[nif2ee]

Never trust anything that comes from indiehackers, this is a community of professional indie astroturfers and manipulators of everything from renaming the same product and launching it every couple months on ProductHunt and buying upvotes, to baiting HNers with "How I made $X by doing Y". It's a pump and dump scheme on sub-million dollar levels.

[aldoushuxley001]

How can it be a pump and dump if they’re not public companies and generally rely on subscriptions?

Indiehackers is a great community that produces a lot of useful content for other bootstrappers. Sorry that you think it’s all a fraud, but I suspect you’re throwing out the baby with the bath water.

[gumby]

Not sure why a coffee company is a “tech startup”.

(Though TBF Amazon didn’t feel like a tech company in the 1990s)

[Wordball]

It has a live chat and five different tracking solutions implemented. What about this doesn't look like a tech business?

[gumby]

That’s just table stakes for a generic retail store Just because I drive a car wouldn’t make me a car business.

I think of tech businesses primarily as those that develop novel technology and secondarily as those who use technology in a novel and unexpected way. In both cases technology is the differentiation.

The only novelty of this business is its message and while that might make a perfectly respectable business (I am not part of the target market so I can not judge) there’s no “tech” in their business plan. Think of it more like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein: the clothes are made in the same factories by the same workers; the only differentiation is market positioning. Nobody would criticize them as not being “business” or even “clothes business” but their differentiator is marketing.

[Axsuul]

I'm pretty sure Wordball's response was meant as sarcasm.

[gumby]

Hah, whooshed over my head! Everybody wants the pixie dust these days.

[throway1n]

well google is an ad company, what’s your point

[gumby]

Read my response to wordball. Google differentiates itself with its tech.

Note what I said about Amazon: it didn’t look to me like a tech company when it started, but actually it was (for its time). And since then has continued to aggressively differentiate itself through investment in tech development.

[throway1n]

yeah but its selling ads, not tech. tech is the facilitator but google mainly monetised ads. sure from a worker’s perspective it sells tech, but it doesn’t.

[sosodev]

I’m not sure you can lump all of IH together into one big undesirable thing. All platforms have bad apples but there’s plenty of good information if you look closely.

[Wordball]

hmmm, odd that you're getting downvoted...