You Can't Win

https://kylepoyar.substack.com/p/you-cant-win

by enigmatic02 • 5 years ago

94 46 5 years ago

kylepoyar.substack.com

Their huge advantage is the extreme low cost to build the polished mvp. They are based in India. A US or European bootstrap cannot compete on cost.

pedalpete• 5 years ago

If your comment were true, there wouldn't be any successful US or European startups. Clearly, that isn't the case. Even getting an MVP built in western countries isn't that expensive IF you know what you're doing.

Unfortunately, I've seen many people spend outrageous sums and little or nothing for it.

Teach yourself how to code, know what you're getting into, get aligned with the right people.

But I think my biggest gripe with your comment is that it makes an excuse for not getting it done.

tshanmu2• 5 years ago

this x100 - "IF you know what you're doing." when everything works and its areasonable success, it looks so easy - but getting all the different people talking to each other and building a product that a customer would pay to use is quite a challenge regardless of your product cost base (which anyways for the proper proudct market fit is a very small fraction compared to the revenues)

Brian_K_White• 5 years ago

It is an advantage, but merely AN advantage. No different from the various advantages anyone has anywhere.

Just as their huge disadvantage, selectively overlooked in order to weave this tale of woe, was merely A disadvantage, no different from the various disadvantages anyone has anywhere.

This "cannot compete" pity party is pathetic. "They work harder than me and figured out something I didn't. It's so unfair!"

Even just the "on cost" part is invalid. Cost is just one variable of many, and may be offset or leveraged by many others. But even aside from that, just considering cost itself, income is just as context sensitive as cost. If you live somewhere where the developer has to be paid more, the customer is good for more in the same place.

johnvaluk• 5 years ago

If I could switch back to Freshservice circa 2018, I would do it in a heartbeat. Every change they've introduced since then is perplexing.

jsonne• 5 years ago

"Freshworks focuses on being found ‘organically’ (i.e. via free or low-cost channels) rather than with expensive paid marketing and outbound sales efforts."

Proceeds to rent a blimp.

To be clear I have nothing against guerilla marketing tactics but the "oh our customers just love us so much everything is organic and easy" really does a disservice to people reading these articles trying to figure out how to grow their companies. Many companies use paid ads, many companies that utilize SEO pay for links or for agencies to get links, sales isn't a dirty word. It reminds me of the silly serendipity founder legends people tell folks when the mess and figuring it out process would be a lot more educational.

whoisburbansky• 5 years ago

Why would it be either/or? Strong organic growth goes hand in hand with efficient marketing spending, and it sounds like their guerilla marketing efforts dovetailed nicely with how they grow normally. Nothing in the article gave me the impression they were bragging about only needing organic word of mouth growth.

ShamelessC• 5 years ago

Without the right local sales talent, outsourcing the job would have been fairly expensive - cash they wanted to hold on to due to the competitive market they were in.

I agree that the speech reads fairly "LinkedIn", however.

ameliaquining• 5 years ago

Wait, how much does it cost to rent a blimp for a one-off event? Surely not very much, compared to the marketing budget of a typical company this size? Building brand awareness with a stunt like this (which mostly relies on viral publicity) could easily be dramatically cheaper than building it by paying for ads on an ongoing basis.

hermannj314• 5 years ago

According to their S-1, they spent $133 million on Sales and Marketing in 2020. To generate $308 million in revenue. That doesn't feel organic, but maybe it is organic at the margin or something.

Source: I'm not sure if this is the right link, the S1 in the article linked to the author's linkedin account.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001544522/000162828...

Rastonbury• 5 years ago

When looking at comparables of other SaaS companies, in terms S&M to sales they are actually below average in terms of sales efficiency.

I saw their rise and thought they must've been doing something right/better than their competition, but did some research and decided against it. That said I respect Girish, building Freshworks into what it is in such a competitive market.

justicezyx2• 5 years ago

The core thesis of any startup remains the core principle of capitalism: use the capital to serve the customer needs better than competitors. One of the mechanism under this principle is to build product for the ones who really need them. Nowadays most of the glamar is given to so called disruptive startups. Which for all things considered, are net negative to the world. For example, crypto...

nefitty• 5 years ago

Crypto is an industry. Yeah, it's 99% scams and ponzis. If you wiped away that entire industry, would your argument still hold weight?

justicezyx2• 5 years ago

I totally agree crypto 99% is scams and ponzi.

