> Just like Javascript made programming more accessible to a broader audience<p>I think this is entirely cart before horse. What actually happened was the web made programming relevant to a much broader audience and JavaScript is the language you use to program for the web, so everyone learnt that.
Haven't we been hearing about "software that doesn't require any tech skills to build" for 25 years now? It seems like a pipe dream. It's built on some innate belief that someone can create tools that work for <i>every</i> kind of business possible, which is crazy. I can think in the past few years I've worked on health care registration websites, diamond auction websites, oil reserve management software - nothing would have been tied together with any common tool and all required extensive amounts of custom code for their business logic. I think it's time we drop this dream of normal "business analysts" writing all the software in a company.
Everybody in this specific social group of investors continues to list Developer Tools as, effectively, an Evergreen space.<p>What’s baffling to me is that the amount of innovation in Developer Tool businesses (not tools, businesses) is <i>surprisingly</i> small. There are three factors that influence this, IMO:<p>(1) The OSS community has trended towards an insular culture incentivized by OSS popularity where stars and Twitter followers are status signals. In this world, it’s hard for talented engineers to stop seeking “star status” and transition to the business ecosystem where they’re bottom rung of the ladder.<p>(2) The space is extremely sophisticated — with longer R&D cycles — and VCs routinely incentivize suboptimal growth trajectories when they’ve identified apparent winners and miss opportunities with more practically iterative companies. (Expecting growth at all costs in a space where continuous delivery + R&D is the norm.) This blows up some companies early and prematurely kills other promising technologies. I think the 18mo expected cycle time probably needs to be adjusted for these companies, <i>especially</i> early stage.<p>(3) Founders are heavily pressured towards exits. Long R&D cycle time, the pressure cooker of VC growth expectations, and the rarity of high-ownership, customer-oriented developer tool + engineering talent makes early exits extremely attractive for both founding teams and acquirers.<p>How do we fix this? Between Daniel, Elad and a bunch of folks who keep writing this stuff — I think it’s time for a new developer-oriented fund, backed by the people and companies passionate about the space.<p>I’ve been a major sponsor of Vue.js for years. I’d like to do more to help talented developers start businesses in the future, when possible. If anybody thinks something like this is interesting, give me a holler.
> DuckDuckGo is small, but it’s growing 50% year-over-year. As of last week, it is also a search option on every European Android device. If the growth rate were to double, DDG would surpass Google in 6 years.<p>That's what we call a "Big If". And doesn't DDG just rent someone else's index?
> Remote is acceptable, even encouraged.<p>11% of all SE jobs posted on Stackoverflow in the last 4 months or so were Remote:<p><a href="https://skilldime.com/app.php?PieChart2=Remote" rel="nofollow">https://skilldime.com/app.php?PieChart2=Remote</a><p>I like the way the blog post is so well written in a witty style that's both entertaining and interesting to read.
An aside, I love the metaphor rich writing:<p>> Privacy might be the digital spinach<p>> As this chewing gum loses flavor<p>> A startup idea that hits the seed ecosystem like a fashion fad, with a surprising number of founders suddenly all wearing the same ripped jeans<p>> The market has priced in the trade war in atoms, but not in bits.<p>Any suggestions on how to get better at writing like this?
Half the bullet points on here all fall into enterprise SaaS...<p>In my opinion the shift from big game changing ideas like Airbnb, Lyft/ Uber, and Stripe to a dozens enterprise SaaS apps popping up in San Francisco has been one of the biggest reasons why I've felt for the last year that there doesn't feel like there's been a "big next thing" for awhile.<p>I just can't get excited by another dressed up note taking app, and wouldn't be excited to work for one.
> 2. Saying Yes to NoCode<p>> 9. Developer Tools<p>While these two may seem contradictory, I see this as a great trend for developers.<p>Developers of 10 years ago would focus on building common solutions like blogs and landing pages. Now there are slew of NoCode startups that allow non-developers to do it themselves.<p>This frees up developers to focus on more complex problems.<p>The Developer Tool startups of today should be asking - "what are the common tasks that developers are doing today, that will be easy for non-devs in 10 years?"<p>Perhaps my thesis if wrong, but that's what we're hoping to achieve at <a href="https://supabase.io" rel="nofollow">https://supabase.io</a><p>In our case the "complex task" is creating CRUD APIs. Creating these are monotonous and developers could be spending time on much more valuable tasks. We're starting to see this with the rise of amazing tools like GraphQL/PostgREST.<p>Other areas to watch will be the "simplification" of databases. Think "MS Access" for advanced databases like Postgres. Metabase is a good start here, focusing on the reporting aspect of the data. The next steps may be database design and data entry, - Retool seem like they could do well in this area.
