13 ms·

Why people share their revenues? Every product can be copied. If you know revenue, you know what product you should copy.

by chebum 10y ago

blakes 10y ago
Because transparency is good. Also competition is good, stop being afraid of competition or people "stealing" ideas.
- chebum 10y ago
  Good for customers but not for business. Competition tends to minimize margins and profits. While main business goal is to make money, competition is against business goals.
  - nazgob 10y ago
    Ideas are cheap, execution is everything.
  - mcbetz 10y ago
    Many one-person businesses focus on niches and do one thing great. Often they also offer great (aka personal) support. Also, quite often, they are great in building a community around their service. Additionally, many of the solo entrepreneurs are good teachers and share what they know. All these factors together make their services (and themselves) so valuable that a competitor with a slightly better price will not take away all customers.
    - chebum 10y ago
      You're talking about acquisition channels. Community, blog or webinars are great channels, but there are also organic search, paid search, traditional advertising, native advertising, bundling, paid promotions, upselling. If the copy-cat is better at these, their product will out-sell yours.
      - mcbetz 10y ago
        Very few of the one-person businesses go for mass markets where you need the paid (ad) channels that you mention. Also, the "channels" I mentioned are not just for acquisition but for enduring relationships. You cannot simply buy trust, an ad will not deliver as much value as a connected and caring business owner.
  - laumars 10y ago
    Competition can also grow a sector, bringing in many new customers that may have otherwise dismissed an idea or might not have even heard of the idea without the exposure driven by the competition.
    - johnward 10y ago
      This is kind of why I think Tesla wants someone like FF to survive.
    - greglindahl 10y ago
      If a big chunk of the public moves from "should I buy an electric car?" to "which electric car should I buy?", then all electric car producers win.
- switchstance 10y ago
  Exactly. An idea is just that, an idea. It takes months and years of hard work to turn an idea into an income stream.
  - chebum 10y ago
    Most of the businesses in the list are very easy to copy. There are neither rocket science, neither patents to protect them, neither big money to pay lawyers to protect their work. Knowing how well the product sells, you can copy it piece-by-piece by saving a lot of time trying different approaches. Author of original product already did all the hard work guessing what will work the best. You just come, copy and profit from his work.
    - xolb 10y ago
      But by the time finishing the copy, the owner had improved their product and advanced the roadmap. The key here is constant move, IMO.
      - chebum 10y ago
        From my experience copying a feature is about twice cheaper than trying different approaches. You may not figure out a good way to implement it until you build first version and let people try it. You may need re-iterate to find perfect implementation. The copy-cat will come later to see what you've done and will implement the good solution without iterations. The copy-cat may have more developers too.
        johnward 10y ago
        Just curious. Why aren't you copying these and ranking in all that money then?
    - palerdot 10y ago
      This is not true. People who copy will mostly do it for money. Finally the passion for the idea trumps the desire to chase money and your product will eventually suck. On the other hand if you think you can make a better product from existing solution, then there is a good chance of you succeeding. You can try copying any one of those of ideas for money and see for yourself.
- fab1an 10y ago
  I don't think this is so simple with one person shops, as knowing one's value propositions, revenue/profit numbers & acquisition channels etc goes vastly beyond the concept of the presumably worthless 'idea' that people usually refer to in this context.
patio11 10y ago
Having an idea for a business, and successfully executing on a business, are two very, very, very different things.
- pvsukale3 10y ago
  to be exact -> very * 1000
adamqureshi 10y ago
China ( add third world country) can / has copied / cloned apps for their local market , happens all the time. ;-)anyone can copy / clone your app at any time that does not mean the same as copying your business. I'm just sayin.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ssharp 10y ago
Patio11 was blogging about his old Bingo Card software for many, many years and became one of the most high-profile members of Hacker News because of it. I don't think a flood of competing Bingo Card software came in. A lot of the time, finding a good enough niche, a small enough niche, and understanding customer acquisition for that niche is all the "moat" you really need. Remember, your competitors likely don't know your market as well as you do and are probably fighting a harder battle than you initially fought since they have to compete against you.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  There were some, I know of one personally but there were others as well. Not sure what the impact of that was as Patio11 seemed to be squeezing all the blood out of that stone.
- johnward 10y ago
  For years I thought "bingo card" meant something else that I just wasn't familiar with. Until I actually read about it and it was as simple as cards to play bingo. I believe he sold that business now.
- chebum 10y ago
  The BCC was never profitable enough with constantly declining revenues. Patrick ended 2016 with $120,000 in debt and working in Stripe to pay it down. Probably, revenues started to decline after bragging about them.
  - patio11 10y ago
    I swear sometimes recently I feel like I'm reading comments from a weird alternate universe HN where I simultaneously claimed to be Elon Musk and also fabricated everything. Hello, Earth 2 HNer. Back here on Earth 1 I ran a succession of small software businesses. They're anomalously well-documented; BCC more than any other. If you have access to the Earth 1 Internet you can read the first month'a report where I "bragged" about $24.95 and follow the curve from there. Please give my regards to fellow Earth 2 denizens who told me in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 that publishing numbers would bring a horde of competitors to kill me.
equalarrow 10y ago
Because there is a massive difference between sharing revenues / idea and making a business profitable off a clone. You could copy a lot of ideas out there right now, but that is the smallest part (in my mind) in making a business out of it. The coding and 'making' of the product, is actually the smallest part. Getting any consistent revenue, marketing, growing your user base, reducing churn - those are all much harder than actually building or copying something. There are _many_ ideas on github right now with real working code & permissible licenses you could just grab and try to make a business with. So why aren't there profitable, sustainable businesses popping up all over because of this? (Hint: coding is not the hard part, idea is not the hard part)
- chebum 10y ago
  There are companies who build commercial products from that open source projects. The most obvious example is format converters. There are tens of products build around free ImageMagick and ffmpeg.
rfrey 10y ago
There a few rational reasons. * Building a personal brand - everyone loves to read about business adventures, and the more details the better. Financial details are great for drawing audiences. If you feel your brand could be worth more than the project you're discussing, it's worth it to share * If your market is developers or software managers or small lifestyle businesses, they'll learn about you through your posts. They're not looking to copy you. You'll be more easily discoverable than those who copy you, so it might be worth encouraging imitators in exchange for increased exposure to your market. * If your finances are solid (the only reason somebody would copy you) it might give customers who are worried about choosing a small, fragile business enough confidence to use your solution.
dalys 10y ago
Here in Sweden, and I suspect in many many countries, revenues and profits and pretty much all numbers in a limited liability stock (the most common kind) company are public information. Here is Spotify for example https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A//www.allabolag.se/5567037485/spotify-ab https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A... (allabolag.se is a third party site aggregating these numbers.) Also, income statements are public information, yet making both of these public information has not imploded the economy. Rather the opposite it seems. It is for example a huge benefit when you are looking for a job to be able to go to the interview and ask why the company never has made any profit the last five years, just as a simple example. Also very good for anyone in the B2B segment.
- spraak 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing that, that's really neat
ceejayoz 10y ago
Man, you're gonna flip when you see https://buffer.baremetrics.com/ https://buffer.baremetrics.com/.

