Building an app does not make you a startup | Hacker News Reader

Building an app does not make you a startup

techfounder.net

51 pointspytrin26 comments

I like how the article re-defines "startups" so that they can then claim that most small businesses aren't one unless they do X, Y, and Z.

Last time I checked any new business was a "startup" since they were, you know, just starting up...

You are correct of course, I'm talking about the popular terming of startup as a funded business trying to become huge. I make this distinction at the beginning of the article.

Title should be "Building and app does not make you a VC BACKED startup" Also I fail to see why in that first half of the article you are saying people that have done their small little app or company aren't entitled to the same title as someone who was able to get a hundred thousand dollars from a man to trade his ownership for money. Then you go on to say how you have made a startup, and guess what, that startup is selling you bits of code.

If it's really about keeping people from reinventing the wheel, then give the wheel designs to everyone for free. If it's about selling code snippets to companies to turn a profit, best of luck to you.

PS: At the end of the reading, I didn't really get exactly why a small app team isn't a startup because they don't have the money.

I can reverse the same advice at you - just give your app away for free. What? you want to charge for it?

We try to create an incentive for people to share code - we publish both free and commercial code components, and we leave the licensing decisions to the authors. Who are you to say everyone must give their code away for free? their work has no value if it's not free? I'm a big fan of free open-source (cause really, who doesn't like to get stuff for free), but you shouldn't deride people who decide to make a business out of it.

In fact, I would argue that the code has more value from the application, since it can be used by others to create their own businesses. So why should it always be given away for free?

Many successful commercial open-source companies are the forefront of the open-source ecosystem (redhat, MySQL, Magento). They support it as much as free open-source does, and you need both for good balance.

Oh lets keep this straight, I don't begrudge you for making money and my good luck wish was not sarcastic at all. Nor am I deriding you for trying to sell a service. Just saying if you want to make money that's cool, just don't sell it like you are doing someone a personal favor when you aren't.

Don't make me out as one of the radical open sourcerors either. Many of the absolute best pieces of software are proprietary.

Like hacker/cracker, or open-source/free-software, or any of a myriad of other classic message board topics, "startup/small-biz" is a pointless rathole argument. It's easily avoidable by reading articles with an open mind and trying to grasp what the author means. In this case, the author's take on "startup" versus "small business" is fairly anodyne: he's not disparaging small app shops, and in fact is leveling a popular critique of VC startups.

The bigger issue with this post is the extremely clumsy segue from talking about the mobile software market to talking about his own business. There's nothing wrong with promoting your business in a blog post --- why else write one? --- but the transition here sure was jarring.

why else write one? -- To provide helpful informative information and/or a neatly compiled opinion that has hopefully been well thought out, going into detail as to why things are or why the author thinks this. Even to rant about things.

Promoting a business doesn't really belong in an article that starts out philosophical. (hence the jarring sensation.)

Parent: "There's nothing wrong with promoting your business in a blog post --- why else write one?"

You: "why else write one? -- To provide helpful informative information"

And to promote yourself of course. Which is good for business. Even if that is not your intention.

While many people prefer to comment anonymously on HN anecdotally I'm not aware of many bloggers that blog that way. (Even Fake Steve Jobs came out of the closet eventually).

There's nothing wrong with promoting yourself, just makes more sense to keep philosophy in a separate blog than your advertising. I was just answering the why else portion.

Edit: Grammar

I wrote the article to discuss two things - first, my personal issue with VCs backed apps that could've been great small businesses instead, and second, to answer the point made by the article I reference at the beginning, which cites long and closed development cycle as the cause to the failure of many mobile apps.

Maybe I didn't make the transition between the two as good as it could've been, I'm not a professional writer. Thanks for the positive feedback though :)

I always assumed the difference between a "startup" and a "small business" was that the small business was trying to make money, whereas a startup might be, but usually was not, interested in profit.

An advertisement that starts by telling me I'm not building a start up...

strange since his company seems targeted at app developers. Although I'm not sure how many people are going to pay for components which have open source equivalents (all the iOS components on the advertisement site I looked at do, except for maybe the PDF kit)

Hah, I agree with the first commenter. Not the best strategy to advertise - dissing the mouths that feed you.

