v1l

Entitlement is more prevalent than we think.

Is that part of the contract that if the business is shutting down or laying people off that they need to continue to pay for things for you? I don't see why there's any obligation.

effed up year.

My advice would be to either build it for a different niche (i.e., not software teams) or to go against the grain and target it to the agile rebels. If you do the latter, it still needs to be useful but you at least stand a chance. What if it just does kanban? Can it be a better kanban only project tool? Can it serve the construction industry only? What vector can you differentiate on? Think hard about that. Price ain't it.

I don't know where you're based but if you're out of the US, then by design the clients you're working with want it cheap. But between cheap and ridiculously pricey, there is a world of freelancers that are just reasonably priced but not cheap -- and similarly, clients who have those budgets (even if for short durations).

That's great that you've built a deep roster of clients. Can't disagree that it's the best source of work.

I think the platform needs to be niche and not-built-for-scale by design. This doesn't gel with the VC backed route. I absolutely think there's room for a few 1-2M revenue businesses here that could be built by a motivated self funded small team.

The vetting and hoops of interviews (talent side).

From the client side, there's nothing onerous but Toptal also prioritizes (requires?) clients that have mid to longer term commitments.

Oh absolutely believe that asking yourself these questions is critical. Even if the answers aren't encouraging or positive. In the very least, they make you think about how you might overcome these challenges if they exist for your business.

Didn't mean to dunk on your post. I actually loved it. Just wanted to call out that founders should probably not follow the letter of the law of the formula but more use it as a guide to evaluate ideas and problems.

Jason's obviously a smart chap and knows much more about startups than I do but following this decision tree would effectively have meant that most startups that exist today likely wouldn't exist.

A few examples: Notion, Airtable, Linear. They would all fail a few of these tests.

Grand Seiko

> Is a single CEO worth that many jobs?

This question is a sign of not understanding how business works.

It's funny to me that no one complained about Sundar's pay when things were going swimmingly well.

agree, are you an engineer? Manager or IC?

How much of what you're suggesting is kept manually up to date?

Do yoga.

What are some products where this is true? (you see what I'm doing here :) -- digging for ideas)

What are your competitors doing differently? (it's not the funding) Do they have traction?

Do you have any hail mary cards left up your sleeve? If not, or if you've run out of steam, or don't believe in this anymore (blind faith not allowed), then shut it down and cut your losses asap.

How on earth do you even curate/create a huge collection like that? Do you really sign up and try? Do you crawl the web?

Either way, impressive work!

can you explain in human? #notbeingsarcastic but I literally didn't get it.

We don't standup every day. Many standups also end up being purely status updates and a lot more happens in a day than is reported in a standup. Decisions are made, meetings are held, customer conversations are had...too many to list here.

The elephant in the room for return to office is commute. If the office was <20 mins for most employees, I doubt there would a huge hue and cry over going in 2-3 days a week.

A solution to that I see is a marketplace focused on such work (you could say Upwork is that but it's a race to the bottom, so there needs to be better filters).

Your post and comment in this thread were a truly depressing read.

What problem is this solving? It's not quite clear from the website.

I'm trying Obsidian right now and liking what I see so far.

what problem is it solving? unclear what it does from your website.

How do you plan to get companies posting on it and spread the word with candidates?

Just use iOS notes.

I don't think smaller companies are any better, especially growth phase.