help, i'm obsessed with selling saddles
where i rant about my startup crisis
saddles are my roman empire.
more specifically, the article by slack CEO “we dont sell saddles here.” if you haven’t read it yet, i highly recommend. the article talks about how slack is not in the business of selling chat software - but in selling organizational transformation. a saddle company is not selling saddles, per se, but horseback riding. [insert ford’s faster horses thing here].
essentially, don’t sell the product, but what it lets the customer do.
i, however, seem to be obsessed with selling saddles. when people ask what I am building, first my brain freezes. then i begin to mumble about user-owned data and privacy and databases — and if I’m feeling spicy i’ll even drop in a “federated” or “self-sovereign”. and usually, their eyes glaze over and they smile politely. (a few people have gotten it immediately, one of them being paul). in fact, most of the people i consider my biggest supporters, don’t know what the heck i‘m building.1
so what is my saddle?
well, i’m building a thing that lets users (you, me, everyone) create an account that can store all types of data (lets call it a personal data store). and then applications can connect to these data stores to store any kind of personal data.
but whats the point?
well, for one, it gives users privacy - they can use applications without worrying about their data being read or used without their permission. it also gives freedom - since users own their data, they can safely stop using an app they no longer like, and just take their data elsewhere (similar to how you can change your email client without losing access to your emails). for developers, it becomes an easy way to build something that is private and compliant by default. it can also be cheaper, since you no longer have to store all user data yourself. it makes onboarding users easier, since users can bring their own data. its also a really cool way to build software - you define a user data schema, and get a local-first database that syncs automatically with the users personal datastore. and then other apps can fork your schema and build features or apps on top of yours, so everything is interoperable✨.
so what am i actually selling?
is it privacy? peace of mind? an different (better?) kind of database? or an easier way to store user data? a way to turn products into platforms? or turn platforms into protocols? the fediverse?
its frustrating because I am really excited about end vision - instead of this internet of walled gardens, where megacorps own your data, the web becomes about people again - with users having more choice over their tools, and an an abundance of software products that all interop with each other, in harmony.
i was hoping to come to some sort of epiphany by the end of this article, but alas, i am still waiting, saddles in hand.
if you can offer any help, i would love to here it :)
and if you are interested in user-owned data, personal data store, federation, or saddles, i’d love to chat.
if you ask my gf, she waves her arms very dramatically and proclaims “data privacy”.
Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash