Ask HN: What's a not so famous software company that makes a lot of money | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's a not so famous software company that makes a lot of money

27 pointsmr_o4730 comments

Hello,

We all have heard of big name software companies but what are some unusual software companies that makes millions every year which we might not have heard of?

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In the GIS space there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esri It's like the Microsoft Office of creating and analysing spatial data. 1 billion USD revenue, 3000 employees and private owned, making the owner a billionaire (net worth estimated 8 billion USD).

Yep. They have a niche there. The only worthy alternative in their space is QGIS.

We use QGIS in our research environments because it’s free, open source, and is cross-platform. It’s the only fully featured GIS suite that Mac/Linux users can use that I’m aware of. Always looking for suggestions though.

I work for CCC IS, we make software to help collision repair facilities and auto insurers estimate the damage to your vehicle and the needed repair… only in the US, only private vehicle auto insurance… $7B market cap

ServiceNow comes to mind for one, I would have never guessed it’s revenue is 7 billion and I literally never heard of it

I have developed stuff on top of their platform. Worst experience I ever had.

Yikes. Scary to see this in the wild as one of my customers is moving to it and we'll likely be layering custom solutions on top of it...

Sorry to hear. Don't bill on a project basis, bill on a hourly basis or daily basis for custom solutions, and it might make sense to bring on outside expertise because there are quite a few footguns. Either way there will be a learning experience.

People make a lot of money doing that

Honestly in this case I'd rather make less, and not work with servicenow :/

ServiceNow has quite a miserable user experience, but I guess their enterprise sales game is strong. They’re selling to C-levels, not us peons who actually use it.

I’d disagree. All ticketing systems suck. The pretty ones are only pretty when they are simple one function affairs.

ServiceNow sucks less than their competitors and dominates the market as a result. If you think it’s bad, Remedy or whatever the HP product was called was exponentially worse.

I don't even want to think about an HP ticketing system.

I used to know the founder of JDA Software (which now operates under a new name). They do logistics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Yonder

The link suggests 1.1 Billion in revenue in 2021

Who would have thought about this

It’s pretty impressive

In the geospatial data import and integration game since ~ 1990 sits the BC, Canada company Safe.com and their swiss army knife product FME

https://www.safe.com/company/

    Today we provide a range of data solutions for over 25,000 customers and over 200,000 users across 121 countries. Which is a whole lot of solutions for anyone who’s counting.

I'm not spruiking here but it's a handy bit of kit for anyone pulling (say) land lease boundaries and tenement data from hundreds of different local government | state formats to integrate into a single XXX database (PostGres, MS, etc).

They're currently expanding from ~$70 M / year to a goal of $250 M / year .. but this is likely more through market expansion than software development.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230413005193/en/Saf...

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Fugro is not a famous software company, arguably not even a software company .. but they have a lot of in house geospatial, geophysical, software ranging from firmware to desktop applications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugro

I have very mixed feelings about Fugro and haven't worked for them (having turned down a very good offer) but they did absorb a rather large chunk of my own personal codebase.

Probably have heard of it if you ever walked into a gas station, but Arizona Iced Tea has been kept a small company and yet they are profitable. Although some retailers charge more for it, the company has always had $0.99 on the can and it has never changed, even through inflation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Beverage_Company

That's not a software company though

You are right, I thought he wrote "not so famous company".

Well it's a soft drink company, I'd say it's pretty close to a soft ware company.

Pick any undergraduate in USA and ask them if they know about Juniper networks or NetApp.

I heard about juniper networks but not NetApp what do they do?

Very expensive but well-regarded enterprise Network-Attached Storage.

Maybe this doesn't fit your definition of "software company" but Renaissance Technologies certainly makes a lot of money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies

I think about i heard about renaissance technologies

They are pretty cool firm but not sure how they use technology

they use computers to do math that makes money.

Solera - they had a product to find automotive spare parts. Their biggest customers were insurance companies.

Hotelbeds - Like Sabre, or Amadeus but for hotel rooms. Based in Majorca (they have an office near the airport). Nice people (and cool tech, btw)

Wayfair, Qurate, SAIC, Insight Enterprises, DXC ... Fortune 500 companies that have billions in annual revenues.

Lots of people havent heard about Quant in my experience. Citadel, Jane Street, etc

Millions isn't really a high bar for revenue in software

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