But if you are user because of Path A, and startup midway decided to go on Path B what is your future? What if pivot isn't working for you as user?
I get it that if you are paying user you have some support or what ever.
The reason that I'm asking is this: how to justify the trust in some new technology devolved by startup? How can I convince decision makers that this is the way to go when 1 in 10 startups fail.
I think it really depends on how big of a pivot and how good they were pre-pivot.
Rockmelt made one of my favorite browsers (UX-wise) in 2010-2011. A year later they pivoted to ... I don't even remember what anymore. But it wasn't at all a product I cared about.
"Betrayal"? I don't know. It just was pointless to me and I stopped using their products.
Would I have kept using their products if the new stuff they were building seemed useful to me? Yeah, I think so. They had enough credibility with me to give them a chance at another product.
Adopting technology produced by startups always comes with risk.
Advocating for using startup tech is an evaluation, risk calculation, and politics.
Is the potential benefit worth the risk? You have to decide that for yourself and then convince others. That involves presenting the problem and evidence this solution is worth investing time in, despite coming from a startup. Pilots, POCs, and presentations are helpful here, but you have to start from a problem or pain they hopefully already voice themselves. (In my experience)
I did this recently and spent a lot of political capital, adpinting Dagger to replace Docker for our image builds and CI, but also a custom CLI that wraps more of our CI process beyond just builds. We started with a POC approved by the CTO and then made a presentation to the managers of the other teams. That presentation centered around the many small paper cuts they complained about infrequently, but when shown together painted a bigger picture, to which we offered a solution that addressed many of those pains.
I still hear complaints about the move from Docker to Dagger, though it was only a piece of a larger problem and solution. Needless to say, I am unlikely to have sufficient political capital to spend on similar endeavors (which I don't foresee at this point)
Google being down means gmail, youtube, google docs etc are down in addition to search. Other services that depend on google's services are also down. It affects many more parts of workflows or entertainment or whatever.
That's not entirely true. They provide (partial) search for both Ecosia and Kagi and both of those to have excellent search results. Google can provide good search, they just don't use it themselves.
Last time I used it (some 8 months ago) there was Windows app and mobile app.
In order to configure, check what was going on I needed to run app on my Windows computer. I was looking into using docker or something like that, but I switched to another vendor.
“ Users are unable to use Canva
Identified - We’re aware of an issue where users are unable to access Canva and are encountering timeout errors when attempting to load the platform.
Our engineering team is actively investigating and working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Jun 21, 2025 - 21:36 AEST”
Social networks hijacked the natural reward system people have regarding interpersonal interaction.
What's the analogy for LLMs? Outsourcing thought (which used to be required to accomplish things) to a crappy simulation of it?
Or another way to look at it, engagement algorithms on social media prioritize empty content that's easy and mindless to consume. RLHF or whatever preference optimization algorithm trains LLMs prioritizes empty but plausible content that replaces real thought and writing effort.
Our stomachs (fast food), our social skills, and now our thinking are all atrophying.
It's awful that we can never seem to predict what the next big ill to society will be. We just plow forward until we crash into it, let it do its damage, and hope for the best. There is nobody at the wheel and we have big problems that we all need to find a way to deal with collectively. It's incredibly concerning.
I get it that if you are paying user you have some support or what ever.
The reason that I'm asking is this: how to justify the trust in some new technology devolved by startup? How can I convince decision makers that this is the way to go when 1 in 10 startups fail.