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Why don't you use email encryption? | Zarathu: I just use SSL to access the IMAP and SMTP servers. Anything more than that, I couldn't particularly care less. It's not like I send credit card information over email.Email was designed to be a relatively simple way to send basic messages. In itself, it's an insecure platform. If you want security, use something else. |
To porn or not to porn? | kwamenum86: If you are worried about ruining your rep by getting into porn and your startups are not making any money then just get a job. |
What do you wish Google Analytics would do? | Harkins: Let me export my raw hit data so I can run my own analyses, or switch to competitors if GA isn't gooing to add features.And track clicks on AdSense ads as my goal. |
Why don't you use email encryption? | jodrellblank: Encryption is all mixed up with PKI and certificates and that whole bundle of (overly)complex stuff that I really don't want to have to bother with any more than I have to.I think I have GPG running somewhere, but know only one person who used it. I like that they pushed me to use it, but haven't needed to email them since.Whatever it was would have to work on all the ways I read my main email (iPhone, Browser, Outlook), and not involve typing a decryption password for every email or even every time I check for mail. |
Why don't you use email encryption? | smanek: I think the key problem (no pun intended) is that email encryption can't be securely implemented on the server side.Simply put, most of the people who are paranoid enough to need email encryption don't trust Google (GMail) with their PGP private keys. Therefore, they either have to use an offline email client (unacceptable to a lot of people) or install a brittle and poorly integrated third-party solution like FireGPG (which the vast majority of users will never do). |
Stats on freemium services | e1ven: One link I can give is http://nabeel.typepad.com/brinking/2008/09/theres-been-som.h...Overall, Freemium conversion rates are way down right now. I might suspect that users are feeling less wealthy, and not opting to pay for anything that's not absolutely necessary. |
What is an expected compensation for a startup yet to launch a product ? | brk: 1000 options out of what? If it's a pool of 10,000 that's a good deal. If it's out of 10,000,000 then probably not.What do they plan to increase the pool to as part of the funding?What is the estimated pre and post-money stock price? |
Why don't you use email encryption? | stevedekorte: I'd be happy to use it if the only user interaction was flipping a preference switch. |
Stats on freemium services | patio11: Google for SXSW Webapp Autopsy. (Oh, heck, I'll do it for you. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_web_app_autopsy.ph... ) There is a lot of good in there.Personally I think the data is of limited use even for benchmarking but, eh, your funeral. Users of my downloadable app convert to the paid version at about 1.8%~2.2% most months. There is a bit of guesswork involved there as counting downloads is not quite as reliable as "select count(*) from accounts;" . |
Why don't you use email encryption? | mdasen: Why don't we use HTTPS for everything we send over the internet? Why don't we have locks on on all our mailboxes? In fact, the post is just terribly insecure. Heck, plenty of people who live in more rural areas don't even lock the doors to their house.There are lots of reasons, but when you get down to it, we just don't care that much about security. |
To porn or not to porn? | theBobMcCormick: Why not? What's more natural than sex?Frankly, I'm tired of all the bogus social stigma against a healthy interest in sex and porn. |
What is an expected compensation for a startup yet to launch a product ? | rw: > "once the product is launched and gains traction to a massive user base."Don't kid yourself, this is hard to do. |
Why don't you use email encryption? | iuguy: My business does. Anything commercially confidential is encrypted in transit and at rest on anything portable (file encryption isn't currently set up on the servers but will be in the next refresh).FWIW the way to use it successfully is to use it to get people to think about the sensitivity of the data (as in 'should I send this unencrypted?') as opposed to using it for everything. People that gripe and moan about it at work tend not to need it and are generally less exposed to it. Those that need it understand why. |
What is an expected compensation for a startup yet to launch a product ? | iuguy: I would avoid talking about shares till it starts to take off. It might be worth getting agreement on what will happen if it takes off. Otherwise you might feel locked in to something you can't walk away from easily. |
To porn or not to porn? | skmurphy: There is an investment site http://www.adultvest.com/ that specializes in "adult entertainment" startups. It appears to be a legitimate investment group.http://venturebeat.com/2005/12/21/adultvest-investment-commu...http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2...http://www.hedgeco.net/news/06/2008/adultvest-hedge-fund-acq... |
