[echelon]

Why do companies try to compete in this space? The margins are thin and the giants have vast offerings.

The only thing I see winning against Google and Microsoft is some hybrid, open source local + cloud suite of tools. Something better than Thunderbird, more like Obsidian. A combination of native and cloud, working well across all platforms, integrated with a full suite of other productivity/office tools, but most importantly open source. Because I don't want to trust my data to some other tool that will just dry up and disappear.

That's a steep gradient to climb. Really steep.

[acuozzo]

For every weary graybeard there is a bright-eyed & bushy-tailed young hacker eager to "stick it to the man" while also lacking in the experience of having been burned which forms the foundation of the cynicism from whence the weariness comes.

[bowsamic]

This isn’t a failure though. Getting bought out by a larger company is literally the aim of most startups

[autoexec]

I hope you're wrong, but perhaps you're not and instead of "make something useful and/or new for people" startups just want to make something threatening enough to be destroyed or at best scraped for parts by a larger company so long as they get a payout.

[loceng]

It depends on size and ambition, and if you're able to continue to improve or add new feature sets ahead of competition - and if you can maintain price points to serve/convince enough of the market to keep using you vs. competition that can come in from all over the world - and be heavily subsidized by VCs.

Getting bought out or IPO'ing on stock market are generally best options, especially with the uncertainty of the next 10 years, which then allows you to be able to essentially stop working for a period of time.

Otherwise the game is you can fall behind developing features, where heavily funded startups simply copy everything you've spent years designing, catching up by cutting their time and effort down since feature sets have already been curated down to a model that works, and you either find a way to survive or competitors take your clients.

Those heavily funded startups who can always outcompete what a stable and long-term business will be willing or able to pay - subsidized by the VC industrial complex, as an additional way to kill competition - on the micro level but also on the macro level - making VC funded companies more likely to succeed overall; even if it's sucking talent away from good or more worthwhile efforts - and also at the expense of the general population, as the VC industrial complex also requires higher fees to be charged; it's inflammatory-inflationary.

There's also the acquihire model in regards to consolidation, which overall doesn't seem good for the consumer but can give a good payout.

[bowsamic]

I’m confused, this is the openly stated goal of most tech startups. They aim to be acquired and therefore make a huge profit for the founders. That’s their entire business model: build the product and sell it to a bigger company

[Mistletoe]

And you’ve encapsulated why we are in the tech dystopia we currently reside in.

[echelon]

> Getting bought out by a larger company

Acquihire and product shutdown.

[DANmode]

Another category in which I'm not most.

[loosescrews]

I think Dropbox and Slack/Salesforce might have a chance. I'd argue that Dropbox might need to enter the space in order to be competitive long term. Slack is already competing with email and Salesforce already owns an online office suite.

I think the only path small players have is as an acquisition.

[jmspring]

Salesforce owns an online office suite?

[bobnamob]

Yes - https://quip.com/

[jmspring]

I know quip, it’s horrendous and in no way a Google suite/office alternative. The editor and search are also incredibly shitty.

[cc2562]

Yep...E2E encryption just doesn't cut it when the company still owns your data & accounts on their servers.

I've adopted Anytype; encryption + self-hosting + open-source backend is rock solid.

[manyty]

Here's a Notion vs Anytype comparison from the company's blog

https://blog.anytype.io/notion-alternative/

[ezst]

I'll check again Anytype in maybe a year or so, because currently their whole "typing" thing just isn't up to snuff (I wrote about it here before so you can check my comments history of you are curious and find a lengthy post about it and why I think only Trilium notes is sound -as in enforcing type consistency- in this space).

[miramba]

Advertises local-first on top of their page. Immediate account creation requirement on iOS, not even a demo mode.

[inferense]

Check out https://acreom.com, you literally own the software, it's local-first, E2EE, integrated, runs on markdown files, and once you download the app you can keep it forever.

[Midnight1938]

Thats good, but what about the email. I dont see a good custom domain host anywhere