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Comment by Solvency | Hacker News Reader

"You are a company. The system we have demands growth. Even very stable and reliable profits are seen as failure. There must be growth."

But take a software company like McNeel. They make a popular but extremely niche market product called https://www.rhino3d.com. They've been around for decades. They have extremely low turnover. Many developers have worked there since the beginning.

They are used around the globe by architects, product designers, industrial designers, etc.

What are they doing right? Why/how do so many others get it wrong? Are humble software companies like this unicorns? Why?

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Their about page [1] provides a good clue.

> TLM, Inc. dba Robert McNeel & Associates is a closely held employee-owned Washington corporation funded solely from retained earnings.

So they're a private, employee owned company with a strong niche product that doesn't depend on outside money. They took the slow road, something that is antithetical to VCs but perfectly acceptable for bootstrapped founders that want to live comfortably but don't care about striking it rich.

[1] https://www.rhino3d.com/mcneel/about/

McNeel is not a public company. Public companies are driven towards prioritizing revenue and growth much more than private companies because growth is a shared goal of all shareholders. I suppose it could be said that companies with outside PE or VC funding would also prioritize growth, but that would be in the same vein of getting to an exit or IPO rather than just making the stock go up.

idk what their profit structure or founding story is, but the poison pill for every company is investment capital. The second you take VC money you are beholden to someone other than your coworkers and clients. If you can get off the ground and become sustainable on sales alone, you are golden. Stability is possible but the problem is that most VCs demand 10x return, not 1.25x return.

They are employee owned

Which means it’s more syndicalist organized rather than purely for profit

Not perfect but as close as you can get to ideal organizationally

Rhino is an amazing product that I use every day. The developers are active and responsive on their forums and I’ve had feature requests and bug fixes go from forum posts to shipping in a couple weeks. You can also pick up a telephone and immediately talk to a knowledgable tech support person. It’s amazing and I wish more companies operated like McNeel.

Edit: They also do that thing that everyone says is impossible and sell perpetual licenses. Every 18 months or so they offer paid upgrades to the next version and I always buy it because the price is reasonable and they're jam packed with useful new features.

  > Rhinoceros (typically abbreviated Rhino or Rhino3D) is a commercial
  > 3D computer graphics and computer-aided design (CAD) application
  > software that was developed by TLM, Inc, dba Robert McNeel &
  > Associates, an American, privately held, and employee-owned company
  > that was founded in 1978.

So not a public company subject to the fickle stock market's expectations of constant growth...

"The system" is either the stock market or VCs. McNeel is privately owned without VC funding (AFAIK.)

How are people still paying for this when blender exists?

Do you know the difference between CAD and polygonal 3d modellers ?

btw, blender always existed. Like since 1998?

This is a CAD program? Strangely enough this is mentioned absolutely no where on the official website.

Hmm now I am considering buying a license...

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