What is an expected compensation for a startup yet to launch a product ? | vaksel: find out what % that 1000 options make up.But you should definitely look for some cash on the side. Even if its a measly 500 bucks a month |
Stats on freemium services | vaksel: You can't really compare yourself to those guys. Sure they might have ~2% conversion rates...but thats because their users trust that they pay for quality, You on the other hand will be an unknown, so they'll be more hesitant to give up the credit card info. To be on the safe side, put your conversion rate at .5%. |
What do you wish Google Analytics would do? | jyothi: - better funnel graphs. Meaning their funnel logic doesn't work for anything but straight simple navigation - tree like. I would rather need something like what statviz generates.- A drill down upto session level navigation.- A query editor that can expose a view of the db of critical visit data. Could be more like a user writing MDX queries on cubes.- Ofcourse, fixed time stats - A user knows the frequency of update on his/her site stats. (note i am not using real-time). On GA no one knows when does ones' site gets updated. I have had instances where partial traffic for a period gets updated. Instances where today's data has started coming in perfectly but yesterday's 2 hr window shows 0 visitors. |
To porn or not to porn? | mhb: The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.Norman Schwarzkopf |
When Does a Startup Need Management? | plinkplonk: The problem is not in having managers. As many posts here point out, someone has to do all that stuff anyway.The problem arises when managers have more power than engineers. In large organizations, by default, managers have more pay, perks and power than even the seniormost engineer/hacker. Avoid this imbalance and you'll be fine. |
Why don't you use email encryption? | briansmith: Most users will only use encrypted/signed email if encryption and signing is done automatically. If the automatic encryption/decryption/signing/verification is done by the server (e.g. GMail), security gurus will complain that it isn't secure enough.If the encryption/decryption is done in the "totally secure" way on the client, users complain that they are locked out of their email too often (can't access it from a secondary location and/or lost their keys).Average users don't have an effective method for exchanging keys.Email security doesn't really work without a signing mechanism that results in nonrepudiation. But, a lot of users don't want nonrepudiation for the messages they send; they want nonrepudiation for the messages they receive and 100% repudiation for the messages they send. To implement that, you need some kind of expiring signing keys, separate from the encryption keys, which S/MIME and GPG UAs don't natively support.Consumer-level email services are mostly webmail at this point. There is no good solution for securing webmail beyond TLS encryption between SMTP endpoints (e.g. between Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo, and between the browser and the server). However, your email is still just a subpoena away at every endpoint.Server-side spam filtering doesn't work with encryption. As soon as spammers start using your encryption key, the spam will pass right through the filters. That means you need to keep your encryption key private. But, that makes key exchange and revocation checks even more difficult.Online certificate revocation checks are important for email security. However, the process of doing the revocation check leaks sensitive information (who you are corresponding with) if it is optimized for performance. The current means of revocation checking that is optimized for privacy has unworkable performance issues. A new, nonstandard, mechanism for doing revocation checks is needed. But, everybody hates anything proprietery, so it would have to be standardized, but the standardization process will take years.Everything related to internet email has been free/open source/public domain since the beginning. Any solution that someone comes up with will have to be opened up and freely given away--including the specifications and reference implementations--before it has any chance of being adopted. This limits revenues. Yet, you need a costly infrastructure to implement the service levels that users expect from email (99.9% uptime and high performance and pennies a day or free).I have been working on a solution to most of these problems but I don't have the resources to move it forward. Please email me (brian@briansmith.org) if you are serious about coming up with improvements to everyday email security so that we can compare notes. |
