Gumroad's Interestingly Timed "Open-Source" Play

That was a rough read, not really sure I understood the authors point. It was kind of all over the place, bad because AI, bad because not really open-source, bad because doge...

Only thing I really left with was the author doesn't like the word gum. Seems like a hit piece on Sahil? Pretty sure the open-source part of Gumroad has been in the works for a while.

Extremely sad to see Sahil is working with DOGE in basically firing hundreds of thousands of Americans (that too disproportionately veterans) in the manner they have been doing it.

I have always liked reading his honest takes on running a company, their unique way of working with non-full-time employees, etc.

I wonder if he has posted about his work in this regard himself?

So what are the alternatives to gumroad? I’d been thinking of using them to sell the PDF version of a book, but after reading about the doge thing, I feel like I need to look elsewhere.

>Someone recently made the point to me that the recent rise in low-code and AI-based tooling is likely going to separate out the platforms that solve tough problems

Former design assets marketplace CEO here. Wrong ^. Low-code gives you the tools to create a website. Great. Distribution is what disrupts. Platforms won because they aggregate traffic. When you break up the platform, you diffuse the traffic along with it.

The exception is sometimes there are whales: dominant content creators that win most of the clicks. If you're interested in a lot of people winning, I'm not sure that's really all that better or different from a platform.

A few months ago, I caught Gumroad trying to roll out MOR (Merchant Operator of Record) on Twitter and immediately called them out on it. They were attempting to launch this feature before it was even completed.

They were internally rolling it out globally, even for parts of the world without a taxation system to collect on. Nevertheless, Gumroad was still planning to apply these charges. This was despite the fact that there are countless existing and affordable platforms, 100,000 times more developed—that could seamlessly integrate with Gumroad and already have this system in place. However, they decided to build it themselves.

Why? I’m not entirely sure, but I’m willing to bet it has something to do with Sahil taking a position at DOGE and perhaps an effort to obscure payment activity.

Why else? All the other scaled and fully built systems are likely to face heavy scrutiny over the next 24 months. And if a system is "still being built" or "unfinished," I guess it’s much harder to comply with regulators or provide data in response to FOIA requests, isn’t it?

things that make you go hmmmmm.

Remember when the Gumroad account on Twitter doxed someone to win an argument?

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

Avoid Gumroad's service and using the open source code.

The Gumroad CEO has been using Devin for vibe coding their codebase which adds more risk of untested code and risks of more bugs since there are less vetted engineers in the company.

As with most tech / influencers overhyping technology, I'm assuming he has invested in Devin and other AI tools and has not disclosed it.

On top of the fact that Sahil has been working for DOGE is also another reason to avoid Gumroad.

You should just use Patreon, Stripe, BuyMeACoffee, Ko-fi, etc.

It would be great if there is a migration guide for creators such to move away from Gumroad as soon as possible.

Had to skip to basically the end to find out the reason:

tl;dr:

> On March 25, tech staffers and contractors at the VA noticed an unfamiliar name trying to push changes that could impact VA.gov code. It was Sahil Lavingia, a newcomer to the agency listed in the VA’s internal directory as an adviser to the chief of staff, Christopher Syrek.

> Who’s Sahil Lavingia, you might ask? Why, the founder and CEO of Gumroad! It’s not even the central point of the piece, but the fact is, if you’re supporting Gumroad—a tool that, notably, has survived as long as it did because of a high-profile crowdfunding campaign—you’re allowing its CEO the financial freedom to work in the Department of Veterans Affairs, at the behest of DOGE, for free.

Sahil seemed to join the tech startup sphere around the time I did, back in ~2009 when he was making iPhone apps. I remember beta-testing one of his apps on my first iPhone at the age of 17, I can't imagine he was much older.

He's always been a hustler, and I don't mean that in an entirely negative or positive way. He exemplifies startup hustle culture in a way that I sometimes envy for his ability to move quickly and churn out new things, but that comes at a cost. The cost is integrity, morals, resolution, whatever you want to call it. He's a mercenary with no particular loyalty.

Gumroad has a scandal every year or two, and they're always based on jumping on the latest bandwagon. The company itself was formed in the creator hype phase that birthed Patreon and Kickstarter, it has seemingly had a full reset (i.e. layoffs back to just Sahil) twice, once when they failed to make it big, once again when layoffs were cool. That he is on the LLM hype, in a hype-driven way rather than an actually effective way, is no surprise. And lastly that he has "open-sourced" the codebase again comes across as a cynical move rather than one done for the right reasons.

All this is to say that Sahil joining DOGE is entirely on brand, both in the sense of DOGE being the epitome of the worst of startup hustle culture (we can solve every problem from first principles with some shitty code, screw actual experience!), and in the sense that this is the next bandwagon that will make him cool. Like Zuckerberg, I think Sahil is just another insecure nerd who prioritises addressing that insecurity over standing up for themselves and their beliefs.

I'm seriously considering writing a custom creator platform.

(I use Gumroad too, but my platform of choice just pulled the rug out from under me. I pay a substantial amount for "unlimited courses". Yet a month or so ago they informed me that while courses were unlimited, video uploads were not. They suggested I delete courses if I want to make new ones. I use this platform for public facing courses as well as private courses that I offer my clients. The support staff, while not a chatgpt, was not particularly helpful.)

Generally Gumroad itself is an amazing idea. It's challenging to push out products, and any platform that helps empower people to just try is a win.

I'm not sure about how the open-source element of this is supposed to work, but if it ends up with more people building things, creating and contributing, while making a dollar, that's a good thing.

>When submitted a list of questions about his work for DOGE, Lavingia told Wired: “Sorry, I’m not going to answer these, besides to say I’m unpaid. And a fan of your work!”

Crazy to me that people have actually been convinced that a bunch of billionaires and millionaires have suddenly decided to work for the good of the American people free of charge.