
You don't need millions of dollars - nqureshi
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/10/you-dont-need-millions-of-dollars.html
======
nadam
"The ultimate point of Masters of Doom is that today you no longer need to be
as brilliant as John Carmack to achieve success, and John Carmack himself will
be the first to tell you that. Where John was sitting in a cubicle by himself
in Mesquite, Texas for 80 hours a week painstakingly inventing all this stuff
from first principles, on hardware that was barely capable, you have a
supercomputer in your pocket, another supercomputer on your desk, and two
dozen open source frameworks and libraries that can do 90% of the work for
you. You have GitHub, Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and the whole of the
Internet."

Which is bad news if your strength is that you are a good programmer, because
in this kind of environment games become a commodity, so you have to compete
with hundreds of thousands of other game developers who also don't have to be
as briliant as Carmack. See the app market; it has a winner take all
characteristic, so even if you don't have to be as brilliant as Carmack in
programming, you have to be very strong in something or lucky to achieve
success.

As I remember Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky took venture capital to take off
stack overflow. (And also they had a huge following even before starting that
venture.)

I kind of don't really buy these kind of 'motivational' posts. Achieving
success is always possible but always hard.

~~~
gizmo
Every generation faces different challenges, but the value of the internet
cannot be understated. It's a resource that answers any question you may have
about programming, about PC internals, or about the business and marketing
parts you have to get right. You can easily reach out to hundreds or thousands
of people who have already accomplished what you're trying to do and who blog
earnestly about their experiences. You can test whether a game or app has
merit with a fraction of the effort required in the 90s. And now you have
millions of hours worth of open source code to build on top on.

"If you build it they will come" doesn't quite work on the internet. Except
maybe if your product is extraordinary. But before the internet, when it's
just you in your parents' basement? Then you need a real marketing channel
otherwise you stand no chance. Even the Id guys had to write shareware games
for an established distributor before they figured out how to do the shareware
thing.

Today you can bootstrap a business worth millions based on a $8 a month VPS.
As far as I can tell this hasn't been true in any other part of history or in
any other field. There is still so much low-hanging fruit in software - it's
crazy.

~~~
sanderjd
Everything you say is absolutely right, but your parent's point still stands:
_everybody_ has all those same advantages, which means that the bar for both
ordinary and extraordinary is much higher. DOOM would be ordinary (even sub-
ordinary) if it were released now, precisely _because_ you no longer need to
be as brilliant as John Carmack to make it.

~~~
gizmo
The bar should be much higher, but it isn't. You'd expect there to be
thousands of startups in every space imaginable, because writing software has
never been easier and there are more software programmers today than at any
point in history. You'd expect the competition to be fierce, but it isn't.

This is why mediocre products with mediocre marketing make bank. The games
industry is very competitive, and so is the iOS app market. But that's only a
tiny percentage of the software market (measured in dollars). Where are the
thousands of Gmail competitors? Word processing and spreadsheet competitors?
Where is a better DabbleDB? Nothing has changed in the past 5 years, and in
any of these markets you can simply win with a better product and half-decent
marketing. And if you make a product for a specific vertical it's even easier.

It's not like Patio11 is the first guy to ever make Appointment Reminder
software. Or the 20th. But with half-decent execution and half-decent
marketing he's still making a ton of money. And is he afraid that by posting
on HN people here are going to start competing AR software? Of course not.
Because there are so many better opportunities out there that there is no need
to fight for the same customers.

How many startups do we see coming from Spain, or India, or Brazil? Very few.
How many from Milwaukee? I don't know of any. But the software engineers
exist. The opportunities are right here for the taking. But people just don't
take them.

~~~
wslh
I agree in that there is an opportunity window until the market is semi-
arbitrage-free. People around virtual communities like HN are in an advantage
now.

But you are underestimating by a lot the costs and risks of software
development, for example, a spreadsheet competitor. Not only from the software
development side but also from the marketing/sales perspective. If you analyze
an established software company the work force in software development and
marketing/sales are evenly distributed and this is not because companies love
to make advertisements, events, etc but because is how (currently) the
business world works: you compete in an attention economy and this costs
millions.