If you wiped away that entire industry, would your argument still hold weight?

There are plenty of industry are created by startups. Like internet search. Social network. etc.

Hasu• 5 years ago

If you wiped away the 99% scams and ponzis, what's left? Bitcoin at $50 and a bunch of coins at fractions of a cent no one cares about?

pm903• 5 years ago

Having worked on b2b software for a while, targeting users rather than buyers really resonated with me. A lot of b2b software is quite simply garbage. None of the amazing UX patterns that we have come to accept as baseline for b2c are present in b2b software (for the most part). User feedback is rarely solicited; if it is, it’s not prioritized by product teams. And the reason is very simple: users don’t matter. Unlike b2c users who can just leave, b2b users are being paid to use the software as a tool to get something done. They often have very little say over what product needs to be purchased. Even if there might be outliers, the industry as a whole doesn’t prioritize users so the market is also pretty small. The decision makers are executives who are weighing a list of (supposed) features, integrations etc. and price.

It’s good to see freshworks use a different approach and succeed with it, I wish them the best.

P.S: I’ve used Zendesk a lot and it ranks among the worst tools I’ve used (a few rungs above JIRA). I hope I get to use Freshworks equivalent at some point.

bberenberg• 5 years ago

The teams at Zendesk and Atlassian also think they’re building for users. I doubt Freshworks is any different other than this being their marketing.

joe-collins• 5 years ago

It's nice that they think that, but whether they believe so or not, I have never heard any user speak well of Zendesk.

naravara• 5 years ago

It’s less about the teams and more about who calls the shots structurally. What’s the balance of power between by engineering, product owners, sales, etc. in setting features and priorities? How are they planning for design and rollout of new features?

It’s not enough for all the individuals in the company to think or want to do things a certain way. Leadership has to be very intentional about making sure decision making and priority setting come out that way on balance.

stymaar• 5 years ago

Atlasian, really?

nine_k2• 5 years ago

I suppose that tools which are painful to use must lower the users' performance.

Why is this not a visible metric for the buyers?

civilized• 5 years ago

Because executives at Generic BigCo don't understand or care about their employees' productivity.

porknubbins• 5 years ago

As someone who has used terrible to ok b2b apps my whole career I think people who are not programmers/designers don’t even think along those lines. “So the employee has to click seven times instead of one? Thats what I pay them for” kind of mentality. The only good news is the worst apps seem to die off over like 5 years.

Elof• 5 years ago

For what it’s worth, I’ve implemented Freshworks and while their customer service is excellent their software is meh. Moved to Zendeak and very happy

dqpb• 5 years ago

A lot of b2b software is quite simply garbage

Netsuite is so terrible it boggles the mind.

doublescoop• 5 years ago

ERP systems like Netsuite may or may not be good, but a huge portion of the bad experiences most users have with them has to do with configuration rather than the system itself.

There's an argument to be made that great systems can't be misconfigured, but the "everything and the kitchen sink" attitudes most of these business back-end systems are built with isn't really conducive to opinionated expertise driving product design.

tshanmu2• 5 years ago

not sure if people realise it - Freshdesk grew out a comment around how bad Zendesk is on HN right here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358398

giantg2• 5 years ago

I can't win. I was born to lose.

dang• 5 years ago

Past related threads:

A comment in Hacker News led Girish Mathrubootham to create Freshworks (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28336815 - Aug 2021 (30 comments)

Freshworks (previously Freshdesk) files for IPO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28335299 - Aug 2021 (1 comment)

How Hacker News motivated me to resign my job and launch my own startup (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4427728 - Aug 2012 (24 comments)

How a simple comment on Hacker News made me quit my job and launch a startup - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2340732 - March 2011 (92 comments)

hactually• 5 years ago

That's a very flattering review of their suite and product. If salesforce is the bar, maybe it's a hit but I found the product broken with problems with roles across the different offerings, SSO issues and just broken parts of the platform.

You Can't Win

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