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Ask HN: If you were laid off, do you want to be a cofounder?

14 points by rish1_2 ↗ HN
I'm working on an open source alternative to Clockwise, Reclaim and Motion. It will be targeting open source remote teams who need frequent internal meetings. I'm looking for a cofounder once I open source it to apply to YC after some traction.

11 comments

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acchimucchi
I am open now. Can we chat?
rish1_2
my discord username is atomiclifeadmin#8717 or atomiclifeapp@gmail.com
bruce511
Can I ask a somewhat off topic question?

What is your monetization strategy? Presumably the goal of this business is to make money somehow?

Just curious.

rish1_2
Saas - basically a monthly service
bruce511
Thanks for the answer. Again, just curious, perhaps because of the other threads lately, but do you have a strategy for protecting your business from compeditors?

I mean, say your service is popular, what stops a compeditor from simply providing the same service?

In the past one answer would be "they have to write code" but given that you explicitly see value in open-sourcing this, that answer falls away. Do you have any other way?

I ask this not to be a dick, but I'm genuinely curious as to your thinking here.

rish1_2
Brand value is important. By being open source, I m showing what kind of values my service would represent. I hope people will stick around if they see the genuineness of my service / my brand and of course good customer service.
bruce511
Have you seen this model work for others? Have you seen it fail for others?

I ask this not to rain on your parade, but to probe how much of your word "hope" comes into play here.

I'm not sure a compeditor would be "less genuine" than you.

Customer service can be a differentiator, (so at least Google isn't your problem) but good customer service is expensive. AWS provides pretty good customer service.

Relying on brand is likely to hurt rather than help you - you'll be unknown whereas AWS is, well, AWS.

I get that if your target market is Open Source developers, then releasing source is a good thing. Hopefully you remain small enough to fly under the radar.

rish1_2
AWS is not my competition. If it were I wouldn't be in the space, personally.
rish1_2
BTW, I do have unique selling points including schedule assist for flexible group meetings and booking for external users using AI.
bruce511
sure, I'm assuming you have a good idea, and are generating something useful. I'm imagining that your code is magnificent :). You mentioned applying to YC, which _suggests_ you're going down the investor/exit (VC?) approach rather than a bootstrap approach.

So, I'm assuming that your goal is to get a lot of users, and gain some market traction, demonstrating both that a market exists, and that people want to pay for this functionality.

So my point is, now that you are successful (to VC levels of success) then you become visible to others - like (but not necessarily limited to) AWS. At that point what stops them just using the code to offer the same service?

Obviously there is room for lots of small companies, providing useful services that customers pay for. If you plan to be small, and niche, then you can make a very successful business. But that business is perhaps better aligned with boot-strapping rather than have VC-style investors.

rish1_2
AWS highly unlikely to copy me. I'm not the same domain as them. They might provide hosted developer tools like search engines but not internal tools for teams. They will think it is chump change until it is not but I will big enought at that point. Who knows.