Another thing that you are underestimating is that Internet makes much easier
things that were impossible or time consuming just a decade ago but "everyone"
is competing in a new league and that advantage will be capitalized by
"everyone".

~~~
gizmo
1\. In a competitive world you'd expect startups to pop up everywhere, and
especially in areas with low cost of living. Reality: opposite.

2\. Building a spreadsheet program is a ton of work, but it's also a multi-
billion dollar market. And a proof of concept can be built by a couple of
smart hackers -- but it needs a good hook of course. Reality: very few people
even try.

3\. When a ton of money is spent on marketing then that is strong evidence for
lack of competition. After all, all money spent on marketing would otherwise
go directly to the bottom line. This is why restaurants (fierce competition)
spend almost nothing on marketing. They can't afford to. Fierce competition =>
low margins => no marketing budget. Reality: mediocre products and tons of
marketing.

4\. The advantages of the internet are not capitalized on by everybody, as
I've been saying. The _opportunity_ is there, but people still have to take
it.

~~~
chc
> _Building a spreadsheet program is a ton of work, but it 's also a multi-
> billion dollar market. And a proof of concept can be built by a couple of
> smart hackers -- but it needs a good hook of course. Reality: very few
> people even try._

This is because it's a sucker's game. You can build the best spreadsheet in
the world and _Microsoft will still eat your lunch_. The expected returns on a
goldfish-selling business are higher. LibreOffice can't even manage to _give
away_ a tenth as many as Microsoft sells. Like, yes, building a spreadsheet
program is something people could do, but it is not an idea with even the
remotest possibility of making good money.

I think I have figured out the fundamental disconnect here. You are talking
about how easy it is to _build stuff_ these days, while other people are
talking about how easy it is to _make a living off stuff_. It is easy to build
things. But building something alone is pure cost, no profit. Then the hard
part comes. The difficulty has just shifted around, not disappeared.

------
danmaz74
_Carmack turned red. “If you ever ask me to patent anything,” he snapped,
“I’ll quit.”_

Wow, my admiration for Carmack just increased tenfold.

~~~
dabeeeenster
He comes out of that book very well. Hard but fair. Romero, on the other
hand...

~~~
StavrosK
What's he like?

~~~
billmalarky
In the book he comes off as an overly confident showman. Carmack was
everything behind ID software (and to Romero's credit he pretty much admits
that).

That said Romero's wild-side/recklessness provided the spark that ignited ID
software, almost literally if I recall correctly. Basically Carmack had
developed a new technology that allowed PC's at the time to handle scrolling.
When he showed Romero it at work, Romero basically said "Fuck this company
(softdisk), we're starting our own company right now." So starting that
weekend they "borrowed" (pretty much stole, but would bring them back each
Sunday night) all their workstations and began making a remake of the original
Mario game for PC.

So basically, ID software = John Carmack's genius/technology + Romero's
recklessness = DOOM.

Highly recommend this book, I don't read as many books as I like but I just
couldn't put this one down.

~~~
StavrosK
Very interesting, it sounds like a good read. I'll buy it now, thanks.

~~~
billmalarky
HN has come full circle for me. I'm pretty sure that I actually heard about
this book through a recommendation in a comment on HN a year or so ago. First
book I purchased since the last harry potter book too.

------
sreyaNotfilc
Lol, How many times does one (me in particular) need to read inspirational
stories about hard work, dedication, pizza, and soda pop to actually do
something about it?

Small anecdote: I was working on software for my site yesterday and thought
about Carmack and the Fez guy (Phil Fish) and how they did amazing things on a
computer. And then I thought about how tough it was for me to build a software
for the web. Yes, its some complex software, but we have more tools now than
those before us. There's really no excuse to not get things done (if you
really want it done).

What I need to realize is that these guys didn't just think their way to
success. They built their way to success. They had the idea, and then
executed. You have to be moving and building. No one can see inside your mind.
So, to show how amazing your idea really is, you'd need to literally "show"
them the idea.

So yes, hopefully this is my last awe inspiring story. Hopefully (not
hopefully, it will be...) the next time I chime in, I'll have something to
show instead of an idea baking in my head.

In the words of Jobs "Real artists ship"! And I feel like I'm there.

~~~
6d0debc071
> Lol, How many times does one (me in particular) need to read inspirational
> stories about hard work, dedication, pizza, and soda pop to actually do
> something about it?

