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kentonvHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I tried it as a startup once, so I know what that's like

I tried it as a startup once, so I know what that's like. It's a lot of time spent running around begging for money (from investors and from customers) rather than building technology. Workers is my startup-within-Cloudflare. It won't make me a billionaire, but it has still made me more money than I actually know what to do with, while being able to delegate all the stuff I don't like doing to other parts of the company that already do it quite well. I have a lot of influence here. The CEO and CTO listen to me. E.g. I made my argument this all needed to be open source and self hostable, and they agreed enthusiastically. I don't think I could build this better as a separate company.

Original discussionCloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work330 source comments · at import
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echelonHN

Workers is a product and you're paid to develop and sell it as an employee. I 100% understand the hustle. I do the same thing. I just don't trust a giant like Cloudflare that has done several things to weaken the open web and establish a position that is all too powerful. I don't want to give them an iota of support. Even using open source buys into their mindshare, distribution, ecosystem, and eventual supremacy and lock-in. I'd buy this from a smaller company for sure. Just not from Google, AWS, Cloudflare. If this was a YC startup I'd have given you my credit card info already. I don't know what your stock in Cloudflare is like, but your upside would be way bigger building this externally. You'd probably raise an extremely large seed round. Consider launching your own startup. Don't give Cloudflare all the upside. Edit: I didn't realize you'd already responded. Was clarifying my posit…

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echelonHN

I appreciate your extremely thoughtful answers. It greatly improves my perception and attitude about this. I'll check it out. I'm still anxious about the Cloudflare angle (and that's hard to shake), but beggars can't be choosers. You've legitimately built something cool and done a fantastic job spearheading that. Thank you for the kind and well stated response. Sounds like you've had a lot of fun building this too.

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fragmedeHN

Congratulations on making it, yet continuing the grind! Work takes on a different meaning when you could just fuck off to the beach for the rest of your life. Thank you for making it open source, not that I'd make a Cloudflare competitor with it, but the sandbox technology will be useful.

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