85M and yet, you still think that Parse failed?

I'm curious what you would call a success.

<comment><USER13> A product that is acquired and subsequently shut down because the acquirer has no interest in it is indeed a _failed product_ as far as I'm concerned, even if said acquisition was a financial success for the investors and employees.

<comment><USER12> It was acquired because it was successful.

The failure is 100% on Facebook's side. They could have decided to keep the business up, they decided no to.

Thankfully, Google is doubling down on a similar business, so we have alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While the Parse team did an excellent job open-sourcing the platform and providing ample notice, it was still a costly learning experience.

Seamlessly transitioning a large user base on iPhone and Android to our self- hosted Parse with minimal service interruption or missed push notifications required significant engineering and coordination. The transition involved more hours than the initial build.

While we did our best (email campaigns, push notifications, etc.) we still have a sizable number of users who use the app daily, yet haven't updated it and are still pointing to (the old) Parse. We didn't plan on Parse going away back then, so those are not graceful failures.

Users who did update the app were signed out (couldn't maintain the session in the switch), resulting in a lot of "I didn't get my forgot password email" questions to support and an unknown number who won't bother troubleshooting it.

With the information at hand over a year ago, I still would have went with Parse. It really did help us get off the ground quickly. Maybe we would have missed our window of opportunity without it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I loved Parse from the time I first started using it in college. It started out as a really handy way to spin up small apps quickly so I could start beta testing my app quickly with real users.

One of the main problems though was that it really felt like just a prototyping tool to me, and I never really used it for real apps in production.

Thus, for my latest project that I've been working on for several months now, I've decided to try in every way to address that problem. I started a company called Scaphold.io ([https://scaphold.io](https://scaphold.io)) and it's a GraphQL backend as a service platform. It serves to address many of the same needs of Parse and more. It combines all the best data modeling tools from Parse and real-time capabilities from Firebase to provide a high-fidelity app development experience that you can actually build real production apps on, with as much transparency to your data as possible. That's the mission that we have at Scaphold, and I'm excited to be helping all the stranded app developers out there that were burned by Parse shutting down.

Excited to see what comes next for the app development world!

<comment><USER16> I was wondering if you have a public policy in place which outlines what would happen in the event of a Parse-like shutdown or other end-of-company-life event occurring?

I ask in the hopes that it won't be taken as too negative a question but your company is VC-backed in the database space and we've lost a few too many of those this last year.

<comment><USER17> if you run a company or product, it's on you to make sure your data is recoverable and your product is fixable in the event of an outage.

expecting a vendor to tell you exactly how they're going to fold is something they can surely dream up and send to you so you feel better about the nature of the universe, but something you shouldn't really rely on.

in other words, assume the worst will happen, despite assurances of the contrary.

<comment><USER16> Fully agreed, I still find it helpful to judge the response and general attitude of the company in question though.

In this instance, it was exactly what I was hoping for.

<comment><USER17> the problem is in many circumstances the entire management or operations teams can be forcibly removed by investors etc. many of these companies are all volatile, high growth venture-backed companies with financial and corporate shenanigans being pulled left and right.

i wouldn't say the risk is attitude, or intentions. you know what they say about good intentions...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Parse was an amazing discovery when I was just starting out my dev career and I've used it in all of my major projects, but it had some serious shortcomings. I wrote about why I think Parse failed from a developer's perspective.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13522602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13522602)

<comment><USER19> Why do you think Parse was a failure in the first place? Surely, Parse founders got a nice little cash out of the acquisition and Facebook got developers onboard and Facebook Login integrated onto many apps.

<comment><USER20> Depends. I don't know what the acquisition price was but given that they're shutting it down, I'm thinking it was in tens of millions range, which makes it an aquihire. Assuming they raised low to mid tens of funding, The investors probably have a 1x or more a preference on the sale. This means the leftover value is in the low to mid ones of millions. I love that you're getting 0.1% So we're talking like ones of thousands of dollars for an engineer after two years of work at probably less than market rate salary.

Given that your equity package at a large company would be is late and 50 times that per year yeah the engineers didn't come out ahead so it's a fail.

<comment><USER21> This is wildly wrong.

<comment><USER22> Baseless conjecture shot down immediately by someone intimately involved with the project is truly something beautiful to behold.

Are you at liberty to discuss the actual reasons and shed a bit more light on why things went down the way they did?