To porn or not to porn? | TooMuchNick: The semi-social, semi-user-generated porn site fantasti.cc was created by a group of popular dot-commers (I know who but I can't tell) who have so far kept their names off the site. One of my partners at Boffery (a pre-alpha visual diary for sex lives) did some work for them, and that partner and I agree that the site would benefit from the name brands of the dot-commers.In a supposedly enlightened modern world, and more importantly a world in which every man with a computer uses it several times a week to view porn and nearly every man and woman masturbates daily, is there really so much shame in being the person who provides those services?I have no data on who the most financially successful sex aid and porn makers are, but we certainly all know of some success stories, and we know them by their legal names: Hugh Hefner, Sasha Grey, Larry Flynt. The founders of JimmyJane (a high-market sex toy maker and seller) are out in the open, as is their investor Tim Draper.Sex sites aren't exactly parallel to porn sites, but it's the closest comparison I have. In its early days, Boffery will need every advantage I can give it, and one is my small amount of notoriety online (both as Nick Douglas and as "the first editor of Valleywag").I've heard a few stories: FriendFinder calls itself a "social network" when talking to money people. JimmyJane has a different corporate name, but one still assumes Tim Draper knows exactly what he's investing in.In short, if you don't want to be associated with your industry, you're at a huge disadvantage (your competitors will profit from risking more of their personal reputations) and possibly even have some moral questions to ask yourself. Why do you want to spend time profiting from anything if you feel it would taint your name? |
Why don't you use email encryption? | mjgoins: Because when you search through your email, it has to be already decrypted, so why bother?On the other hand, I cryptographically sign all of my email, so those who use the web of trust have a reasonable assurance it came from me. |
To porn or not to porn? | mattmaroon: I have no moral qualms with it, but I wouldn't because it's just not a good investment. In my travels I've bumped into some people who've succeeded at it (one of whom writes a fascinating blog about the industry) and it's not easy.For one, there's serious capital outlay. Producing porn is not cheap. Good female performers charge $1k-$2k per scene. Males are $300-$500, but significantly less reliable. They're really more important too, since their job is much more demanding. Thanks to lubricants, a female can pretty much phone it in so any hot model will do. But good luck finding a guy who will show up, not be coked out, and be able to get it up and keep it up, and pop when and where you tell him to. You're going to have entire shoots largely wasted due to this.You have to rent locations, camera men, lighting people. You're easily looking at $4k-$5k per scene. To get people to pay money, top sites put out 10 or more scenes per week. Can you fund this until reach the critical mass needed to break even? If so I suspect you wouldn't be considering doing this in the first place.You have to move to L.A. pretty much. That's where all of the adult modeling agencies are, and California is the only state in which shooting a porn does not constitute illegal prostitution.You have to design the web software, which is not trivial. You're delivering videos so your incremental costs are high. You have to deal with payments, which usually means a very expensive third-party provider. The rake is high because of the very high rate of charge backs (which usually occur when the wife sees the charge on the monthly statement and the husband suddenly can't determine what it is and decides its bogus) which in turn makes credit card companies often decline those purchases, so the processors play a game of cat and mouse (much like companies that process payments to casinos, which is how I know this part) by changing their business names and category codes. In fact, you need multiple processors, because each one on its own will fail a large portion of the time. It wouldn't be worth your time to try to process payments yourself.You have to set up and run an affiliate program, which is the main way these sites get traffic. That will require networking with some of the millions of free sites. You have to find a good way of getting content to them, running promotions. The major sites pay up to 70% in affiliate fees.People tend to think that because the industry is unsavory, it therefore is less competitive, but really the opposite is true. Just like selling drugs is way more competitive than selling tires (to my knowledge Goodyear employees don't run drivebys on local Firestone plants) porn is way more competitive than most other industries. |
Why don't you use email encryption? | bayareaguy: Although I get a lot of email, I don't really send much and most of what I send is that I can't meet $person when they want because of $reason and that I would rather meet at $date. That sort of thing
