How do software companies make their product work when they don't have time to build the right thing?

Software companies use hacks to make their product work when they don't have time to build the right thing.

What is Paul Buhit's 9010 solution?

Paul Buhit's 9010 solution encourages people to get 90% of the benefit for 10% of the work, although founders don't always appreciate it.

How did Gmail spread throughout Google?

Paul Buhit invented Gmail as a side project, building features that users wanted and eventually it spread throughout Google.

How did Facebook scale from a single user's table to hundreds of millions of people?

Facebook overcame the challenge of scaling from a single user's table to hundreds of millions of people by writing code to bounce between schools and building a global user's table.

How did Imeem create a music streaming site with no video?

Imeem hacked existing open source video tools to create a music streaming site with no video, transcoding audio uploads into video files.

Scaling Software Startups: Tips from Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel

Name: Scaling Software Startups: Tips from Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel
Uploaded: 2023-03-09 20:48:29
Description: Startups succeed by quickly identifying and fixing what's broken, then repeating the process.

This article is a summary of a YouTube video "Things That Don't Scale, The Software Edition – Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel" by Y Combinator

TLDR Startups succeed by quickly identifying and fixing what's broken, then repeating the process.

Key insights

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Pb invented Gmail by doing things that don't scale, starting with a simple UI and building every email feature any human would want to use.
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AWS revolutionized the startup world by providing fast internet access and eliminating the need for physical server maintenance.
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When creating a product, it's important to consider the scalability of the product and how it will handle peak traffic, especially for live video sites.
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The best solutions are often the simplest ones, as demonstrated by the solution to pre-populate video servers before a live stream starts.
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Innovation often comes from repurposing existing tools and technologies in creative ways, rather than reinventing the wheel.
💰

Dalton Caldwell shares a controversial solution to a revenue problem: "after 10 minutes of people watching free live video we just put up a big thing that blocked the video that said your ISP is not doing a free peering relationship with us."
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Google's MapReduce, which is now used by every big internet company, was created under duress when Google's index became stale and the search engine was secretly completely broken for an extended period of time due to the web growing too fast.
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Startups earn the privilege to work on scalable things by making something people want first.

Q&A

How do software companies make their product work when they don't have time to build the right thing?

— Software companies use hacks to make their product work when they don't have time to build the right thing.
What is Paul Buhit's 9010 solution?

— Paul Buhit's 9010 solution encourages people to get 90% of the benefit for 10% of the work, although founders don't always appreciate it.
How did Gmail spread throughout Google?

— Paul Buhit invented Gmail as a side project, building features that users wanted and eventually it spread throughout Google.
How did Facebook scale from a single user's table to hundreds of millions of people?

— Facebook overcame the challenge of scaling from a single user's table to hundreds of millions of people by writing code to bounce between schools and building a global user's table.
How did Imeem create a music streaming site with no video?

— Imeem hacked existing open source video tools to create a music streaming site with no video, transcoding audio uploads into video files.

Timestamped Summary

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00:00
Paul Buchheit's 9010 solution encourages quick hacks to get 90% of the benefit for 10% of the work, as seen with Gmail's success.
🔧

03:38
PB's quick fix of a corrupted hard drive showed the importance of email and Gmail's invite system was a necessity, not a genius growth hack.
🤖

05:46
Facebook overcame the challenge of scaling from a single user's table to hundreds of millions of people by writing code to bounce between schools and building a global user's table.
💻

09:51
Kyle and Emmitt developed an algorithm to propagate a stream across multiple video servers to handle high traffic, resulting in a few seconds delay for viewers.
💻

15:06
We hacked existing open source tools to create a music streaming site & figured out how to stream live video for free.
🤝

17:52
Create a free peering relationship with ISPs to save money, and use a website to get free translations from your community.
🤔

20:31
Google created MapReduce to address the issue of their index becoming stale due to the web growing too quickly.
🔧

23:36
Startups succeed by quickly identifying and fixing what's broken, then repeating.