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Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

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2101 points jamesjyu | 1 comments | 07 Feb 19 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.473s | source
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lancesells ◴[07 Feb 19 17:36 UTC] No.19106759[source]▶
I've always liked Gumroad as a product and service but this line kind of bothers me:

> There is, of course, the $178,000,000 we have sent to creators

This money wasn't sent to creators. They sold products worth $178M + Gumroad fees through the service. The creators made the products, marketed the products, acquired the customers, etc. When I use Paypal to sell something they aren't "sending me money".

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themagician ◴[07 Feb 19 17:44 UTC] No.19106830[source]▶
You could say the same thing about Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Etsy, TaskRabbit, etc..

When you sit down and think about it you start to realize just how “temporary” all these so-called unicorns are, as they are just middleware services with no real differentiating benefits other than size and brand recognition and maybe some vague “guarantee” to the customer. You’ve got to get big fast, because what you actually do is easily replicated.

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1. benatkin ◴[07 Feb 19 18:28 UTC] No.19107188[source]▶
Uber and Lyft are middlemen, but because they interface directly with the consumer, they also create demand. I deleted my apps when I realized that I was spending a hundred bucks a month compared with twenty bucks a month if I had used cabs, and getting little real benefit out of it. It just feels so convenient, but the fares add up quickly. I bet if they sent weekly or monthly summaries people would use them less.