If you want a good source of motivation, you might try getting a horrible job
for a while.

Really. I did door to door sales when I was a girl. Hours upon hours of
walking around seeing people who want nothing more in their heart of hearts
than for you to fuck off and die. Nothing motivated me more to put in the
hours at uni - even though I didn't like what I was studying - than the
prospect of going back to that soul-crushing job, nothing's motivated me more
to put in the hours at things that don't really please me than that either.

These days, when people tell me that something's hard, or that they have a
shit job, I really have to step on my tongue to stop myself turning around and
going - _You don 't know what a horrible job is, not really. You've been on
easy street all your life._

~~~
onedev
What does being a girl have to do with sales?

~~~
6d0debc071
In the sense I mean, I was 16.

In the sense I think you mean, sometimes it's an advantage because if you're
chirpy and infantilise yourself a bit some people take pity on you more than
they would a man. (If it's raining generally people are in a really bad mood,
few people want to open their door and get cold and see grey. But if it's
snowing - I always had really good leads when it was snowing. There were like
two weeks of snow where I was getting three leads (around £100) a day. In
either case though you don't want to mention it to people, you want to let
them mention it and make a bit of a joke about it.)

On the negative side, there are some areas you really don't want to work as a
girl. At the very least you want to be paired with a man, preferably an older
man, when you're doing them. A lot of people in those areas are going to tend
to look at you as being... owned pretty much... by the man you're with. That's
not a nice feeling but it's still preferable to the alternative. I never had
anyone grab me but this old guy stroked my hair once and god that was SO
creepy.

It's not a job I was well suited to. I was good at it but emotionally you need
a certain degree of detachment or it's going to mess you up. A lot of the
girls in my team were really cold deep down, covered over with a sort of
brittle humour. When you hear someone joking all the time, blustering about
how tough they are, it's generally been my experience that it's a sign of
severe insecurity. Almost like they're reassuring themselves. Some very rough
backgrounds getting by on their wits there. Don't get me wrong, they really
were tough, they weren't lying about that. But unfortunately when you go into
things with the short-term idea that you can get yourself out of them because,
"hey, wits," you'll almost inevitably end up getting yourself into situations
where you're _obliged_ to get yourself out of them. To a large extent a pride
in your wits seems to arise from a lack of a plan.

Some girls let other girls stay with them when they were having particularly
bad times at home, and I saw that end poorly a couple of times. Some of those
people are predators, that's the thing you've got to remember. When you invite
a predator into your home; put your arm in their mouth; you can't be that
surprised when you get bitten.

So, yeah. I think there are things about being a girl that make the job
slightly different in some respects. Not hugely so but noticeably.

Also wear flats, the extra height can be nice but walking in heels for six
hours isn't fun. ^_^

------
bluedino
If you haven't read this book, go get it. It's the ultimate start-up story.

They start out as the most rag-tag group of developers. They took their
computers home on the weekends from their day jobs at SoftDisk to work on
their own games. These weren't MacBook Airs, they were full-tower 386 desktops
with CRT monitors!

They packed into an apartment for their first 'real' offices. The story about
them re-creating Super Mario pixel by pixel using a VHS recorder and TV is
great.

Then these guys spent a small fortune on NeXT workstations to create
Doom/Quake! Who doesn't dream about using the most high-end tools you can get
your hands on.

And in the end, they all end up as famous 'rock star' millionaires driving
Ferraris.

~~~
angersock
It's a much more down-to-earth story about some good Texas boys kicking ass
than you'll find with the people scrambling over themselves on the coasts to
catch as much as they can from VCs making it rain.

------
altero
I find it ridiculous how IT, the industry with lowest entry barrier that ever
existed, is often marked as sexist and elitist. Wanna program? Here is
computer and manual, see you in 10 000 hours.

~~~
001sky
_Here is computer and manual, see you in 10 000 hours._

Isn't this exactly why it is sexist? [1]

[1] This (being tone deaf to social cues) wouldn't work to attract women in a
social setting, so why would it work in a professional one? You're basically
offering up a scenario that is more likely to create anxiety for women, and as
a result they will (statistcally) self-select into a different activity.

~~~
theorique
Isn't it sexist of _you_ to suggest that:

\- women are so fragile and anxious that they need someone to hold their hand
through the exercises, or

\- women don't have the guts to persist through studying a difficult subject?

I certainly don't believe this to be true.

If the same, fair, treatment produces different outcomes, why does that make
the treatment wrong?

