
Can a startup fail because its product is not a SPA? - itwy
I was reading an article posted on Hacker News yesterday about shipping an MVP&#x2F;premature optimization. One of the commenters stated that a startup of his failed because the entire page was getting refreshed!<p>I personally despise developing&#x2F;using heavy SPA apps and prefer server rendered applications with AJAX sprinkled where needed (much like GitHub and GitLab).<p>What do you guys think about this? Do users really notice the subtle differences between the two?
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cocktailpeanuts
One thing I've learned along the way is: Don't listen to "advice" from
failures. People who have only failed will do you nothing good because they
don't know why they failed (at least until they keep trying and eventually
manage to succeed). They think they do, but they don't. It's like asking
people of the ancient world if the earth is round. Their reality doesn't
include a rounded earth, so they will of course say it's flat, and they would
be 100% confident that they're right.

Also even the people who succeeded don't really know why they succeeded. In
fact, the more successful they are the more clear they will be about the fact
that they don't know how they succeeded. They will say something along the
lines of "we succeeded because of luck and persistence and sometimes a bit of
clever ideas". If you don't believe me just find someone successful and ask
that question, if you can.

"I failed because my site wasn't an SPA" was the stupidest thing I've ever
heard. It's nothing more than a backward rationalization to make himself feel
better so that he can deny the fact that he was simply incompetent in many
aspects. That's why you don't take advice from these people.

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itwy
Makes sense, thanks for the perspective.

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scaryclam
I seriously doubt that his startup failed because the whole page was being
refreshed. More likely, it was a multitude of reasons, one of which was a bad
UI, which he then blamed on the full refresh rather than the real problems
with it.

I'd suggest that a better question is "Can a startup fail because its product
is an unnecessary SPA?". Users most definitely see differences between the
two, mostly that a bad SPA is unusable where a bad multi-page website can
still be useful.

Go with your gut instinct. Server rendered with JS and AJAX sprinkled where it
makes sense is a much nicer user experience and can also be extremely powerful
where it counts.

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itwy
I figured as much just wanted to hear it from someone else. Thank you :)