"3. The New Meme: Enterprise Search
“Enterprise search” is shaping up to be in 2020 what RPA was in 2019. A startup idea that hits the seed ecosystem like a fashion fad, with a surprising number of founders suddenly all wearing the same ripped jeans. I’ve seen about a dozen teams and companies working on next-generation enterprise search in the past few weeks. They’re all attempting to build the same thing: a search/feed/discovery product that helps you find things amongst Slack, Gmail and Salesforce clouds.<p>I’ve yet to see anyone properly tackle the more rudimentary, “boring” and lucrative approach: an on-prem search appliance, similar to GSE, that indexes internal intranet, wikis as well as email. On-prem software is annoying to build, something many founders shy away from."<p>At my old startup Pinecone, we built something similar called Ask Pinecone. It would index everyone's emails and internal wiki's on premise. Then you could send an email with a question to ask@youcompany.com some Bayesian based modeling would then forward the email to the most appropriate person at the company based on the contents of their inbox and your email.
Re: the first point, Amazon is terrible now. I’m afraid to buy things because of all of the fake reviews. How are you supposed to buy products sight-unseen with fake reviews abound?
Here's one non-abstract idea that you can get for free, even though I might try myself as well:<p>Give Confluence a run for its money.<p>Confluence is so bloated that a clean install takes longer to start than it takes to boot my laptop and log in.<p>Plugin SDK documentation is a mess.<p>As far as I can see it only sells because of the brand and because of network effects.<p>If anyone could manage to create a real wiki (remember, it means quick!) and market it they might have a chance at some nice cash that would otherwise flow to a company that keeps wasting peoples time.<p>End of rant ;-)
> Given free transcription and the drive of remote work to video conferencing, we’re about to witness a Cambrian explosion of cataloged meeting information. What was previously oral knowledge will be automatically documented by machines. We’ll see many opportunities come out of this.<p>Automatic searchable transcripts for video chats. Now that sounds useful!
"I’ve yet to see anyone properly tackle the more rudimentary, “boring” and lucrative approach: an on-prem search appliance, similar to GSE, that indexes internal intranet, wikis as well as email."<p>Is there a reason to believe this is something enterprises actually want? Was GSE too early?
Well, thanks for introducing me to Vayyar at least ;)<p>If I understand their value prop, they provide a single sensor solution that is essentially a black box. And the output is the wide-range 4D point cloud. Power consumption is ultra-low. But the fidelity is still very high. It's up to the partner to design the software that consumes the data. Vayyar just provides the black box.<p>If it works. The total market here seems on order of "replacing cameras" in retail, manufacturing and surveillance!<p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/20/vayyar-nabs-109m-for-its-4d-radar-tech-which-detects-and-tracks-images-while-preserving-privacy/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/20/vayyar-nabs-109m-for-its-4...</a>
> While consumer privacy might be overrated, enterprise ephemerality is underrated.<p>Yep, this is the core assumption underlying Sharesecret - <a href="https://sharesecret.co" rel="nofollow">https://sharesecret.co</a>.
A start-up at the intersection of 'developer tools' and 'NoCode' would be very exciting to me. I'd love to see tools that reflect some of the principles outlined in Bret Victor's blog.<p><a href="http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/" rel="nofollow">http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/</a>
<a href="http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/" rel="nofollow">http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/</a>
We tried building NoCode (used to be hosted at noapp.mobi), I think around January 2017. The project has been abandoned since then, you can find the project at -<p>1. Docs - <a href="https://github.com/veris-pr/v3-docs/wiki" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/veris-pr/v3-docs/wiki</a><p>2. Core - <a href="https://github.com/veris-pr/v3-core" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/veris-pr/v3-core</a><p>3. Backend - <a href="https://github.com/veris-pr/v3-api/tree/develop" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/veris-pr/v3-api/tree/develop</a><p>4. Mobile App - <a href="https://github.com/veris-pr/v3-app/tree/feat-offline" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/veris-pr/v3-app/tree/feat-offline</a><p>5. Mobile App - <a href="https://github.com/veris-pr/v3-client" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/veris-pr/v3-client</a><p>Quick demo (forced under 2 minutes time, we tried to take this to TechCrunch), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfZT75rduPg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfZT75rduPg</a><p>This was a POC project. It was quite suitable for simple business process management based apps. One of our customers has been using a conference room manager built on this platform, for 3 years now.