~~~
001sky
I'm suggesting that you are inviting selection bias. That does not provide any
grounds to question the median aptitude of the population. It just says that
anything you infer from your sample data is most-likely skewed.

Now, a skew is discriminantory (by definition it _is_ bias). Whether or not it
is <sexist> is simply a question of distribution of the mechanism responsible.

Is a program of 3.5 years of self-study (lets assume, in social isolation) an
equally attractive proposition? Probably not, given that women consider doing
anything in isolation to somewhat socially demeaning. We know that women, for
example, self-select mates based on quite the opposite: high social standing.
A long self-enforced period of social isolation is thus <rationally> counter-
productive from the perspective of evolutionary biology. So, if we use this as
a gating function, yes we will get biased results.

Fairness is a question of expected value. A fair bet is one where the ratio of
cost/benefit is equal. So, in this case where there is an asymmetric cost, the
result is uneven fairness (in this sense).

Whether or not it is right or wrong depends upon your criterion for value. By
one standard - maximizing the potential peformance - it would be inefficient.
This is beacaus you have mean XY and below mean XX performance represented
(~regardless of proportionality -- as XX is biased down in both quality and
quantity). Whether or not this inefficiency is wrong or acceptable is on the
whole, just re-phrasing whether or not gender bias is (or is not) wrong.

That is beyond the scope of my commentary here.

~~~
altero
Hilarious, this stuff comes from some manifesto? Nobody wrote '...in
solitude'.

~~~
001sky
Actually, look at what is written..."go read the book"...and "don't talk to me
until its done", are both clearly implied. It is a dick attitude, sorry.

Some people may respond to this, and some may not. Statistically, without
question you will get adverse selection. So, yeah you can now start to make
assumptions on how to avoid this fate, or not, but otherwise people with real
options will do other things.

------
theorique
Amazing quote:

"The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some
grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You
need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to
work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We
waded across rivers."

So inspirational.

------
10098
> today you no longer need to be as brilliant as John Carmack to achieve
> success

That is a lie. To achieve anything similar to what Quake and Doom were at
their time, one must possess raw undiluted talent and no amount of tools,
libraries or online resources are going to help.

If it was that easy, we'd see masterpieces pop up every few months. But
instead the market is flooded with mediocrity. Which really should come as no
surprise, because we know that 90% of everything is crap. That includes
people: most people (including myself), unfortunately, aren't half as smart
and talented as they think they are. Which is why we struggle to create things
that could be considered merely "good", and "great" is completely outside of
our reach.

~~~
manuelflara
It says "to achieve success" (think Candy Crush et al), not "to create a
masterpiece".

~~~
10098
In that case his point is moot. Of course you don't need to be as bright as
Carmack to achieve some definition of success. You can be a furniture salesman
and achieve success that way. But it's like saying that water is wet.

His argument only makes sense if he implies that you don't need to be as smart
to _repeat_ id software's success these days, which I think is incorrect.

------
acoleman616
As others have mentioned in the past, I believe this is one of the best
"business" books I've ever read. Not in the traditional sense, but that only
furthers my point. Absolutely phenomenal read.

------
jmcgough
I strongly recommend the book to anyone who's at all curious in game history,
Carmack, or game development. I read it as a teenager, and it really inspired
me to become a programmer.

------
k-mcgrady
Excellent post. I've heard of the book before but never read it - although I
did just order a copy.

I liked Carmack's comments on patents. Interesting that all these years later
is still such a big issue in the software industry.

It was also very interesting to see the comparison between shareware and in-
app purchases. Never thought of that before.

------
jokoon
And here I am, with good ideas about making a persistent online single
infinite world, all the tools, but not actually working on it daily.

The weird thing, is that many other companies have the actual skills to do
what I want to do, but they don't.

Clearly my project is either stupid or I'm very lazy, or nobody is innovating
and that's what kill the market.

------
drakaal
You do need millions of dollars. Building a Game today is not what it was when
Wolf 3d was made. The number of textures the depth of the story, the voice
acting, the quality of physics that players expect to day is very different.

