Ask HN: Is it still worth starting a web based startup?

4 points·thakobyan··7 comments

In the mobile and bot era I'm super curious to know what you think about web based projects and how far they can go!

Depends on who the market is. A year or so ago I cofounded a career guidance startup, and the feedback we got from everyone we talked to was "Yes, web only. Who the hell looks for jobs on a phone?" (Interestingly, there are a lot of people starting mobile job-search startups.)

Go where the users are, not where the news stories are. If your users would prefer to use a web browser to accomplish a task, make it a webapp. If they would prefer to use a phone, make it a mobile app. If they'd prefer to text, make it a bot.

can't agree more.

Mobile and bot aren't eras, they're just tech adoption cycles. They are also not incompatible with web.

The defining characteristic of a startup is that it does something an increasingly large number of people are happy to pay for. Unless you think the web will somehow prevent that from happening, it is still "worth" starting a web based startup.

The "bot era" is like the "IoT era". It's not a thing, it's not going to be a thing, but fucking everyone is going to keep saying it over and over until some new hype is discovered to proclaim instead.

No, all the websites have been invented already. There will be no more websites.

The web isn't novel anymore. Your idea needs to be novel, with the web as a delivery tool.

Trying to build a SaaS tool with Ruby on Rails and raising $10M isn't going to get you far these days.

Its a struggle to get website visitors but my mobile apps grew to 60k users with $0 marketing budget.

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