Ask HN: We're tired and need your support

5 points by daudmalik06 2 years ago | 2 comments

Dear Folks,

It's been a challenging journey, nearly two years of relentless effort, and yet our startup has faced its fair share of setbacks. We've chosen to bootstrap our venture because we believe in proving our concept before asking anyone to invest their hard-earned money into it. However, despite our dedication, progress has been slow, and we've hit roadblocks right from the start.

The journey in our industry is incredibly tough, especially for startups like ours, and as tech founders, the hurdles seem insurmountable at times. The giants in our industry pour vast sums into advertising, amounts that surpass what we've spent building our vision.

We're genuinely frustrated and uncertain about our future, but we remain determined to make it work. The support of this community could be a turning point for us, and we are immensely grateful for any assistance you can offer, be it trying out our product or spreading the word.

For almost two years, we've been diligently working on our product, and while we've managed to attract some free users, the leap to paid users has proved to be elusive. We find ourselves at a crossroads, in need of your support. If our product aligns with your needs, we implore you to consider giving us a chance. We aren't a well-known or affluent company; we are just a small startup striving to make a difference. All we ask is for your trust and a chance to prove ourselves.

Thank you for taking the time to read our story and for considering how you might support us on our journey.

p.s: What is our product: Despite the hardships, we've been dedicated to building a product we wholeheartedly believe in. For nearly two years, we've been developing Vulert, a tool that vigilantly monitors your open-source dependencies for potential vulnerabilities, suggests remedies, and ensures compliance with licensing requirements – all without the need for installation or access to your codebase. Vulert can seamlessly integrate into your CI/CD pipeline, making it a valuable asset for any tech team.

url: vulert[dot]com

Yours sincerely, Dawood

_benj 2 years ago |

I’m so sorry to hear that :-(

I’ve been in the grind of trying to get a startup off the ground and not succeeding.

I’m personally am not in a position to make purchases decisions and that makes me think that that might be one of the challenges you might be facing.

In quite a few of the companies that I’ve been there’s some sort of code scanning in the CI/CD but it’s often not placed there by developers by choice but by policy.

Fear is a powerful emotion that sells and many other companies that might something similar to what you are doing are using it, but giving users poorer quality than what you might.

How about consider targeting VPs and C-suite in your marketing/sales? Is your organization vulnerable? Have you consider the cost of a leak because of a vulnerable dependency? Paying us $$ protects you from having to face $$$$ plus public shame.

Use case studies like that nefarious npm package that was part of a bunch of legitimate packages but nobody knew about (you likely know a lot more about vulnerable packages than me!)

How about hiring sales? having an enterprise pricing structure? Browsing through the OWASP I found codescan, which I think is used by my organization… they have no pricing info in the pricing page (you can guess that it’s expensive), the code I work on passes their scan but I still get quite a few HIGH and MEDIUM warnings when I run npm install.

Tell people how the stuff they are paying $$$ for is still leaving them vulnerable!

I know I haven’t fixed those dependencies vulnerabilities because is nowhere to be found in the backlog and thus I’m not payed for it.

Feel free to throw away everything I said, but I wish y’all the best of luck in business and if you know you are doing something better than others, see what the others are doing and take away their clients to the better thing you have!!

daudmalik06 2 years ago | |

really thanks for kind suggestions, it really means a lot. i will save your comment and will try to test and validate what you suggested.

thanks again mate.