You can't write a Portal, or a Half Life, or a Quake, or a Halo, in you spare
time between classes at school, or even by yourself living in your mom's
basement over a year. The speed at which game tech advances is such that a one
to 5 man shop can't create a game worth million in the time it takes to be
obsolete.

Yes, there will be exceptions like Angry Birds. But most people aren't going
to be that company that just nails game play at the right time. And most those
won't be as much developers as designers.

~~~
fsckin
>Portal, or a Half Life, or a Quake, or a Halo

Portal might not be a good example to use here. It's essentially version 1.0
of Narbacular Drop, which was made by a small team of students at DigiPen.
Valve picked up the team and the retail version of the game never had more
than 10 people working on it at a time.

~~~
drakaal
10 people for a year is $1m.

And they used digital Assets from Valve, and a lot of voice work and music
work that they had to buy.

------
perlpimp
Just to the point, I am located in Russia where print copy of this book would
appear in 6months to year if at all. Technology allowed me purchase this book
and read it right away.

It is all about focus and determination nowadays, just like it always was. And
way back it took some real patience and a highly structured approach to
achieve any kind of success. And now you can the cake and eat it too -
compared to effort you needed to expend in nineties to create something.
Information wasn't just everywhere, tracing compiler bugs could make you go
down one or other rabbit hole for days if not week or two.

------
DigitalSea
They don't make programmers like Carmack any more. When he was around, Carmack
and his comrades were making the rules and paving new paths doing things that
were considered impossible. These days, finding the answers is all too easy
thanks to Stack Overflow and Github. I also feel as though the limits of
computing in a gaming sense like Quake and Doom were will never happen ever
again.

------
Sam121
One of the best game i ever play in my childhood and complete it with in 3
days, still remember the stage 3 when i have to touch space bar for open the
gate and simultaneous monster came. it was scary for me. Mainly i like to
target the oil drums :). Mine favorite weapon was the machine gun which was
available in the middle chamber with a protected suit

------
ffrryuu
Yes you do, unless you intend to rent forever.

------
danso
Carmack and Woz would've made a great engineering team...amazing that such
brilliant engineers were also so generous

~~~
MikeTLive
Would Have? ... The future is not over yet.

------
Apocryphon
Shareware seems more like Kickstarter to me, in terms of sentiment. You get
niche, hobbyist communities excited about your product, and pool up money
through grassroots efforts. Though perhaps shareware's most direct descendent
today is when creators release albums or ebooks and add a tip jar for
suggested donations.

------
varelse
As much as I admire John Carmack's bootstrapped success (and on this axis the
guy is just awesome), given how he handled the poor health of his cat, I don't
think I'd ever work with or for him. It just doesn't sit right with me.

~~~
_random_
You would've been fine! As long as you don't pee around the office.

~~~
varelse
Here's what really puzzles me. John Carmack was a legend by the time of the
Mitzi incident. Instead of dumping the poor creature at the animal shelter
like he did, he could have auctioned off "John Carmack's frickin' cat" to his
legion of admirers, giving it a new home.

Or he could have taken it to a vet and probably found out it had bladder
stones which could have been removed by a ~$1,000 procedure, but I digress.

And that I think is part of why I'm not rich like he is...

------
nachteilig
Carmack still hasn't managed to let me down after all of these years, and I've
probably tried to keep up with his happenings since the Quake days.

He's a real inspiration. If you haven't read this book already, it's really
worth it.

------
wildermuthn
Carmack's story continues at Oculus. He might be famous among the gaming world
(might not), but it won't be long until he's famous throughout the world. VR's
coming.

------
everyone
"You know how game companies spent the last 5 years figuring out that free
games with 100% in-app purchases are the optimum (and maybe, only) business
model for games today? "

What!!??

------
FridayWithJohn
Damnit, after reading that I simply had to buy myself a copy of that book.
These two guys were my childhood heros. Although my mom hated them thanks to
all the hours I spent playing Keen or Doom and "not doing my homework"

~~~
gizmo
The book is really phenomenal. Highly, highly recommended.

~~~
DigitalJack
The story is great but the writing was pretty marginal. There were scene jumps
that the author didn't give any sort of hint or clue about. There we're
complete misattributions of who was saying what.

I almost gave up on the book in the first few chapters.

