[msencenb]

Everyone saying it doesn't scale is missing the point.

Scaling is a winner-take-all, venture capital mindset. The article is about service businesses, which do not need to hit web scale! We are talking about services here not your web startup.

Even beyond services, giving a shit and building saas is not impossible. In fact, I wish more tech companies started small and stayed small. I absolutely want to run a digital small business and I want to give a shit, it makes the building feel purposeful instead of this product-led growth at all costs bullshit.

I hope we see a software middle class grow in the next decade. Middle class tech companies are going to be coming from the bootstrapper + founder focused funds (TinySeed / Calm) and they are going to have a distinct advantage if they understand their strategy/context in their chosen verticals.

[mooreds]

> The article is about service businesses, which do not need to hit web scale!

There are many small consultancies that are humming along, making high six figures to low seven figures a year in income, with good paying jobs and work/life balance. It can be a bit of a grind for the owners (who assume a lot of risk and have to land clients) and there are some ups and downs due to the realities of consulting (okay, just lost a big client, time to tighten the belt), but I've seen this work a number of times. Having a recurring source of income (productized service, hosting) can really help.

The main thing these companies do is "be excellent", aka give a shit.

[dendrite9]

I'm curious about how to get involved in these types of companies. They don't seem lie the easiest thing to search for, but that might just be that I don't have the exposure to know where to look.

[dsaavy]

There are a lot of people who already do this. Take a look at the MicroConf community started by Rob Walling. The middle class is growing in software, you just won't read about it (usually) on most of the social media platforms or news outlets because it's usually not a flashy story.

[rwalling]

Absolutely. We (MicroConf/TinySeed) ran some numbers to try to quantify press coverage of “boring” software companies, which confirms dsaavy’s comment: https://tinyseed.com/latest/measuring-the-depth-of-the-softw...

[cwkoss]

not giving a shit doesn't scale well either. see: our currently corporatist hellscape of a country which allows companies to defraud customers en masse and only receive a slap on a wrist fine in the unlikely case they are punished at all.

[wyre]

Idk, seems like it scales pretty well; their stock prices don’t seem affected by their not giving a shit.