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Discussion on: How to Grow a Multi-Sided Platform: Start with Single Player Mode

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vuild profile image
Vuild

This is honestly the exact way it is done if you are going to do it yourself initially. If you have lower resources but lots of willpower & a very strong work ethic. You will sacrifice almost every hour of life to reading, learning, moderating, creating, answering, analyzing etc.

In return you will have something of value or something people want to invest in that is very low risk (you can then keep more equity/control which matters long term). Most startups fail, but investing in devto rn is low risk because the risky parts are working (mostly).

It's generally better to learn this way than raise for a shiny new idea, never tested unless you have the correct experience/funding.

Notice the patience to wait for solid numbers before making moves.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Yes, definitely.

Given the track record I'm pretty confident somebody would throw money at a new thing I was doing if I ever go off and do a new thing. I'd be curious to see whether it's a road I'd even be interested in venturing down if the opportunity presented itself. Hard to put myself in those shoes without literally being presented with the scenario.

As it stands now for DEV, we just take each next step as an opportunity to choose to do what's ultimately right for the community and the company which shifts a bit from opportunity to opportunity.

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vuild profile image
Vuild • Edited

Yes. You could raise well already from the serious ones based off current performance. 😳

People raise on much less experience & skill. It's not needed if you can do the early work (code, content, traction).

Money is control in these kinds of scenarios (it's clear you could repeat what is happening here, regardless of raise). MZ can do what he wants with FB due to early retention (look at fb cap table or whatever).

For dev, communities tend to run naturally in cycles a bit like product. The concerns become non-technical usually: "I remember the old days when Ben & team would answer & say nice things but nowadays you only see them on a yacht on IG & Ive been banned on DEV 3mths for calling it an ice-cream horse!!". It's more often mismanagement + some competitor pressure (medium?) not technical issues or missing features. Usually, those issues were always there underneath the whole time. The great digg > reddit migration was mostly that (the v4 redesign didn't help). Look at what happened to other big communities to determine the fate of yours, there are a bunch of cases.

Fb is an example of how to extend lifecycle (know existing ageing audience, capture new ones by being well monetized to take competitors, pivot whole org etc).

trends.google.com/trends/explore?d... product lifecycle.
trends.google.com/trends/explore?d... when you drill down.
trends.google.com/trends/explore?d... devto is pre Aug 08 here it seems (in the cycle, not scale).
trends.google.com/trends/explore?d... you can just see it lifting at the end.
trends.google.com/trends/explore?d... + power marketing
trends.google.com/trends/explore?d... saturating what's next?

Everything like goo & craigslist followed this adhoc style to some degree as people were making things up as they went (Apple being a key exception).

Arriving in tech today seems way more intimidating than watching the useless nonsense as it turned into 'industry standard' ways of doing things. To anyone new reading this, free up 18mths (ramen startup), copy Ben's technique of rolling start & be fearless. πŸ‘

Start soon as change is underway. 😊