Does "No Code" just mean having a UI? What I mean is the examples it gave for "No Code" look like regular Saas companies so I don't see what's the difference between something labeled "No code" and a regular software product that you use a UI to do things since the code is abstracted away. The majority of web based products don't require the user to code so "No code" seems like a buzzword more than anything.
When it comes to winner-takes-all (the bread & butter of VC economics,) it strikes me as dissonant to bet both on no-code and on dev tools.<p>No-code’s winner-takes-all scenario presumes full automation of developers. It’s in the name: no code, no developers.<p>Postulate: software developers will remain necessary as long as human brains don’t natively speak “Von Neumann.“<p>Thus the winner-who-takes-all is going to be “with-code,” not “no-code.” “No-code” is a misnomer and a dead-end.
For #3: If anyone is looking for an enterprise search they can boot up "cloud-prem" (in their VPC), that's exactly what we're building at <a href="https://landria.io/customers/why-landria" rel="nofollow">https://landria.io/customers/why-landria</a>.
More like "VC Compatible Startup Ideas 2020"<p>It's totally feasible to start a successful company outside of these ideas. I think this list is helpful because they answer the "why now" question that VCs are looking for.<p>In other words, this list is helpful if you're trying to start a $10B company today.
Interesting read but none of these ideas actually explain what problems they solve. Programming is my hobby and being financially secure, I’m in position where I could easily spent half a day writing someones code for nothing more than “thank you, good job”. Seriously, so long as I know someone’s problem is being solved. I wish there were website like “thank you for programming dot com” where people with low or no budget could post problems that programing can solve and programmers could tackle those at zero financial gain, maybe only as a extra point in their resumee.
Privacy<p>Judging by what people are posting on IG, FB, and what I hear they are posting on SNAP, I have come to the conclusion that Privacy is a niche product.
> 3. The New Meme: Enterprise Search<p>Exactly what we're doing: <a href="https://insideropinion.com/" rel="nofollow">https://insideropinion.com/</a><p>Seems like most people aren't thinking of search the exact same way though. It's a huge problem (having worked in large fortune 100 companies).
Bytedance?? OK, I guess... But Lark's home page blurb seems a bit direct: "Hey look, the Chinese government is going to hack into your servers and look at all your corporate secrets sooner or later, why not just make it easy for both of us and use this service now? Sign up here."
Was this published in 2019 or 2020? There’s a line pretty far down the page in the Enterprise Dabblers section that says “As of today (January 2019), we see a half dozen pitches a week for automation software”<p>Maybe that was a typo? Or maybe this is a slightly updated article from a year ago?
Lark looks very similar to what we are trying to accomplish with AirSend (<a href="https://www.airsend.io" rel="nofollow">https://www.airsend.io</a>). I guess interesting days ahead.
Re 2. Saying Yes to NoCode ... We are working on an MVP in this space called Webase. It is still very early but we are starting with basic CRUD operations and then will be layering on more sophistication going forward.<p>Check it out here: <a href="https://www.webase.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.webase.com</a>
Completely agree on the "Carbon and Climate" section.<p>Negative makes a carbon negative bracelet made with carbon dioxide pulled from the atmosphere. I created the company to make carbon more personal. <a href="http://gonegative.co/" rel="nofollow">http://gonegative.co/</a>
I wrote a post about the so-called "law of advertiser atrophy": <a href="https://hua.substack.com/p/everything-i-have-ever-learned-about" rel="nofollow">https://hua.substack.com/p/everything-i-have-ever-learned-ab...</a>. TLDR: the author correctly identifies an issue, but misdiagnoses its root cause and how it will play out moving forward.<p>In fact, I would endorse short AMZN, long GOOG/FB, as an investment strategy (but not as investment advice)!