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Befriending the Goon Squad · Applied Cartography

jmduke.com · 1,776 words · saved by 1 readers

A service I admire a lot is blot.im, a headless CMS of sorts — you provide a list of files, connect Dropbox/Git/etc., and it turns it into a full blog (or portfolio, or reference, or whatever.) Blot's about page contains a list of alternatives, a move I think is always equal parts kind and useful, but with a bit of a twist: More dead competitors than alive. I've chatted with David, who runs Blot, a few times; I've never quite asked him how explicit the intent of this section is. Is it a warning? A boast? A bit of both? To me, it sends a clear message: there are many competitors that have come before; there will be many that follow; despite that all, Blot remains. This is an important message for independent developers to internalize: especially in crowded markets, survival, not victory, is the success condition. I run Buttondown, a newsletter platform. Buttondown shares very little with Blot, but they are both in very crowded spaces — awash with competitors, some of whom are amateurish

Befriending the Goon Squad 2023/07/08 TL;DR The single biggest asset that side projects and "nights and weekends" businesses have on their side is near-infinite runway. If you have near-infinite runway, your largest risk is yourself: you get bored, you get demotivated, you get distracted, etc. If you're sufficiently patient and disciplined, you can wait out the competition and rely on slow, compounding growth. This doesn't work forever, but "five years of slow growth" is often the difference between a side project and a lifestyle business. A Visit From The Goon Squad Time’s a goon, right? You

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