cx42net

Yeah! Me too! Been an avid reader of this newsletter for quite some years now!

Thanks @duck !

There are two (deep) thoughts about this article.

First, about using the "Lost password", saying “huh, I never thought about why” is an easy way out with not much of a research from the author (sorry). One of the main reason people do that is because websites are enforcing dumb rules for a password that user tend to repeat on every websites (Your password must be 16 chars long, with lower and upper case, numbers and special characters. No more than 2 identical characters in a row ... yes ... I'm looking at you Twilio.com). Of course in that scenario I'll hit my keyboard in a random way and never login using my password.

But this article leads to the alternative; login via email. Some HNers here have mentioned having implemented that on their website, either by sending a one-time login link, or a verification code by email. We did that too for ImprovMX.com initially, and it has a lot of advantages (no password, no password-lost flow, no security measures for storing the password, etc). But it turns out it also have quite a few downside that we haven't thought about:

1. Emails get lost. We had quite a few support request because users couldn't connect to our service because the login email never arrived. This is a major issue, mainly when user wanted to upgrade but couldn't because of that. If you decide to implement this, you must use a really good email provider (Postmark is really good. Mailgun, not so much) 2. Emails are async. When your user goes to your website, they want to connect now. Waiting for an email can take quite some time and they might loose focus 3. Security "measures" will tell you to not indicate if the email you entered is valid or not, to avoid listing your users (... I won't go in that); If you implement login by email, it means your user will enter their supposed email, you'll tell them something like "If your email is registered on our website, you'll receive a one time login link", wait what feels like an eternity to get the login email in their inbox, and at some point wonder if the email they entered was the right one. Will try another, wait, rince and repeat.

So yeah, relying on email move all the security issues and added workflow back to a trusted service (login/lost password/2FA/OTP/etc to services like Gmail) but it will definitely add friction too.

In the end, it depends on what service you offer.

You have a massive acquire opportunity here ...

I'll take an original approach, and I hope you'll like it.

First, to be fully transparent, I'm going to talk about my service, https://getfernand.com (A customer support service focused on being fast and stress-free). I prefer to share that first rather than lying to you about sneaky plugging my service.

Now, that being said, let's talk about ... Fernand. As you might have guessed, it's not a ground-breaking service. There are already hundreds of competitors out there doing the. Exact. Same. Thing.

So why did we go and build another one. To be honest? It's because of the market. It is:

1. Validated. 2. Big. 3. Complex 4. The big ones aren't getting praise right now.

That's why we decided to go that road. Granted, it requires a crazy amount of work, and the to-do pile doubles every time we remove an item, but still, it's a market so broad that you can't be stuck on the ideas.

But why does it relate to your question? Easy. Nowadays, it's nearly impossible to start something NEW, something that no one else is doing. Seriously, if you go and pitch a VC firm about your new project that you are alone on the market doing ("and that's why we can't evaluate the market for"), they'll think you haven't done your homework correctly. That's all. (and they'll be right.)

So it leaves you with doing something that already exists. Now, for this, you have a few options:

1. Going on a market where there are not many competitors. This can be interesting because you can easily become a leader on this market. But there might not be many competitors for a reason. Pouring your heart and soul onto something that will have a slow growth (if any) to a very limited market is ... well ..., it depends on if it's your heart that is driving. 2. Going against a proven market. This will be harder. Way harder. But you'll have a better chance of growing and getting at least a small fraction of the market. If you can get 0.5% of a billion $ market, it is still 5M$!

That was kind of the reflection we had for Fernand. I manage other services (ImprovMX.com - email forwarding, and PDFShift.io - HTML to PDF conversion API ... another shameless plug ... damn!), and they are both very critical. One hour of downtime feels like an eternity. So, we sat down with my partner and discussed a service that wouldn't be that critical. We explored different possibilities and decided to land on a Customer support service.

Of course, if you go against a market by providing the exact same product as everyone else, it will be even harder, if not impossible, to stand out. For us, we decided to focus solely on small (1-10) SaaS services with a sensitivity to stress and by offering a clutter-free and very fast product (wow, so much keywords).

