Oh, it looks like we were competitors! I'm the founder of ReadMe.com, and we do API docs (as well as SDKs and more).
I don't really know why, specifically, we ended up being successful. I know I also had a lot of false starts – slightly iterating on the core idea until I hit something people were visibly excited about. I also knew it was a hard market, so I put a lot of my time and effort into non-engineering things. Hacker News was always good to us, especially as I was more vulnerable.
I'd love to hear more! I'm going to reach out privately :)
Overall, though, congrats on all the work you put in. It's incredibly hard to start a company and believe in yourself, and you should be proud!
You might have been successful, compared to konfig, because it looks like you had an 8-year headstart. It could be that konfig was a fine idea and well executed, just not at the right time.
Maybe, but there’s a number of companies in the SDK space that popped up the past 3 years and are seemingly successful. And there were a number of companies back when we started that are no longer around.
Since you're here, I wanted to say that the css transition on readme's login has stuck with me as the strongest branding element I can recall. Kudos to whomever came up with that because it is just excellent
I don't really know why, specifically, we ended up being successful. I know I also had a lot of false starts – slightly iterating on the core idea until I hit something people were visibly excited about. I also knew it was a hard market, so I put a lot of my time and effort into non-engineering things. Hacker News was always good to us, especially as I was more vulnerable.
I'd love to hear more! I'm going to reach out privately :)
Overall, though, congrats on all the work you put in. It's incredibly hard to start a company and believe in yourself, and you should be proud!