Why people share their revenues? Every product can be copied. If you know revenue, you know what product you should copy.

by chebum 10y ago

Why people share their revenues? Every product can be copied. If you know revenue, you know what product you should copy.

blakes 10y ago

Because transparency is good. Also competition is good, stop being afraid of competition or people "stealing" ideas.

chebum 10y ago
Good for customers but not for business. Competition tends to minimize margins and profits. While main business goal is to make money, competition is against business goals.
- nazgob 10y ago
  Ideas are cheap, execution is everything.
- mcbetz 10y ago
  Many one-person businesses focus on niches and do one thing great. Often they also offer great (aka personal) support. Also, quite often, they are great in building a community around their service. Additionally, many of the solo entrepreneurs are good teachers and share what they know. All these factors together make their services (and themselves) so valuable that a competitor with a slightly better price will not take away all customers.
  - chebum 10y ago
    You're talking about acquisition channels. Community, blog or webinars are great channels, but there are also organic search, paid search, traditional advertising, native advertising, bundling, paid promotions, upselling. If the copy-cat is better at these, their product will out-sell yours.
    - mcbetz 10y ago
      Very few of the one-person businesses go for mass markets where you need the paid (ad) channels that you mention. Also, the "channels" I mentioned are not just for acquisition but for enduring relationships. You cannot simply buy trust, an ad will not deliver as much value as a connected and caring business owner.
- laumars 10y ago
  Competition can also grow a sector, bringing in many new customers that may have otherwise dismissed an idea or might not have even heard of the idea without the exposure driven by the competition.
  - johnward 10y ago
    This is kind of why I think Tesla wants someone like FF to survive.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    If a big chunk of the public moves from "should I buy an electric car?" to "which electric car should I buy?", then all electric car producers win.
switchstance 10y ago
Exactly. An idea is just that, an idea. It takes months and years of hard work to turn an idea into an income stream.
- chebum 10y ago
  Most of the businesses in the list are very easy to copy. There are neither rocket science, neither patents to protect them, neither big money to pay lawyers to protect their work. Knowing how well the product sells, you can copy it piece-by-piece by saving a lot of time trying different approaches. Author of original product already did all the hard work guessing what will work the best. You just come, copy and profit from his work.
  - xolb 10y ago
    But by the time finishing the copy, the owner had improved their product and advanced the roadmap. The key here is constant move, IMO.
    - chebum 10y ago
      From my experience copying a feature is about twice cheaper than trying different approaches. You may not figure out a good way to implement it until you build first version and let people try it. You may need re-iterate to find perfect implementation. The copy-cat will come later to see what you've done and will implement the good solution without iterations. The copy-cat may have more developers too.
      - johnward 10y ago
        Just curious. Why aren't you copying these and ranking in all that money then?
  - palerdot 10y ago
    This is not true. People who copy will mostly do it for money. Finally the passion for the idea trumps the desire to chase money and your product will eventually suck. On the other hand if you think you can make a better product from existing solution, then there is a good chance of you succeeding. You can try copying any one of those of ideas for money and see for yourself.
fab1an 10y ago
I don't think this is so simple with one person shops, as knowing one's value propositions, revenue/profit numbers & acquisition channels etc goes vastly beyond the concept of the presumably worthless 'idea' that people usually refer to in this context.