Side note, your product was unbelievably popular at my university. Parse made getting a functional DB up and running for courses and side projects completely painless and a no-brainer for tight deadlines and PoCs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've spent the last 15 minutes on parse.com, github.com trying to find out what the parse backend actually is. Can someone explain?

<comment><USER24> Parse was a backend as a service that allowed for a cloud hosted database to be connected with web and mobile apps with simple JavaScript. It was a lovely tool for hackathons. They could also run arbitrary JS in response to events at scale. It competed with Firebase until they were acquired by Facebook.

<comment><USER25> It all makes me feel very stupid. I did programming since childhood and web since the beginning, I was clouds (virtualization) user even before millennium, I do backends for a living, saw a lot of JS code, know something about mobile apps, but I must join this thread.

"Parse Server is an open source version of the Parse backend that can be deployed to any infrastructure that can run Node.js" \- each of these words one-by-one do have some meanings, but altogether they have none, neither your explanation for me. I fully believe it's totally my fault and it's hopeless, so please no reply.

<comment><USER26> "a cloud hosted database" \+ "run arbitrary JS in response to events at scale" covers most of it. It's a hosted database and server.

<comment><USER27> A cloud hosted database is accurate, but doesn't really describe it well. Amazon, Heroku and others also provide cloud hosted PostgreSQL, which is a very different use case.

Parse was a:

* cloud hosted nosql database,

* with client libraries for mobile platforms,

* _direct write access_ from mobile apps, without hosting your own API backend in the middle, and

* some methods of securing this direct write access from untrusted clients.

<comment><USER26> Yes, but covering all the important parts exceeds the "couple sentences / one short paragraph" goal. First and foremost it's a DB + server + client libs (I entirely agree on that one, it's a major value-prop). Details beyond that are many.

Other important parts may include "runs on node.js", "server code in JS", "client + server define ACL per row", "push notifications", "amazingly, supports windows mobile", etc, depending on the viewer. That's what the rest of the documentation is for, e.g. in a features list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a real bummer. I am not a programmer by profession (I am a PM), but I took time to learn Parse from scratch to quickly write my own app. I managed to launch my app on App store and everything was well till Parse announced their shutdown. Unfortunately, with a 1 yr old at home and a demanding work / commute, I didn't really have the time to learn about their migration guidance or educate myself on a new platform. So my App will stop working from today, which is a bummer.

For people who are more knowledgeable than me, I was really using Parse as a data store and using their APIs to store and retrieve data. I really liked their visual tools where I can create tables (classes) almost like in an excel document. This meant that I didn't have to learn a DB language. Is there a comparable tool that has similar features ? I have looked at Mongolab and Firebase and both seemed a lot more complicated than Parse. Or do I need to learn MongoDb now ?

<comment><USER29> If you have some time and are looking for something easy check out Proxima:

[https://www.jamroom.net/proxima](https://www.jamroom.net/proxima)

It's really designed for someone that is not a developer first. I built a MBaaS quite a few years ago, and Proxima was something I built on the side since I wanted an easy backend to power my own app. I also wanted someplace to do documentation, support, newsletters, etc. - so the idea with Proxima is that you can focus 100% on JUST your app and Proxima will handle your backend/website, etc.

Note too that it's not a SaaS - you would download and install it on your own server (although we do offer the hosting as well if interested). It's open source and free, so check it out if you're looking for something easy. Feel free to contact me as well if you have any questions.

Hope this helps!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Found this on the Parse CEO's LinkedIn profile[1]:

"Facebook acquired the company for ~$100m in April 2013, intending to build a business akin to Amazon Web Services, and we operated for two years as a semi- independent subsidiary.

Facebook ultimately chose to exit the hosting business but Parse continues to thrive as an open source project with official support at Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, etc."

Was this widely reported? I never knew that the internal plan with FB's Parse acquisition was to build an AWS competitor. Kind of interesting!

I guess it was viewed as a hedge in case the FB on-platform advertising revenue didn't grow as fast as they were predicting.

[1]: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilyasukhar](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilyasukhar)

</comment><comment><USER31> A few points on our parse.com and migration to parse-server experience:

\- I didn't like it initially. Not only the name (parse what?) but also because people started using it as a relational storage, which it clearly were not. Later, I became one of them (got convinced by colleagues).

\- We recommended parse.com to a few clients, and they really enjoyed it.

