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Comment by yarcob | Hacker News Reader

I'm always curious who is behind a company. How many people work there, how it is funded, where they are based, type of corporation, etc.

These things make a big difference. Eg I typically trust a non profit that's been around for a couple of years more than a venture funded startup that just launched.

This company doesn't even state where they are based or what the name of the company is on the website. They have a statement on longevity on their website, but no mention at all who this company even is.

This does not inspire trust.

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Their twitter is from 2016.

Their linked blog has posts going back to 2017.

Their FAQ covers their core dependencies: https://standardnotes.org/help/52/what-services-does-standar...

What your options are if they go out of business: https://standardnotes.org/help/4/what-happens-to-my-data-if-...

Where they are based, where their servers are, and why they've made the choices they have: https://standardnotes.org/help/39/what-country-is-standard-n...

They also list an office address, a slack you can join, and several email addresses for outreach at the bottom of their FAQ: https://standardnotes.org/help

I don't think it's their transparency that's the problem.

"Office address" is that of their lawyers, which is not uncommon, but it also means that they aren't necessarily US-based.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=350+N+Orleans+St.+STE+9000N+Chicag...

GP's concern is a very valid one. The identity of developers and their location makes an absolutely crucial difference for a project that roots itself in the crypto tech. Being wishy-washy with this info is exceptionally unhelpful as it is damaging.

In this case, the actual company can be from an origin (or a country) that would make you think twice before even installing it, leave alone letting it touch any of your data. Them being vague here adds more questions than it answers.

Company information can in fact be found on the website, but I hate it that they use a .org website when they're clearly just yet another startup.

What does this mean?

Their app is open source: https://github.com/standardnotes/web

The first release was in 2017? I don't see any sign of them having taken any funding?

I don’t think they’re a startup. They are a software company selling a saas though.

.com for commercial, .org for non commercial organisations is the historic breakdown.

Sure, people use all sorts of domain extensions these days. That said I don’t think Twitch is trying to trick people in to thinking they’re based in Tuvalu whereas I can’t say the same with this company and being a non commercial organisation.

Don’t see what open source has to do with anything. Tons of very much profit seeking companies have open source code.

Clearly a VC-funded startup is worse than a bootstrapped one, but IMO whether or not a company is a startup or not comes down to if they want exponential growth or not. It doesn't say that they do on the website but I nowadays assume that if they didn't, they'd proudly proclaim it.

But I could be wrong about the startup part and they in fact just want to be a profitable small business.

Not to belabor the "startup" debate but they actually do discuss growth goals on the blog:

"We don't want to speak for you, but we're sure you've felt it: Ever notice how your favorite applications seem to get slower over time? That's no coincidence. They call that "growth". It happens because panicked teams were frantically trying to throw more functions at what was a good idea for some stupid business goal. And a good idea turns into something that isn't, real quick. That thing you loved metastasized into something you hate.

If simplicity keeps us from adding features, so be it. Standard Notes is officially an anti-growth company. We don't mind. We set out to do one thing well: Allow you to write your notes and thoughts privately without friction, on every device you own..."

https://blog.standardnotes.org/why-simplicity-is-the-only-wa...

Hmm, I don't interpret that to be a statement about the growth of the user base or revenue, but about not adding new features to the product?

True but they are describing the two as related. I took it to mean they are able to avoid addressing a stream of half-baked feature requests precisely because they are not banking on an exponentially growing user base. If skipping or postponing a new feature causes them to miss a few users, so be it.

Being open source does not mean they aren't commercial. IMO using a .org as their only domain is flat out misleading: the honest way is to have only the source code and community in the .org and the commercial offering in a .com.

That's entirely fair! I don't think they're a 'typical startup' though, at least from a cursory look. Generally, it doesn't feel like there's much adherence to TLD norms these days at all.

I guess this is feedback to them, then. They have a longevity statement https://standardnotes.org/longevity but this is talk, and you need to see some more foundational information that demonstrates that it's worth taking their word about longevity.

This is normally required to be on the website for some countries. Guess they’re not in one of those.

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