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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

"We raised a bunch of money"

Generally speaking (I'm not a fly.io customer) at this point that phrase WORRIES me as a customer of any service.

It makes me think that the company exists just on a constant flow of VC or similar money and what I'm using or paying for isn't a realistic or future cost and I'm involved with a system or platform that is getting stretched larger and larger regardless of income and the more money they raise the harder the fall will be.

It's unfortunate but for me it's not a phrase I want to see. I want to hear how they are profitable based on their operations and paying customers or other non VC or IPO type income. That gives me confidence in their stability.

To be clear that's not a disagreement with the title or blog, seems like a fine article that is fairly up front, but it's hard for me to really see "we raised a bunch of money" as a positive from a customer perspective anymore.

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> It makes me think that the company exists just on a constant flow of VC or similar money and what I'm using or paying for isn't a realistic or future cost and I'm involved with a system or platform that is getting stretched larger and larger regardless of income and the more money they raise the harder the fall will be.

This is where I always get burned. As they get larger and larger, and the product gets more complex, they see it as value that I'm not paying for, but I see it as negative value because I'm forced to deal with all the added complexity that I don't even want. Then, one day, they decide I shouldn't be "freeloading" on their super awesome platform and change pricing to something that isn't even close to reasonable for me.

It's like hiring someone to cut your grass and a few years later you go outside to find 3 guys on riding lawnmowers telling you that prices are going up because obviously you're not paying enough to cover the costs of the service you're getting. It's not my fault they scaled their business to accommodate customers with 10 acre lawns and assumed I needed the same level of service, but I'm the one left without lawn care.

Also the guy who you hired to cut your grass now also lugs around all the tools to take care of your pool, your car and your house. Take all or nothing.

And your lawn guy’s office has a pool.

Also, the lawn guy now has a pricing tier for different grass heights that all in the end take the same amount of work.

But your lawn guy stays in business - which is relevant to them and to you (for as long as you're a customer). If the market is efficient, there should be reasonable competition that you can switch to that more aligns with your needs.

My lawn guy, and his competitor, just got acquired by a company that only mows the median strips along highways.

My lawn guy got shut down by google.

My lawn guy got bought by Google, cleverly integrated into Google Play Grass, eventually shifted over the the side behind the new 2.37m high spirea hedge (which is beautiful), then Google Play Grass got replaced with sign saying "It's time to switch to YouTube Groundskeeping!". And my lawn guy isn't included anymore.

Except it's more like you originally purchased turf that's compatible with the provider's lawnmowers and, while you thought they were cutting the lawn, they were busy building a moat around your property. So now, switching involved ripping out the old turf, filling in the moat, and having new turf installed.

Then you realize that by the time you pay off the capital investments needed to switch to a new provider they'll be pulling the same stunt and you should've learned how to cut the grass on your own.

It's absolutely not efficient in the sense you imagine.

The VC capital is concentrated in to the hands of a few players. They're not going to compete against themselves.

And nobody is going to compete against the titans.

The market is efficient at concentrating wealt in to the hands of those who already have it.

that's an excellent description

Wasn't this the case with Vercel? They started out as Now v1 which was closer to Fly.io, and... became whatever the heck they are now, which is very different from where they started.

Brilliant analogy. I find myself increasingly supporting small teams or indie devs. Why? Because it serves me well. Some things are way too complex for small teams to execute (or so I believe), so I will continue to rely on corps to supply me phones, computers, cars and such. But I loathe it.

> Generally speaking (I'm not a fly.io customer) at this point that phrase WORRIES me as a customer of any service.

Any time I read an announcement like this I refresh my knowledge of competitors and make a mental note that it might be time to switch soon.

If you're an investor that's a valid concern. But as a user? I've been happy to have VC funding subsidize my food via Hello Fresh etc. whenever I'm inclined.

> If you're an investor that's a valid concern. But as a user? I've been happy to have VC finding subsidize my food via Hello Fresh etc. whenever I'm inclined.

It's not the same though because you're the end consumer in that scenario and there's no downside to the business disappearing tomorrow.

Instead, imagine if you built a restaurant serving food you get from Hello Fresh. How do you price your meals to ensure you're covering the true cost of you inputs? Can you compete with the guy down the street that isn't smart enough to realize part of their supply chain is being subsidized in an unsustainable way? Probably not.

The whole setup simply makes for bad economics IMO. I'm glad people in tech are finally catching on that VC money is the equivalent of an unsustainable, hidden subsidy that's difficult (or impossible) to calculate.

> imagine if you built a restaurant serving food you get from Hello Fresh

Seems like a flawed business strategy. Ex: I currently use AWS, Linode, and Vultr for different regions and services for a single app. Avoiding vendor lock-in isn't trivial but is definitely something you can design for.

For one off transactions I am happy to ride the VC train.

For anything I want to trust or rely on, or it is a nice n trivial task to switch I start to worry.

Probably a couple more years of good service until they get acquired. They're leaps and bounds better than the container services on AWS and Azure, solidly better than the GCP one. Seems like they could sell to get their exits before too long. Although I would be very happy if they had the pain tolerance to continue as their own company.

> Probably a couple more years of good service until they get acquired.

(not privy to inside information) As a customer that would be a catastrophic outcome. Reckon Fly.io could avoid the temptation better than most given the founding team has already had one exit (mongohq/compose.io) and might not feel the urge to sell out again.

flyctl getting rolled into aws cli (or boto3 shudder) would definitely hurt

As an employee that would be a catastrophic outcome.

> Reckon Fly.io could avoid the temptation better than most given the founding team has already had one exit (mongohq/compose.io) and might not feel the urge to sell out again.

"Yes John, I used to think that too...but you see, if we sell then we unlock more opportunities that will be quite...nourishing...for the business."

In other words, it's really easy to avoid temptation when it's not staring you in the face.

I’m convinced that Cloudflare will buy them for their future container offering.

> Probably a couple more years of good service until they get acquired.

Solid prediction. It is more likely than unlikely that this will be the outcome. Once you raise VC funds the exit clock starts ticking.

Then that clock started ticking years ago, so factor that in to your decision to do business with us --- the hour approaches, and quicker than you once thought.

That's interesting.

When I see such a message from a service where I'm a customer, it removes worry.

- It validates the product.

- It tells me that they're more likely to succeed than their competitors.

- I'm confident they won't go away anytime soon.

- I expect them to improve their product faster.

Gotta say I'm a little surprised, VC deciding to give money to me doesn't indicate any of that.

To me that whole list is determined by actually turning a profit based on your operations, not some VC.

> - I'm confident they won't go away anytime soon.

> - I expect them to improve their product faster.

These are... very much not guaranteed in my experience. For a lot of these products, they may as well go away when they switch to a model that is 10x more expensive unless you gut features 3-4 years down the road, and it's not clear the improvements they make are to the benefit of existing customers vs chasing new ones.

Yeah, my FOSS web-app that used a free plan was shutdown by Heroku a week ago. Never again.

I feel you! Just had to redeploy mine on another free hosting service.

In the same boat.

I want to see a clear sensible path to sustainable profitability for my core software vendors and I want to see some competition, not too much not too less, just enough.

Unfortunately, very very few companies fall in that narrow category

I agree, here comes the feature creep. Decisions are made on "What do I have to do to keep my investors happy" not what's best for the product.

We've been VC funded for many years, so I guess everything we've been doing is creep!

"We bent over. We know it's a bold move. We'll see how it plays out. And you, my dear boys and girls, will be along for the ride"

https://imgflip.com/i/7qwwn2

Raising money means your first priority now is to please investors, not customers.

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