patio11 10y ago

Having an idea for a business, and successfully executing on a business, are two very, very, very different things.

pvsukale3 10y ago
to be exact -> very * 1000

adamqureshi 10y ago

China ( add third world country) can / has copied / cloned apps for their local market , happens all the time. ;-)anyone can copy / clone your app at any time that does not mean the same as copying your business. I'm just sayin.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

ssharp 10y ago

Patio11 was blogging about his old Bingo Card software for many, many years and became one of the most high-profile members of Hacker News because of it. I don't think a flood of competing Bingo Card software came in. A lot of the time, finding a good enough niche, a small enough niche, and understanding customer acquisition for that niche is all the "moat" you really need. Remember, your competitors likely don't know your market as well as you do and are probably fighting a harder battle than you initially fought since they have to compete against you.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
There were some, I know of one personally but there were others as well. Not sure what the impact of that was as Patio11 seemed to be squeezing all the blood out of that stone.
johnward 10y ago
For years I thought "bingo card" meant something else that I just wasn't familiar with. Until I actually read about it and it was as simple as cards to play bingo. I believe he sold that business now.
chebum 10y ago
The BCC was never profitable enough with constantly declining revenues. Patrick ended 2016 with $120,000 in debt and working in Stripe to pay it down. Probably, revenues started to decline after bragging about them.
- patio11 10y ago
  I swear sometimes recently I feel like I'm reading comments from a weird alternate universe HN where I simultaneously claimed to be Elon Musk and also fabricated everything. Hello, Earth 2 HNer. Back here on Earth 1 I ran a succession of small software businesses. They're anomalously well-documented; BCC more than any other. If you have access to the Earth 1 Internet you can read the first month'a report where I "bragged" about $24.95 and follow the curve from there. Please give my regards to fellow Earth 2 denizens who told me in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 that publishing numbers would bring a horde of competitors to kill me.

equalarrow 10y ago

Because there is a massive difference between sharing revenues / idea and making a business profitable off a clone. You could copy a lot of ideas out there right now, but that is the smallest part (in my mind) in making a business out of it. The coding and 'making' of the product, is actually the smallest part. Getting any consistent revenue, marketing, growing your user base, reducing churn - those are all much harder than actually building or copying something. There are _many_ ideas on github right now with real working code & permissible licenses you could just grab and try to make a business with. So why aren't there profitable, sustainable businesses popping up all over because of this? (Hint: coding is not the hard part, idea is not the hard part)

chebum 10y ago
There are companies who build commercial products from that open source projects. The most obvious example is format converters. There are tens of products build around free ImageMagick and ffmpeg.

rfrey 10y ago

There a few rational reasons. * Building a personal brand - everyone loves to read about business adventures, and the more details the better. Financial details are great for drawing audiences. If you feel your brand could be worth more than the project you're discussing, it's worth it to share * If your market is developers or software managers or small lifestyle businesses, they'll learn about you through your posts. They're not looking to copy you. You'll be more easily discoverable than those who copy you, so it might be worth encouraging imitators in exchange for increased exposure to your market. * If your finances are solid (the only reason somebody would copy you) it might give customers who are worried about choosing a small, fragile business enough confidence to use your solution.

dalys 10y ago

Here in Sweden, and I suspect in many many countries, revenues and profits and pretty much all numbers in a limited liability stock (the most common kind) company are public information. Here is Spotify for example https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A//www.allabolag.se/5567037485/spotify-ab https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A... (allabolag.se is a third party site aggregating these numbers.) Also, income statements are public information, yet making both of these public information has not imploded the economy. Rather the opposite it seems. It is for example a huge benefit when you are looking for a job to be able to go to the interview and ask why the company never has made any profit the last five years, just as a simple example. Also very good for anyone in the B2B segment.

spraak 10y ago
Thanks for sharing that, that's really neat

ceejayoz 10y ago

Man, you're gonna flip when you see https://buffer.baremetrics.com/ https://buffer.baremetrics.com/.