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Comment by seagreen | Hacker News Reader

Do you have thoughts on the Heroku->Render dynamic? Is there a name for it? I've seen it enough now to recognize a solid pattern for a successful business:

1. Company starts to do X, makes it a wonderful experience

2. Users love it, it's successful

3. Company stop treating users well

4. New company steps into make X a wonderful experience again, with the advantage that the market is pre-validated.

How much of an advantage is it to know that users want what you're creating? Do you have any tips, like ways to reassure people you won't follow the same dynamic as the original company?

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That's an interesting thought. Any company that raises money from VCs will ultimately either fail or end up publicly traded (via IPO or acquisition), and at that point it's just a matter of time before they start squeezing their users.

I wonder what the ideal time is in a company's arc to start their eventual replacement. Render just raised a series B which probably means they're still many years away from step 3, so it's probably too early. But maybe when they're raising a series C or D, it's time to start thinking about making their replacement.

I feel like Stripe is entering that territory right now. Not that they're worse than alternatives, but they no longer have that "wonderful experience" magic because they've started to turn on the maximize shareholder value engine.

I generally agree with your comment, but isn't there an exception for companies that do well enough early enough to let the founders keep control with supervoting stock? Then the founders can do whatever they want... which might be make short term money but doesn't have to be.

A subtle distinction is that it's not Heroku treating users poorly — it's Salesforce, and it's not the same people who were at the company even just ~2 years ago.

With Render, I'd rather show than tell. As an interesting data point, we've now existed as an independent entity longer than Heroku did, and we're truly just getting started.

Definitely. I'm not actually looking for reassurance myself (I've already switched).

I was more asking about the tactics of the situation since it seems really different than the modal "would anyone even want this?" startup. It does seem like "show don't tell" is a good move.

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