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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Key details from the middle of the article:

> Nick Martin cited higher borrowing costs as a main reason that Joe Coffee has reduced the number of software products it buys. The company now has roughly six software subscriptions, down from 12 to 15, accounting for 3% to 5% of operating expenses, down from around 8%, he said.

> Decisions on what to get rid of are based on whether a product is a “nice to have” or is essential to business operations. “Can we get away with just doing this in a spreadsheet?” he said.

12–15 is a lot of software subscriptions. I think you'll expect to see more consolidation of software products, if they're all so specific to the restaurant space. Especially with customers just wanting better integration and less complexity.

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> “Can we get away with just doing this in a spreadsheet?” he said.

Realistically you can do pretty much everything a startup or small business needs in a spreadsheet. Buying specialized software at that scale is a nice to have.

I read this as "vitamins vs painkiller" analogy. People forget to take their vitamins all the time, and if it's expensive vs the perceived (sometimes vague) ROI, then it's going to be the first to be cut. Versus... people do NOT forget to take their painkillers and nobody is looking too hard at how much ibuprofen costs (beyond comparing costs... they're gonna buy it regardless).

Let's also keep in mind that vitamins as supplement pills are mostly useless, we all mostly know this, yet we all mostly buy them anyway. Maybe this idea is already wrapped up in your "perceived ROI" comment...

Agree. I buy it all the time. And its mostly assuaging my psyche that "Hey, I am doing something to take care of my health."

Buying specialized software and buying latte. To me this seems part of same trend: You deserve it, You are worth it, Why not?

This is kinda opposite of old thrifty lifestyle: starting up early, making own coffee, doing speadsheets and all.

> You deserve it

It is just latte. Also you do not need to start early just to make <whatever> coffee.

Well popular excuse we have when stopping to get coffee at a shop/drivethru is that we are running late. Just implying no time to make coffee/breakfast at home.

> It is just latte.

Maybe you deserve Ferrari. However for lot of us, "deserve" is used for innumerable trivial/unnecessary things in life.

Technically true, but spreadsheets are also very easy to accidentally mess up.

Yesterday I discovered my personal finances spreadsheet was giving me a total that was wrong by about 10% because I'd forgotten to update which fields it was summing over. Nothing relied on this sum so no harm done this time, but oh boy do I have slightly[0] more sympathy for the news stories where billionaires accidentally loose track of one hundred million.

Get proper accountancy software if it's important; a spreadsheet will lead to tears.

[0] but only when they're being asked about some asset by a journalist or on twitter etc. and not when they make this mistake on taxes, because they should be getting professional help with taxes well before becoming a billionaire.

> Get proper accountancy software if it's important; a spreadsheet will lead to tears.

The irony being that once you reach a certain scale, the accountant you hire will be using... a spreadsheet.

True. I guess question here would be : Should a reasonably priced one time license cover this requirement for accounting software or a perennial subscription is only way to go

Yeah, and subscribing to SaaS vendors is a fine way to run yoiur business until they, or the cloud they run on, goes down.

HR, payroll, time tracking, POS, online ordering, review alerting, online advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, integration services, financial reporting, website, email, rewards management.

And that's for a business that mostly operates offline. It's really easy for these things add up quickly and without you realizing it.

This is why I always object when someone points out that $50/user/mo is a tiny percentage compared to what you're paying for the employee. It's not $50/user/mo, it's typically ($50 * 10-20)/user/mo.

> “Can we get away with just doing this in a spreadsheet?” he said

I felt a great disturbance in the incubator, as if millions of SaaS suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

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