What constitutes a start up or not is obviously very fluid. And this is totally orthogonal to the point of your startup which I think is identifying design patterns in mobile app space and providing that as a service. You should save your punches for when you need them.

The 'apps are not startups' comment seems very flippant. There are many examples of good startups that are apps. But I do agree that the expectations for an average startup whose sole product is an app might not match that of a more traditional startup in terms of capital requirement, man-power, and potential revenue all of which are affected when you go the traditional route and get VC funding.

Good luck with binpress.

I actually wrote a post yesterday about how custom IP / software shouldn't be a requirement for a new startup: http://planscope.io/blog/a-programmers-advice-to-startup-fou...

A lot of people would be surprised how many startups could be created leveraging just email and and maybe Excel, and only graduating to custom software when that becomes too much of a pain in the ass.

> I am convinced that this kind of component-based development is the future of the software industry.

Building software using reusable components is good. However, there is a real danger that this approach discourages people from blindly throwing in components with no real idea of how they work. I have had the misfortune of having to rescue companies from poorly written iOS apps from iOS 'engineers' with no real idea of how to actually code who threw together a bunch of libraries like iCarousel.

Sites like Binpress (not to single them out here: there are several others trying basically the same thing) don't encourage good development. They encourage developers without the skills to implement features to pay money for a quick fix.

The cars analogy used here is an interesting one. Sure, some car manufacturers don't make their own engines - but they do spend a lot of time and effort to tune those engines to suit their needs. A company like Binpress doesn't encourage that: something like GitHub, on the other hand, does.

You still need capable developers to build a good product. The goal is to reduce the time they spend on solved problems.

...I'm not denying that - I'm wondering why, for example, an iOS developer might obtain iCarousel from Binpress rather than GitHub.

There's no reason not to use Github, we are not competitors - in fact, Github sponsored us in several events we ran. We are not a social coding / repo service like Github, but we perform a different function - we curate components and provide a platform to gain attention. In addition we provide the ability to charge for licensing, creating another incentive for sharing code and for maintaining it over the long run - basically run it like a business.

Consider that Github has almost 3.5M repos. It's not easy finding what you need and also evaluating the quality. We try to reduce that friction for best in class components.

I also take issue with the definition of a startup. For instance, in Missouri it costs $50 to set up an LLC. I tend to separate my ventures into separate companies. The goal of each one is to make a profit. A weekend project or automated/passive income project also counts as a startup, even if it does not have an active team or venture capital - it is still a new business.

Wow, I'm envious! It costs $433 to lodge a company registration with the ASIC in Australia. It's a bit more (mine cost $570) if you use an online service which can lodge electronically and generate all the documents you need for your company to be legal (i.e. forms for consent to act as a director, company constitution, share certificates, etc.)

That is much more expensive. I believe that the $50 fee is for filing online, so in 20 minutes with a credit card you can have confirmation paperwork.

FWIW it's around $130 AUD to lodge in New Zealand. Most Australian companies you do business with will treat you the same, plus: no software patents :)

Of course if you have complicated tax / revenue issues it's probably not worth the hassle.

One thing I think that is missing here is that there is a category of app developers which are implementing NEW technologies (Machine vision, AR etc...) which need tons of funding but doesn't necessarily lead to further projects in the way that a true small business does. If people took the poster's approach, then those will never get funded and that technology will either languish or come from bloatware companies. It is hard to get those up and running because it is so leading edge and is not repackaging a social/mobile/local/aggregation etc... service.

The whole VC world is looking for the billion dollar exit, which is entirely unsustainable and given it's history doesn't produce the requisite amount of major tech breakthroughs.

Why not? Does running a lemonade stand make me startup? What exactly are you considering a startup? Businesses that have taken VC money? Does that mean none of the bootstrapped business are startups?

As I'm sure you know, words have different meaning in different context. If you read the article, you know I make the distinction between a "business starting up" and the popular term "startup" which usually bears additional connotations.

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