The cloud shooting itself on the foot: dispatch.io/.cc and do.com

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Oct 26, 2013 at 09:41 PM

Dr Andus wrote:
>>I would be more likely to trust a service that is a labour of love and
>>run by two guys from their garage, than a hip start-up with huge VC
>>support from the Valley…
[...]
>>But then I am not a business buyer, so the cloud services I tend to use
>>for my professional needs (the likes of Workflowy and Gingko) are
>>probably less attractive for large corporations to acquire (and kill
>>off), and they are more likely to survive on subscriptions from
>>enthusiasts (probably many of them academics and their students).
[...]
>And I get a warm feeling from supporting such small businesses for some
>reason, which I don’t get from supporting a venture capital fund…

My impression is that both Workflowy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1870473 and Gingko https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302825 are Y Combinator funded… see Paul’s post for more on YC’s logic.

Let’s not hold any illusions here: tools like Workflowy and Gingko are not garage operations; not when they start serving tens of thousands of users who rely on these tools regularly and have very limited patience. You need serious money to support the server power and software debugging and maintenance over a reasonable period.

The ‘two guys’ are just the tip of the iceberg; there’s surely a lot of outsourcing involved, as well as ‘unsung heroes’ in the backstage. Check out Hojoki’s team—which appears to be self-contained—to get an idea of what is needed http://hojoki.com/hojoki-huwhat/

The benefits of developing applications for the web are soon outweighed by its complexities as things start getting serious. Think scaling, latency and browser compatibility issues, not to mention integration challenges as you try to cross-market your product with the Dropboxes, Evernotes and Googles that your prospective clientele is already dependent on.