Tell HN: Software people are quite interesting

7 points by SandraBucky 1 year ago | 6 comments

Before current company I worked for xxx company for like 1.5 months and their revenue was 25K usd per month.

Founder was very much satisfied with their product that they do absolutely nothing to improve their product.

They had just one developer working on the product, one to maintain their wordpress website, one tester, two sales/support guys.

It is his golden goose. He gets like 15-18k profits every month which he spends on either buying farm land and/or depositing in FD’s.

He built that software himself 14 years ago, probably the lead developer before his team abandoned him.

He claims to be highly technical with sales people requiring coding expertise to join their team.

He got one trusted lieutenant who joined him 9 years ago from a WITCH company. Whatever founder says his lieutenant agrees.

They were operating out of a 3BHK apartment in the 4th floor of a quiet residential neighbourhood.

Complementary lunch was part of our perks. Every 3-4 years, founder takes his employees on an international trip - Thailand which is 3 hours flight.

Their competition was innovating ahead with modern features and good looking UI yet this guy, the founder showed little-to-no interest in modernising their product.

They are still waiting and reminding their customers to pay up, I honestly don’t know why they still keep paying but they do and the founder is content in how him and his software is doing.

For him, growth means the compounding effect of money in his bank account.

mtmail 1 year ago |

Low stress company, good profit, (I assume) loyal customers, founder works (much?) less than 40h/week and can quit anytime. Sounds like a good life for the founder. I admire that. Like the book "Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing"

philomath_mn 1 year ago |

He is paying for 5 employees and an office with 7k-10k a month? 25k / month revenue seems pretty low for that overhead.

cranberryturkey 1 year ago |

sounds like any of the companies my friend has worked for....they don't innovate at all and their using 20 year old tech with a terrible terrible UX.

taylodl 1 year ago | |

We've known for at least 30 years that there's money to be made in the long tail. Once you've cornered a niche market you're pretty well set. Most of the market participants are already using your product, people are resistant to change, so there's very little juice to squeeze for a competitor to try and encroach on your market share. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't study these scenarios in business school.

cranberryturkey 1 year ago | | |

Maybe. I didn’t learn shit as a business major.

solardev 1 year ago |

I work for a tiny company of like a dozen people. It's my favorite job ever. No stress or bullshit, good coworkers and customers. The product doesn't change as fast as in bigger companies, but that's ok. We try to keep it small and simple.

Compared to my last job working at a Fortune 500, I much prefer this. The last one had multiple meetings a week where nothing got accomplished, too many layers of middle management who micromanaged everything, high turnover, etc.

Smaller is better IMO. If you can sustain it and make a living, no need to seek growth and become a bureaucracy.