872 karma · joined August 31, 2010
@rushabh_mehta
You are right, India is a small market right now, but if they can build a low-cost model armed with a global supply chain, they can compete with Amazon in other markets too.
1. Greater buy-in: Since the amount is more, users will also invest more time in setting up the product.
2. More opportunity to talk with customers: Customers on an annual plan will more typically want to talk with you over chat / email. This also increases the engagement and the relationship.
In India there is a job site called naukri.com that has horrible user experience, but is still the number one job site. But it works and does the bare minimum without much issues. It would be tough for anyone to crack that market without non-trivial capital.
> They could just do useful work like the rest of us, which isn't quite as romantic, but is doing the world as a whole better than another failing "product"
seems like "bullshit"
In spite of the flak you get from the HN crowd (the reason I am guessing, might be that you make it deceptively simple to hit $390,000 with 99% retention rate) it is always very refreshing to see your blog posts and the quality of your work is very inspiring. Thanks!
This is an interesting way of attacking the problem. Some thoughts:
1. Community will be attracted / restricted by the platform.
2. There is too much fatigue out there, as there are so many such "ideas" competing for mind-space.
3. SAAS based products for small businesses, freelancers has become a kind of a cottage industry with limited scalability. I am doubtful how much revenue this can generate.
The wages for construction workers will go up and the situation should correct itself automatically. Unfortunately, it will take some time for people to adjust their cultures so that construction workers are valued more socially - like people who write term sheets.
Turn off foreign fonts (?) maybe 0.001% of web users do that.
Will be happy to hear your views though (will send you a separate mail on this).
Without high fidelity feedback, a remote worker may be totally mislead about certain issues, including his or her own performance. Hence the onus is always on the remote worker to stay in deep contact with her or his peers. And companies that allow remote working should also make this explicit.
Will be interesting to read how 37signals works around these issues.
The other way, I have heard that works is hiring sales people. But for that you need to raise at least some amount. And price your product a bit higher too.
I think the HN crowd has lost its objectivity in evaluating 37signals and its become something like an Apple.
One-time forever pricing is a very innovative concept for a web based SAAS application. I bet we will start seeing more of this soon.
Have been developing ERPNext (https://erpnext.com) on similar lines. Its no where near OpenERP but would love to get some critical comments.
Beautifully explained Elizabeth Jennings in Delay:
The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how
Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.On a slightly different note, there are SAAS products like SalesForce, Quickbooks and the lot that are going to get the market by the brute force of their marketing budget. On the other extreme are people like you and patio11 and 37signals who take the effort to nurture an audience and generally pro-bootstrap. I think both strategies should work if executed well.