Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ativzzz 1977 days ago
From my experience with a different but similar tool, it follows the pareto principle. It will do 80% of the work very effectively, but as your business grows and you need more niche functionality, you will need a developer to figure out a way to make the platform behave in a way which it doesn't expect, which can be time consuming.

So great for MVPs or getting a business bootstrapped quickly and cheaply, but once you have enough money to afford developers without breaking the bank, your money may be better spent elsewhere.
2 comments
spockz 1977 days ago
I often wonder how much of that 20% of functionality is really needed. What if we as society spend the 80% effort that goes into customising things into building more that uses the readily available features? This is not an argument of quantity over quality. It’s just that I’ve seen so much effort going into doing the last 20% with so little outcome that it has me made skeptical.

Of course, for products deeper in the stack we should strive to implement that last 20% because the quality of the stack depends on it. I just don’t think it’s worth it for leaf/end-user projects.

link
ativzzz 1976 days ago
I hear what you're saying, but for successful businesses in competitive spaces, those last 5% or even 1% are the sauce that sets your business apart from your competitors. Of course you won't know it is until you build it, but that's what quick mvp cycles and "lean startup" methodology is all about.
link
spockz 1976 days ago
Exactly. So such a company should focus their effort on discovering that 1-5% edge and not waste effort going beyond 80% on things like hr/tooling/billing/etc that are irrelevant to (finding?) their value proposition.
link
Scramblejams 1977 days ago
For a business, I agree. I should have clarified, I'd be happy with something that works pretty well at the hobby level.
link
ativzzz 1977 days ago
Ah, these are more for making standalone simple frontends. Think more landing pages with built in email conversions or some payment integrations and not front end connections to a back end API. I've had to make some backend api connections on the different service and it was a PITA.
link