This is one of those vanity blog posts, a “look at us, we’re open” blog posts without actual openness, or rather, limited openness where it helps their image and not openness that could backfire.
Businesses don’t operate based on revenue. They operate based on profit. They operate based on operating expenses. They operate based off of free cash flow. Showing off revenue and number of accounts is showing off a tiny portion of the picture, and says nothing about the health of a business.
If you’re looking to ‘be open’ about the health of your business, then the operating costs would be shared, the amount the founders are ‘taking out’ of the business in dividends would be shared.
There are businesses that operate 20MM a year in revenue, but practically speaking are broke, because of the way the business is being run.
So for folks that don’t know better, this is a very cool thing ente is doing. For folks that run businesses and know better, this is a way to show off and ‘gain cred’ without actually having to be open about how the business operates.
I have been impressed with Ente products and customer service. It's good to see they are growing. That said, revenue information is not entirely helpful in a vacuum. I'd be more keen on seeing profit (even at a lower timeline resolution). What's the average cost for taking on a new customer? What's the retention/turnover? Etc. That said the products are great and I'd recommend them to anyone.
I wish I could say the same. I tried Ente the other day, to see how it compares to Immich, but it was very hit-and-miss. Face recognition for people never worked, no matter what I tried, for example.
I found it over blown. It took me far too long looking past the ducks to find out what Ente actually does. The design team don’t seem to be interested in the product.
Publishing operating costs will create operational overhead, since we've to manually consolidate, label and publish expense records. Not excited about doing that right now, but would like to in the future.
Currently we've runway for a few years, and a margin of ~70% – entirety of which is reinvested into building Ente.
If your margins are about 70%, do you have any plans to reduce your prices? Compared to other photo storage platforms, your pricing seems a lot higher. End to end encryption seems to be the only USP when a person looks at your hosted offering.
70% is our gross margin. We have expenses outside of infrastructure (people, ops, marketing, ...).
We have to reduce our prices, to make Ente's products accessible to a wider audience. But right now the focus is on building a sustainable business and increasing the probability of this business outliving us.
This is one of those vanity blog posts, a “look at us, we’re open” blog posts without actual openness, or rather, limited openness where it helps their image and not openness that could backfire.
Businesses don’t operate based on revenue. They operate based on profit. They operate based on operating expenses. They operate based off of free cash flow. Showing off revenue and number of accounts is showing off a tiny portion of the picture, and says nothing about the health of a business.
If you’re looking to ‘be open’ about the health of your business, then the operating costs would be shared, the amount the founders are ‘taking out’ of the business in dividends would be shared.
There are businesses that operate 20MM a year in revenue, but practically speaking are broke, because of the way the business is being run.
So for folks that don’t know better, this is a very cool thing ente is doing. For folks that run businesses and know better, this is a way to show off and ‘gain cred’ without actually having to be open about how the business operates.
I have been impressed with Ente products and customer service. It's good to see they are growing. That said, revenue information is not entirely helpful in a vacuum. I'd be more keen on seeing profit (even at a lower timeline resolution). What's the average cost for taking on a new customer? What's the retention/turnover? Etc. That said the products are great and I'd recommend them to anyone.
I wish I could say the same. I tried Ente the other day, to see how it compares to Immich, but it was very hit-and-miss. Face recognition for people never worked, no matter what I tried, for example.
Kinda unrelated, but the art direction on Ente's site is really top-notch.
I came to the comments to say the same thing! I would love to take a seminar or a class from the folks in their design department.
I found it over blown. It took me far too long looking past the ducks to find out what Ente actually does. The design team don’t seem to be interested in the product.
This is great - would love to see more data tho! I guess they are shy to post EBITDA, infra costs?
Hi, answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933905
This is so cool. Congratulations! Have you considered opening operating costs as well?
ente.com/open is fully automated.
Publishing operating costs will create operational overhead, since we've to manually consolidate, label and publish expense records. Not excited about doing that right now, but would like to in the future.
Currently we've runway for a few years, and a margin of ~70% – entirety of which is reinvested into building Ente.
If your margins are about 70%, do you have any plans to reduce your prices? Compared to other photo storage platforms, your pricing seems a lot higher. End to end encryption seems to be the only USP when a person looks at your hosted offering.
70% is our gross margin. We have expenses outside of infrastructure (people, ops, marketing, ...).
We have to reduce our prices, to make Ente's products accessible to a wider audience. But right now the focus is on building a sustainable business and increasing the probability of this business outliving us.
Ente feels a lot like Smugmug did back then.
Thanks, I'm a fan of Smugmug :)