To go back to my initial list of 4 points, they were the driving decisions on why to go against the Customer support market:

1. Validated: Because we know that the market is proven. It won't crash tomorrow, and it is only expected to grow over time. Not like NFTs :D 2. Big: So we can hope that if we only get a tiny drop of that market, it will be enough to sustain our lives. We aren't looking to become millionaires, just to be paid building stuff. 3. Complex, so the entry barrier is higher. A big market that you can enter by building something in two days means having a ton of newcomers frequently, which will include, at some point, people reaching out to you asking if you want to acquire them. If the entry-level is high, you'll have more chance to establish yourself for the long run (and in the Customer Support tool, it is; you need an inbox, a knowledge base, and a chat system, AT LEAST). 4. That one's a bonus. Intercom is frequently criticized because of its pricing. So, on top of our USP(s), we also decided that pricing should be simple and straightforward. (we were past users of Intercom, and it is so irritating to have a ton of options with the "upgrade to have this feature" button almost everywhere!). For GetFernand.com, you have all the features for everyone, and only those who can respond pay for their seat, that's all.

Sorry I got a little carried away, but =>

TDLR:

For me, if you want to build a project that will bring beer money (I love beer!), I'd focus on going against big markets and try to make a small dent in them. Find a unique selling point and try to swim between the giant, getting the crumbs and growing from there. You can enter an easy market, but know the competition at the low end (newcomers) will be harder.

Of course this is my point of view.

<3

Social networks definitely created that bubble where what you experience is different than your neighbor. What seems to be trendy is just for you and your related peers, but not for everyone (which can further increase extremist thinking).

The difference with the old web is (was) that it consisted mostly of blogs - public pages - available to everyone, in a way that if a piece became trendy, it would be for a broader set of people.

I miss that.

When Google Chrome came out, what made it stand out for me was their impressive developer console.

This lead developers to switch from IE/Firefox where you had to install a plugin for developers, into using Google Chrome that had a native and more advanced tool for debugging.

*For me this is the key*.

If you provide a browser that greatly improve the developer's experience, they (the developers) will move to use it, making it the best compatible browser to use, which will then make the rest of the crowd to use it because the overall experience is better there.

I just hope the team at Firefox will realize this before Google ...

I absolutely agree with you. Firefox must stay.

But.

I've been using both Firefox and Brave as my browsers, and Firefox is eating my memory way more than Brave (I have around 60+ tabs open at Brave, and just a few at Firefox). (I'm on Linux Fedora 36 with the latest versions available in the repository).

This is why I'm not using it much, but it saddens me.

Funny, this post appears now, we should receive the sim card for our daughter today. And before that, we had a long discussion with my wife, and here's our decision, rules, and approach. Our daughter has still no idea she will get one. She will be 12 in 2+ months.

The first thing we laid down was the various possibilities :

- no phone yet - a very basic phone (no smartphone) - a smartphone, but with no internet (except Wifi) - smartphone with internet (4G/5G/etc)

We quickly decided that a smartphone with internet was out of the picture, but we also decided it was time to have a phone.

The main reason for that was regarding the organization. Last year, she had to use her friend's phone to ask us what she could do based on calendar changes, like a sick teacher. When I was her age, I used a phone booth to do the same, but they all have been removed today. That mean she needed to rely upon others to contact us (or ask the school). This gave an argument to have a phone.

The second reason was that she had a great year last year ("6ieme", in France), great results and she is serious, honest and reliable. We can trust her with a phone.

So we had to choose between a basic phone and a smartphone with only wifi. We had an old smartphone that was still working fine, and she likes to do video montages with our tablet, so we thought going the smartphone road was a good option. Plus, I gotta admit, if I'm being honest, a bit of peer pressure. (Many people we discussed it with told us it was a low blow to give her a basic phone where all her friends would have a smartphone. It's not about the material for me, but mostly about not being on specific apps (Telegram/Signal, etc.)).

But having a phone is just the beginning. There will be rules that come along, and a lot of them.

First, we have a rule at the house for all our kids; they can not watch "screen" anytime they want. We are broad with the term screen as it means what it means : any screen: TV, Computer, Tablet, and now phone. They can only have screen time at 11:30 and 18:30. The idea is to have around 2 hours per screen - at most - per day. Of course, this varies based on when we eat (we tend to eat later on Saturday evening, for instance), and we allow for more screen time on Sunday and the occasional Movie night.

So it will be the same for her phone.

But also, phones will be absolutely prohibited when at the table and in her bedroom. That was the second argument for the Wi-Fi; she will have to use it in the common space, where we can see a bit over the shoulder.

Installing apps will be reviewed by us; some are already on the no-list, like Snapchat.

She could definitely install apps without asking us, or waking up at 3 a.m. to search her phone downstair. But as I've said, she is honest, and I'm confident that's not something she will do.

Finally, and this might be the most important part. While handling the phone to her, there will be a talk. A long talk. We'll explain to her the risk, the pressure, the temptations, and all we can think of to help her understand this is not something to be taken lightly, but we will also insist a lot on the fact that we are always here if she has any problem (this applies more broadly of course).