\- Had some issues with SDKs but we've been able to workaround them with the help of parse's team (pre and post FB acquisition).

\- When the shutdown news came, that was a crossroad. Open source parse-server had got too many issues and we decided to postpone and not follow the recommended timeline. By august, we decided to stick to the open source version, but still no decision on using a third-party provider for the parse- server, mongodb, both, etc, etc. Also, the providers we had seen then turned the yellow light on due to the shutdown experience. By october, it was decided to follow the dark path of going on our own. For clients, we helped them on specific needs.

\- The migration consisted of very minor changes in the "cloud code" part, and almost no changes at all to client apps. Difficult part will be to scale our infrastructure when needed.

BTW, we finalized the migration of our own app on saturday.

<comment><USER32> I know sales pitches are frowned on here but in the interest of helping out (with probably no return based on most users' Parse instance sizes), I have to share this. We were in the same boat when Parse shut down so here's just another option for anyone looking to migrate their app away still.

We took the parse server and built a hugely scalable platform on AWS and made it free to signup. We're still adding features but if anyone wants to start using it, it's in Production and available via [http://octobas.com](http://octobas.com)

You can also migrate your app to any externally hosted MongoDB service (like mlab.com) and simply connect your MongoDB instance to an Octobas.com Parse Application. (still for free under the base plan.. this method actually works out even cheaper when you scale up).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just want to say thank you to the HN community. We learned a lot in engaging with folks here over the years.

<comment><USER33> Hi Ilya, You've really done a nice job with this transition, so rare to see people caring for their users until the end and keeping their word.

I am curious if you've ever looked at PostgREST, i think i've seen Tikhon among ppl who starred it on github. Any comment on it? Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So the alternative options are:

\- pouchDB - [https://github.com/pouchdb/pouchdb](https://github.com/pouchdb/pouchdb)

\- RxDB - [https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb](https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb)

\- gunDB - [https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun)

\- horzion - [https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon](https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon)

\- firebase - [https://firebase.google.com/](https://firebase.google.com/)

<comment><USER35> Kind of strange that you just threw in RxDB (your own creation?) and GunDB (which is easily torn apart as snakeoil whenever it appears on HN) along with the rest of them.

<comment><USER34> Yes RxDB is my creation. Didnt know that GunDB is not liked here, do you have a link for me?

I just wanted to have a next-to-complete list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Thanks to all contributors that made the transition to open-source possible, parse-server is far from dead, getting daily improvements in performance, extensibility (Postgres, push notifications queues...) and ease of use.

Parse is dead, long live Parse.

</comment><comment><USER37> I was never a huge fan of parse, having seen startups fail hard when using it, and I've been pretty vocal about that in the past [1]. It was a great idea in principal, but failed pretty hard when faced with the reality of non-toy development.

I generally hate to see projects fail, but in this case I'm not terribly upset. I think that people were getting sucked into the ease of getting apps up and running quickly, then spending 2-3x the effort getting past that initial stage versus doing it in a more traditional stack.

Perhaps the open-source server might give the community some opportunity to fix the many, many glaring bugs and problems, but I have felt like the specific design of Parse itself was just too flawed to succeed.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10056033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10056033)

<comment><USER38> _I generally hate to see projects fail_

Many would be happy to fail like this!

 _Facebook acquires Parse, an app-support company, for $85 million_

[http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/26/business/la-fi-tn- fa...](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/26/business/la-fi-tn-facebook- parse-85-million-20130425)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This makes me wonder. If my startup reaches a certain amount of success, heck if only 5 customers, and for some reason I need to shut it down, what's a graceful way to deal with it.

I can give each customer all of their data back in a nicely formatted zip file etc. But is that enough? customers are more likely to want an equivalent service (remember the Google RSS reader fiasco?). Even if a customer finds an alternative service on their own, there _should_ be a way to import the said zip file from their previous services. This brings in the idea of "service interoperability" (and related import/export) among startups that have no relation to each other. Apparently, standardizations like JSON etc, should make it easier.

Looks like a huge blind spot that the startup industry doesn't pay attention to. (Graceful shutdown and graceful import/export built in as a rule rather than the exception).

</comment><comment><USER40> The export data feature has been broken for months — it's stuck in the "waiting to begin…" phase. Is there plans to allow people to export their data?

