Comment by cheriot
5 months ago
Wild to me that Bitwarden raised > $100m from VC. Seems like the kind of thing that would make a nice lifestyle business.
The enterprise version never went beyond password management so I'm not sure how this could have generated a viable ROI.
> Seems like the kind of thing that would make a nice lifestyle business.
Don’t see too much of this talk around the comments, anymore!
If you’re seeing this comment: Are lifestyle businesses on your radar?
Please do share.
Maybe this is me being a little wet behind the ears, but I don't know if lifestyle businesses are really possible to start at the moment, given the uncertainty of the current software sector.
See this thread from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118727
The economics of software creation is changing, so it stands to reason how people engage with software will change too. Finding a niche may be a game of luck more than observation/perspiration at this stage, similar to discovering oil on your "barren" property rather than building a farm. As someone who's generally independent, though: I'd love to be wrong here!
I’m betting the farm that you are =]
Your accountant will be configuring their own work software.
Your project manager will be developing their own work software.
Custodians will not necessarily be developing work software.
Most non-tech desk-staff start to lose focus after the fifth reply on a social media thread…
I do not believe they’re going to be able to perform the three required steps for building software solutions:
1. Know what you need (vs want).
2. Know how to ask for it.
3. Have a process for validating it.
I also don’t think it gets too much simpler than Docker et al for self-hosting, yet those concepts are genuinely a foreign language to even “tech-savvy” consumers.
I think we’re in a bubble, here,
and I am personally betting on one niche (of many) where value ($$$$) is still placed upon having another team to outsource responsibility to.
Responsibility for keeping an important tool up-to-date, keeping it able to capture data,
and most importantly: rigorously tested to ensure it’ll perform calculations correctly.
Responsibility for peak tooling, so a busy end-user can stay responsible for their craft without taking a sabbatical to build software is not going anywhere.
Whether these “peak tools” will be (validated, packaged, delivered to the user, maintained) by me,
or OpenAI/Anthropic instant-agents in 10 years,
is what I believe we should be watching.