Ask HN: Small Biz owners (ROI $50K+), how much did Tech/Stack matter in success? - superasn
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troydavis
For my last 2 companies (both SaaS), the stack made a difference in 2 ways:

1\. Because we knew it well, it stayed out of the way. We usually knew how to
accomplish what we needed to.

2\. We enjoyed using it. Work didn’t feel as much like, er, work, and we did
it more.

Our stack may or may not have been the best, but even if it was, objective
quality wasn’t what made the difference.

To use an analogy, imagine a painter who knows their current paints and
brushes very well. We used good supplies that we knew and liked, even when
they weren’t the one that the art store was marketing. Our goal was to finish
a painting (MVP), not re-learn how to obtain the texture we want with “the
best” brushes.

For a typical small business or tiny new startup, I’d use whichever modern
stack let the team work most efficiently (including hiring/staffing, if that’s
in the plan). The difference between “any great modern stack” and “the best
stack” is smaller than the gain from the 2 benefits above.

(Tiny nit: rather than “ROI,” I think the term you want is enterprise value,
revenue, or profit)

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superasn
Thanks for the insight. I used ROI because of the char limit in the title,
would have definitely used "profit" otherwise.

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marsrover
Success is pretty foreign to me but I can definitely conclude that tech stack
hasn't affected my rate of failure.

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speedyapoc
I run an app with 1m+ DAU. For me, the server tech stack did not matter. What
did matter was the ability to iterate quickly and identify bottlenecks.
Although it was still critical, the server was not a massive component of the
overall business, which may have given me better mileage than other users with
a sub-par tech stack.

I originally started the server component using procedural PHP on $5/month
shared hosting, which ground to a halt after receiving local news exposure. As
users grew, I slowly built up the server stack to be more robust, tested, etc.
For the most part, my users were okay with these growing pains (certain parts
of the service had downtime as it expanded and grew) and they did not impact
the overall success of the app.

When starting a new product, my biggest focus would be to put together the
stack in a way which allows for the ability to expand, pivot, and change to
account for unforeseen events. I feel that in a lot of cases, too much time is
wasted debating tech stack factors which ultimately do not matter.

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superasn
Yes you are 100% correct. For my last site I used a deadly combination of PHP
and Perl (yes really CGI.pm) with Bootstrap3 and that site is still making
good income. For my next project I had this insane idea to hunt for the best
Tech/framework and I haven't gotten much done in the last 2 years. Though I
think I have mastered everything from Docker to node to Lambda in the
meantime.

Going back to laravel/vue again. Just wanted to confirm my suspicions. I think
I'm sticking to what works even though how outdated or ugly it is.

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matchmike1313
It's critical. One piece of advice though, don't worry about what the hottest
tech stack at the time is, worry about how to solve the problems your
customers are facing in an efficient and cost effective way. We thought about
the type of data our customers would generate and how they would need to
connect to our service to determine a tech stack that made sense. It was also
important for us to pick a stack that as we grew we could find cost effective
developers to work for us.

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SirLJ
Not really small business, but similar: side project building stock trading
robots with simple Python scripts + my stock exchange broker free API...

Frankly this is making me more money than my salary on average and did really
change my life and the ROI is astronomical compared to the monthly costs of
few VPS + some money for data...

Everything is working on autopilot and I am free to do whatever I like with my
time...

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mod
How did you get started learning about how trading strategies?

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SirLJ
I went and searched the internet and did test all free trading strategies I
could find...

Of course they all failed (no one in the right mind will publish a good
trading strategy period), but understand why and how I did came up with my own
ideas...

By gaining experience you will start to come up with your own ideas to test...
and this is how I found my edge in the market...

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fspear
Are you able to share any resources that you'd think would be helpful to get
someone started building stock trading robots and strategies?

Thanks in advance.

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SirLJ
Just focus on the major stock exchanges NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ, do not waste
time with crypto, options and other distractions... good luck!

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PerfectElement
For my SaaS, the tech stack mattered a lot. I resisted the temptation to pick
the hottest stack, and instead went with the boring stack I've been working
with for 10 years. This allowed me to spend more time focusing on the business
and less time fighting with the language/framework.

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muzani
I did an ecommerce recipe app. It was critical to us.

We couldn't get funding, so it was important that we could build things very
fast with limited resources. I also made the mistake of being a technical CEO,
so dev time was very limited as I had to deal with multiple distractions from
logistics to finance.

For acquisition, the tech stack was also one of the factors in the final
valuation. Nobody wants to acquire something they can't maintain (although
ironically this was what happened exactly).

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palidanx
What did your ecommerce recipe app do in particular?

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muzani
It was a low carb recipe app. People would get hooked on recipes but realize
that a lot of the ingredients (flaxseed, stevia, konjac, etc) were not sold in
stores. So we sold them those ingredients.

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malux85
Critical - Blockchain and Deep Learning landscape are changing rapidly, and
you've got to pick the winners

... I suspect I'm an outlier here though, vast majority of the time the
customer and the problem being solved doesn't care about the tech

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cm2012
SaaS apps are key for my consulting business.

