The Past, Present, and Future of Sketch
Pieter Omvlee (via Hacker News):
We set out to build it for websites and icons, then it became popular for design applications when those became more popular.
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It started out with just my friend and me, and right now it’s 13 people. A few people fill multiple roles, but I would say 6 developers, a few designers, support, QA and someone who deals with the plugin and scripting community.
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The fact that I’m not in the Valley also means that I don’t have to pay your very high rents and other premium costs of living. Another advantage I see is the fact that we’re completely remote. It means we don’t necessarily have to compete with those who need to live physically there. We can hire people who are perfectly happy living on an island off the coast of Scotland and just hire them because they are good and wouldn’t require—or even want to—move to San Francisco, or Amsterdam, or wherever.
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There is always risk from competitors. Adobe announced Comet a few months ago. This definitely poses a serious threat. The risk with a company like Adobe is that it doesn’t have to be an instant success for them. They can lose money on it for years while they improve it — and they clearly have enough talented people in their company to do so, so I do feel some pressure from that announcement.
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I absolutely agree that a one-time fee for an application is not sustainable. I also know that we don’t want to switch to a subscription model.