I'd like to get my data out, but both options for exporting data via the dashboard are broken. They also disabled the ability to contact them in regards to the export data functionality.

<comment><USER41> Email email@example.com for generic last-moment migration assistance.

<comment><USER40> Thanks, but unfortunately they just replied with a canned email about their migration guide.

There doesn't appear be any way to simply export data anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I would like to make an appeal. Let's use this post as a great recognition for the Parse team hard work and share also our lessons learned using Parse/Parse Server as a Backend. Thank you, Thank you guys. @csmajorfive, @gfosco, @laker, @HectorRamos,@jamesjyu, @flovilmart ... and everyone else

<comment><USER36> Thanks for the shoutout, but I'm not part of the parse team :)

<comment><USER42> Yes, you are! Parse Server Team :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Ah yes, the day that so many unsupported apps stop working.

<comment><USER44> As for iOS apps, I imagine Apple's new attempt to remove unsupported apps from the app store will result in many of these apps getting the boot soon.

I've already seen the notification when opening an app that it might perform slowly since it is not supported (or something along those lines).

<comment><USER45> I've seen a notification like that, but it had to do with an App not being compiled for 64 bit architecture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Quick... everyone run to www.graph.cool !! It's parse but for GraphQL!

<comment><USER33> The way you phrased it almost seem sarcastic in the context of this thread, although i think you are actually recommending them :)

They offer a interesting product but i think at this moment it has the exact same problem that Parse had (my other comment in this thread), you don't have access to the raw data, hope they will do that in the future (provide direct access to the source database), it will certainly be a more interesting/flexible service

<comment><USER47> Hi ruslan_talpa, I'm one of the founders of Graphcool. Thanks a lot for your feedback. You're totally right: Not having direct access to YOUR data is one of the main concerns about BaaS which we'll address at its core over the coming months.

I'd be very keen on hearing your experience getting started building something on Graphcool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What are the founders next up to ? Interesting to hear about it.

<comment><USER41> Ilya's a VC now. [http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/09/parse-cofounder-and-y- comb...](http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/09/parse-cofounder-and-y-combinator- partner-ilya-sukhar-joins-matrix-partners/) James and I are still working at Facebook, on other projects.

<comment><USER48> Cool. How big was team when parse was bought by Facebook ?

<comment><USER41> 24 people

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone clarify: does this mean all older versions of apps that were dependent on Parse are now orphaned?

That is, even if you've released a new version of your app that uses the open source Parse Server, any of your users that haven't updated to the new version now essentially have a broken app?

<comment><USER49> Yes

<comment><USER13> Well, that's quite unfortunate for the millions(?) of users whose apps will break today for reasons they won't understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Updated my Parse app several months ago away from Parse, but up to 600 DAU's were still using the old versions - I'm not sure whether they'll fail gracefully or not. You can't convince some people to update their apps, they think it is a conspiracy!

</comment><comment><USER51> I remember when Facebook announced the acquisition of Parse. I was talking to some devs who really like Parse. They were pretty down about the news. The comment that really struck me was, "Now that Facebook bought them, I don't trust Parse anymore." A lot of devs seemed to sour on Parse, but Facebook seemed to push back by seeming to say that Parse was going to be around for a long time. Well, that was interesting.

</comment><comment><USER52> A key takeaway from this; and one of the main reasons parse failed-- don't name a company or service after an extremely generic programming term.

Parse failed for a lot of reasons but I hated it because the documentation was terrible at the beginning and used to get me stuck in a forever loop of links. So I searched for additonal info:

"Parse javascript"

"Parse website library"

"Parse programming"

Admittedly contrived examples. But the point i am making is pretty clear.

<comment><USER41> That sure wasn't one of the main reasons Parse failed! It is annoying though. Perhaps we should have taken over some similar term, like "golang".

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I have been using Sashido for a while for two different apps.

I am surprised about their service. The migration was super easy and straightforward and it is as easy to use as Parse.

I would love to see them offering a cheaper option for very low traffic apps but 5 dollars for migrated apps is a fair rate that I can afford. Another option would be some discount if you already have apps hosted with them.

</comment><comment><USER54> While I know there are people who say they loved their Parse experience, I suffered greatly. There are bugs, there are issues, there are simply things that either don't work or are very hard to make work.

On top of it, architecture of the app I was trying to make work, was... challenging.

Anyhow, not a big fan, but it is open source and now you can fix those issues if you care about them.