So here's our approach: Clear rules, a well-defined environment that doesn't restrict her much, but with the knowledge that she can always rely on us if anything happens. Bonus tip I learned via a friend this weekend: We'll tell her that if something difficult she can't share with us, there is always her godmother she can talk to, who will take the appropriate action. We are her parent, not her prison guard.

Now, we'll see how this evolves in a few months/years...

We're definitely thinking of anything that could help. It's also common that funded companies appear more serious and long-term oriented, which can help. (It goes along with what is written in the article, as the "successful unicorn raises money" while it might no be the case, but the reality vs what people believe is often different). Since, for us, it wouldn't be because we aren't profitable and desperately need money, having VC money could help, or not ... :D

I so much agree with this article! I always had the same thinking about investment, Mostly the part where you don't control your company (or control it way less).

And I would have kept it the same until we discussed with my co-founder about https://getfernand.com

The reason that makes us consider VC funding would be for the network and the exposure.

It would help us get in touch with other (big) founders with a broad reach and help us grow more. That would be a legitimate reason for us to get a (small) round.

(We are already profitable so we don't need the money for the money. But we need to find a VC firm that is not too manipulative in its investments. That might be the tricker part).

It's also mine ;)

Oh! Thanks for that!

I initially found this via ScienceAlert (https://www.sciencealert.com/ufo-mystery-controversy-swirls-...) and used the title from ScienceAlert simply because the title from "TheConversation.com" was too long for HN.

My initial decision to post this was regarding a previous post on HN made at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36216745. The post from TheConversation starts to analyze the claims (in a general and simplistic approach) on if we should take things seriously or not, and I thought it might interest some of you.

Indeed, posting the original link works directly. I suspect that HN has blacklisted ScienceAlert as a reposting website.

Thanks for your help :) I posted it with the original link and will mention the reasons and details (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36290333)

Hum! The link is from Sciencealert.com. Where did you see it was banned from HN ? Is there any reasons why ?

I agree too. I don't hype the April 1st so forgot what days it was when I submitted it.

Yeah, that was not appropriate to the thread, I agree.

In the meantime, I got an email from Andrew that accepted to proceed with the submission without the Google Analytics and accounting connection.

I don't know if this is related to this thread or if the decision is made on a per-case basis.

Regardless, I think it's important to share it here that Andrew was helpful here and it's not all black and white.

I don't know what are their roadmap here. Maybe they are facing a massive growth and can't follow on their features.

I sure hope this isn't intentional and that they are only falling behind but who knows.

I love to play devil's advocate. Often, you have your head deep in something and you forget to consider the other party, playing devil's advocate helps that.

And you are right, there will be no guarantee that the buyer will respect my user's privacy.

The point I (badly) wanted to make was that more and more services are leaving Google Analytics and move their analytics to a more privacy friendly service. Only accepting Google Analytics causes the service to lose a lot more sellers. Granted, being on Andrew shoes, that requires more work (integrating with all these services).

In reality, what bothered me is that they should have been upfront about it. Having a clear message saying that all the metrics are required, before filling all the details would have saved me a lot of time, and I would have been ok with it.

Yeah, that makes sense. My first assumption was that there would be explanations along how to integrate the notions, like what is a variable, etc. These are the parts I didn't wanted to have in English.

But I've started to work with him, and we went beyond what the early tutorials were asking to make him learn things while being in a given topic. I provided the requirements and explanation so they were in French.

I don't mind the code being in English though, my focus was on having the explanations in French ;)

Nice! I like it! Thank you for the suggestion!

Thank you for your kind help, I appreciate it!

> "an active Twitter presence"

What is your Twitter handle?

I saw about Roblox, yeah! As a matter of fact the kids already played with it (but as a gamer, not a developer). It might be interesting to dive into this indeed! I'll take a closer look, thanks!

UE5 would be awesome but it's too complicated for someone that never did any coding at all.

But if all goes well, that might be something we'll learn!

Nice, thank you for this.

I'm having one issue here is that ELM is not a language I know, so I'll have to learn it along with him in case he get stuck :D

That's really interesting! I like this, thanks for sharing the link!

I'm half agreeing with you. Clearly, he wants to spend some time with me, that's for sure, but he's also passionate about video games (who isn't?) and he truly want to learn.

On my end, I see this as a win-win; I get time to spend with my kids, share my passion and allow him to learn things he likes. If it leads to him not wanting to do this, we can find something else to share.