Hacker News Reader

Comment by JackFr | Hacker News Reader

> It's a software company!

But it's not actually a software company.

What are they?

Edit: as the saying goes, people don't want a drill, they want a hole. So if Grindr isn't a software company but a matchmaker that happens to write software (or CaaS/PaaS), then I don't know who truly is a software company. Microsoft is a productivity company, Amazon is a retailer & B2B services company, Google is an advertiser, and so on.

CaaS

PaaS

Are Craigslist or Ebay software companies? They obviously need software to run, but like Google who are mainly in the ad business, these people are in the matchmaking/social business not software business --unless they were to sell their software to other parties who were user/client-facing.

There’s not a whole lot of matching going on. Grindr just shows a grid of X closest people.

I would say that is software since you need GPS and a map application for that. And a chat.

I think of it like this: would the business exist without the software they wrote in house to facilitate the business? If the business ceases to exist without the software: it's a software company.

If that's the criteria, can you name any company that's not a software company in 2023?

The local steel mill got hit with ransomware a few months ago. The Windows virus didn't touch the furnace controls, cranes, sand dispensers, or forklifts, but it shut down their custom software that lets them receive purchasing requests, queue work orders to the foreman, and eventually ship to and bill customers, and they were shut down for weeks.

Is a steel mill a software company?

I suppose the local Amish bakery/furniture store might continue to accept cash if their borrowed battery-powered POS terminal went offline, but every other business I can think of from Boeing to Wal-Mart relies on software to facilitate the business. And at various levels of scale, they all grow from purely running on an Office license to some custom spreadsheet logic to an in-house database server.

I understood it as the company has to write the software in-house. The steel mill bought the software, so not a software company by that definition.

The steel mill wrote the software, they've got a couple guys writing C# for an ASP.NET app that runs their custom CRM and pushes orders, CAD files around, keeping the workload consistent so that you don't end up with a bunch of parts in a row that all need the largest gantry crane at the same time, ensuring that patterns cut in-house are ready on time, making sure that the shop knows what color paint goes on each part, and so on. And that's not even getting to the custom automation software that runs on their PLCs and so on.

Sure, in that specific example they only have about 5 out of a couple hundred employees who can write C#, and maybe 10 who can program PLCs, plus some contractors like myself. But your definition of "software company" was effectively "dependent on custom software to operate", and that's been true of every single one of hundreds of automotive/furniture/aerospace/heavy industrial manufacturing plants that I've been in throughout the past 10 years.

> The steel mill wrote the software, they've got a couple guys writing C# for an ASP.NET app that runs their custom CRM and pushes orders, CAD files around, keeping the workload consistent so that you don't end up with a bunch of parts in a row that all need the largest gantry crane at the same time, ensuring that patterns cut in-house are ready on time, making sure that the shop knows what color paint goes on each part, and so on. And that's not even getting to the custom automation software that runs on their PLCs and so on.

Then yes, they're at least partially a software company. (I personally tend to think it's a spectrum, with this steel company at the bottom and ex. Collabera at the top.)

They're selling a service --that service runs on software. That software is their "secret sauce" --but like a capable CEO, the company is not in the business of a great CEO or great software, it's in the business of selling their services that are facilitated by their software --but that software could be internally developed or it could be a white-label software.. kind of like what we see in the malware biz.

I do like that definition, but there's also the question of what kind of business would it be? There are companies that have to write their own software, because there isn't commercially available solution that will allow them to scale. Companies like energy trading companies, banks, hedge funds, ISPs and so on. They might buy some solutions, but build others.

eBay also doesn't magically become an auction house, just because they decide to buy a platform, rather than develop one. Amazon (the webshop) isn't a software company... but they write a ton of software.

I think that Grindr is pretty solidly a software company.

Unlike most other dating apps (Tinder/OKCupid/Match/Bumble/etc.) there is no actual “matching” mechanism. You are just displayed a grid ordered by distance of the X closest people to you, which requires basically a chatbox and an app that can interact with location services.

> are craigslist or eBay software companies

Yes, obviously. What other market would they possibly be into, the only thing those companies do is make software

The only thing grindr does is make software. The "matchmaking service" is how people use that software. They don't have banks of matchmakers saying "on these boys would look cute together, let's introduce them."

A matchmaking service.

alright but stay with me here... what do they use to matchmake?

I think the distinction the original person was trying to make is that to be a software company you need to sell the software someone would use to offer such a service instead of offering the service yourself. They would stipulate that a tech company is specifically a company that sells technology to others, not any company that uses technology. Otherwise, all companies are tech companies.

You can not buy the software that Grindr uses to do matchmaking; you can only buy their matchmaking service.

Think about it like this:

Imagine a dastardly villain called up the CEO of Grindr and said, "I have a missible pointed at your datacenter. It's going to destroy either your server that has all of your source code, or the server that has all of your user data. Which one do you want to live?"

The CEO would nuke the code without a moment's hesitation. Almost all of the value of the company is in the service it provides and the data is has to enable that. The software is just a means to an end. They'd rewrite the app and move on with their lives.

Now compare that to, say, Ableton. While Ableton has user information for registration and stuff and would certainly be heartbroken to lose it, they would survive the loss. But their software is the company.

But the thing is the software is largely written. Presumably they'll be updates, but it would be surprising (and probably a bad idea) for them do a massive software projects. It's also unlikely that they are going to grow their top line significantly at this point, so business-as-usual and keep a close eye on costs.

And yeah, not a software company.

It's a software tech company. They make the Grindr app. Nothing else.

No, they are a matchmaking connections-as-a-service company that happens to do it through an app.

I think I agree, depending on the value they place on the app and their willingness to turn the app into something completely different if the market requires it.

...and Adobe is an artist tool company that just never stocks any paints or canvases.

On the most important level,...yes.

...But also, Adobe invests a LOT more in developing proprietary, highly customized and specialized, highly sophisticated software in-house and from scratch. The Grindr app seems much closer to the "built with generic open source lego blocks" side of the spectrum, no? Maybe it is not so clear-cut and drastic, as they probably also have a lot of custom tech - e.g. matchmaking / trust&safety algos? - and Adobe IS using lots of OSS building blocks as well, I expect. But still, I do think there's a difference.

But going back to the first part - I appreciate your implicit point, but most any company is best served by thinking about itself first and foremost as an [its function] company. So yes, Adobe IS an artist tool company more so than / before it is a "tech company".

If the companies that dominated the artist tool market before computers had had the good sense to think of themselves in this flexible, adaptable, big-picture way (instead of as paint-chemtech companies or whatevs) there's every chance one or more of them would have the $$$ that has instead gone to Adobe. They already had the customer & vendor relationships, the brand awareness, etc - i.e., the hard parts.

If you are a poker player, it's likely that it currently makes sense for you to play NLHE almost exclusively. That doesn't mean that it's correct or in your best interest for you to think of yourself as a NLHE player rather than a poker player.

> If the companies that dominated the artist tool market before computers had had the good sense to think of themselves in this flexible, adaptable, big-picture way (instead of as paint-chemtech companies or whatevs)

Essentially, the Polaroid company. Their biggest income was film, so they saw themselves as a film company. When digital photography came along, they did some research in the area, but largely decided, "We're a film company, why would we sell this thing for lower profit margins?"

They are selling software to users through monthly subscriptions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com