</comment><comment><USER55> It's super sad. It was so great when it was hosted by them. I am bit worried about what is going to happen to the documentation.

I am currently using SashiDo which I quite like. Excellent support. Before that, I tried NodeChef, but I have found Sashido a little more intuitive. Your millage may vary.

</comment><comment><USER56> At my last job one of my biggest projects was a migration off of parse to a postgres backend. Fun times.

</comment><comment><USER57> I liked the graceful shutdown that Parse had. Always thought that FB would just unplug the wire

</comment><comment><USER58> Hope facebook will opensource the original Parse platform. Less likely, but just hoping.

</comment><comment><USER59> Does anyone know if the same admin UI (tables, settings) is available with Parse Server?

<comment><USER60> It is, it's called parse-dashboard and it's open source as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> By looking at their websites i have no idea what their product is about.

</comment><comment><USER62> This looks like it does similar things that Parse was doing: [https://exis.io/](https://exis.io/)

</comment><comment><USER63> As a non-developer who found Parse extremely easy to use, is there a similar product in the market that I can switch my iPhone app over to?

</comment><comment><USER64> So we know there is a Go version somewhere I wonder why they didn't opensource this instead of rewriting everything to nodejs...

<comment><USER2> The backend for running half a million apps doesn't look anything like the backend for running a single app. Open-sourcing the actual Parse stack was not an option, and no one would've put in the effort to actually run the _dozens_ of components involved. I started from scratch because that was the only way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Thank you for your service Parse. I'll me

</comment><comment><USER66> can someone tldr us on what happened to parse?

<comment><USER67> Facebook bought it. Parse was highly coupled to AWS at the time. They spent some 3 years trying to get it to run on Facebook's cloud, and apparently failed to do so. Facebook decided to cut their losses, and shut it down.

<comment><USER21> We did have many technical challenges (as would be expected, really) but that wasn't why it ultimately went away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Anyone want to explain to me like I am five, because I got no fricking idea what it does and why would I want it?

<comment><USER69> > why would I want it

Well, the title says its shutting down so you probably don't want it. If you don't know what Parse is, this news doesn't affect you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> The open source Parse Server offers more benefits than hosted parse.com. Many of the benefits are outlined in this blog post: [http://blog.parse.com/announcements/what-is-parse- server/](http://blog.parse.com/announcements/what-is-parse-server/) Whatever you are building with Parse Server, Nodechef can help you get there faster. [https://www.nodechef.com/parse-server](https://www.nodechef.com/parse-server)

<comment><USER71> Are you a nodechef cofounder by any chance? I host with nodechef and am happy with them so far.

<comment><USER70> Yes, I am one of the co-founders. Thanks for hosting with us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> The Parse folks seem to have handled this reasonably well but this is the perfect illustration of why building your own application around a third party service like this is not a pure win. There is a tradeoff and it can in fact bite you.

<comment><USER73> It's a shame so many people think of the Data Access Object design pattern as something only Java developers should be using. Using DAOs to provide database-agnostic access to your data takes a few moments more at first, but then when you need to move data from $DB_X to $DB_Y, there's a lot less wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Mediocre link on the topic: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_access_object](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_access_object)

<comment><USER72> I'm not sure what your point is. Do you mean that if only people used DAOs then Parse shutting down wouldn't be a problem? It only encapsulates the problem. You still need to go through a process to switch from Parse to MariaDB or whatever else you switch to. You just don't have to rewrite your whole application.

I'm in favor of DAOs and use them myself but they don't have anything to do with what I was talking about.

<comment><USER73> You made the point that the tradeoff can bite you. I mentioned DAOs as a way to make that bite less painful. Not a hard connection to make.

<comment><USER72> That's what I assumed, but it wasn't totally clear that was your intention.

Like I said it does help but it's not a panacea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Why do I feel like this post is getting brigaded by Sashido?

<comment><USER75> Because it is. Makes me begin to regret my decision of migrating my parse server to them, but I will say that they did make it easy to migrate over and answered my questions promptly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> What an incredible journey!

</comment><comment><USER77> I read this as "Paris is shutting down today"

I guess my parser is offline too...

</comment><comment><USER78> Check out the Parse Migration Guide to migrate away without any downtime - [http://www.parsemigrationguide.com/](http://www.parsemigrationguide.com/)</comment>