I like the idea. But why do we fixate on the tools? It is like lumberjacks sitting around discussing axes for hours instead of actually chopping the trees. Yes you need to find a tool that works for you, and you should take time to sharpen your ax. But a tool alone doesn't solve any problems.
Beautifully put. The people who build successful startups are the people who build stuff.
There are very important things at a startup (building a product people want, growth), and there are ancillary things (programming language choice, cron job management, team communication, etc). You really don't need to worry about the ancillary things until they become massive problems, and by that point you'll know they are massive problems. Otherwise, spending any time or effort on ancillary things is a waste of time and energy that should have been spent on making your product better.
Since you can't really give broad advice about how to build a great product or how to grow that product, most lists of "handy tools" are just tools which solve ancillary problems. Are these interesting tools on the list? Yes. Are some of these tools themselves great products? Yes. But, if you are trying to build a successful startup, this list of tools will serve you almost no benefit.
> You really don't need to worry about the ancillary things until they become massive problems, and by that point you'll know they are massive problems. Otherwise, spending any time or effort on ancillary things is a waste of time and energy that should have been spent on making your product better.
This is also part of a good product. To "worry" about these things doesn't mean you have to deal with right now, but you have to aware these, otherwise you might shoot yourself on foot. E.g. picking a programming language determines the architectural style, picking a continuous delivery tool, PaaS vs IaaS decision will determinate the devops style, etc. Maybe it not significantly right now but also modifies the people you will be able to hire.
I think you're discounting the overhead of finding tools to use, as well as the benefit of discovering tools that could reduce the amount of time you have to spend on things that, ultimately, don't contribute to building a successful project and organization.
It's like programming, in a way. If you're putting together a SaaS app, don't roll your own web framework if you don't need to: use Express or Rails.
Because discovery is a problem! I can give you two examples:
I, for example, would love a service that would let me create a pdf invoice with a simple PUT or POST. I don't need a payments solution, or bookkeeping software, or a recurring billing service. Stripe gives us 95% of what we need. But our European users need invoices that show what they paid, and it's a manual process for us. I've been searching and I've found a couple options but none really scratch my itch.
On the flip side, I run a SaaS business (which I added to Paperboy), and we've often heard things like I didn't know I needed your service until I discovered it.
There are a lot of great tools out there and it's discovery and curation is not solved. Look at the success of Product Hunt, for example.
@encoder, to your point, this is exactly what we (Paid, www.paidapi.com) do. Definitely reach out to us if you have any questions. Would love to see how we can help you out.
I think the problem isn't as bad as it seems. Every developer will have these tools in common, but less overlap in their actual work.
Let's say every dev spends most of their time working on and talking about the problems they're solving, and then a little bit of time on the tools; because every one shares that tool discussion it seems much more common than it really is.
It certainly is not just about the tools. Building a successful startups involves a ton of things. But every lumber jack loves hanging around in the tools shop. We need our little man-cave as entrepreneurs :)
Poorly phrased, but I think the parent has a point. The problem I can see with this analogy is that there doesn't seem to be any discussion/voting at all on paperboy.