isn't really sensitive.That said, I occasionally exchange details that could be covered by an NDA and for those cases I'll just send an OpenSSL encrypted attachment. Most people I work with don't have a problem with that
and the few that do are easily helped by simply reminding them of the syntax: % openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in document.pdf.aes256 -out document.pdf
The biggest problem I have is that people rarely think about the sensitivity of things they send to me unless I explicitly remind them to. |
Favorite Technology Company Superbowl Ads? | anamax: While there have been many good ads that debuted at the superbowl, only a few have been great superbowl ads, that is, that have taken advantage of the context.I think that the best superbowl ad was the e-trade ad at the beginning of the 1999 or 2000 superbowl that had a chimp dancing in a garage.The caption was something like "We just blew $2 million on this ad. What's your retirement plan?"The following year, after it was clear that the dot-com bust was real, e-trade had another superbowl ad. In this ad, a chimp led a horse through a ghost-town of dot-com mascots. (Yup, including the sock monkey.) The end shot was of a rocket, presumably taking the chimp into space. |
To porn or not to porn? | astrodust: The trouble with trying to cross-fund ventures like that is it might diffuse the focus of your business. The way you succeed is by doing what you do best, which is ideally better than the competition and something that's in demand.I'd say you're faced with a few ways of raising capital, one of which is investing in a porn site. While web sites may be web sites, I'd suggest that running an adult-themed one is more problematic than most because people will always think themselves clever and try and crack their way in past your pay-wall. Without the right precautions, this could take a fair bit of time to either set up or, in the case of breeches, to patch up the compromised accounts.If you don't want to get directly involved, you might want to consider exploring what you can do to make money from that sort of thing without running a site yourself. For example, this friend of yours may need some technology developed for their properties, and as you have many developers on hand, it could be trivial to crank out something like that for profit without impacting your other project too badly.That way you get better at doing what you're best at, such as development, without getting distracted over the long-term with other side projects. |
First startup / cold feet. Any advice ? | lionhearted: Random advice you'll need: Spend as much time as you possible can trying to get money.Just start now. Get some money.Do it. Get some money. Are you spending time getting money? No? Do it! Stop redesigning your website. Get some money.Product's rough? Offer it for 20% of what you'll sell it for later, with free upgrades. Do it. Get some money.Are you spending time getting some money? Spend more time getting money.Man... get some money. Stop messing around with a logo. You don't need a logo. You need money.Improving the product? I actually spend waaaay too much time historically doing product development. I understand. But STOP! And get some money.Get some money, man. From customers or clients. Beg for money, barter for money, work for money, do way more than you'd ever reasonably do for some money.Just get some f*ing money, man. Money means people value your things and you're on the right track. Get money. ASAP. Especially in your first business. Money means you can sell, money means you can get loans, money means the business banker takes you seriously, money means they break the rules and wipe off charges for you (or give you telephone wire-transfer access before you're qualified, which you need to pay people when you're outside the USA traveling, and trying to get money from some people in Berlin). Money means you get lines of credit, or net-30 terms instead of paid up front. Money means later, you can pay people to do the most horrible aspects of your business once you've fully mastered them. Money means you're doing something of value.Mate - stop designing your logo and color scheme, and get some money. It's the only way. |
What do you wish Google Analytics would do? | jonursenbach: Ability to see your stats in realtime would be fantastic. |
How does this AddThis.com make money? | tsetse-fly: Is this some sort of ploy to get us to visit that site?It's simple: if you're not selling anything, whether it's goods, services, or ads, then you're not making money. Not all sites on the Internet exist for profit. |
www and non www redirection issue. Somebody help! | sam_in_nyc: This is going to sound blunt, but I mean it politely: Hacker News is not for tech support.I would suggest heading over to StackOverflow.com, or one of many webmaster community forums to ask this. |
Stats on freemium services | timcederman: Where's Andrew Chen when you need him? |
Stats on freemium services | catone: Ryan Carson shared stats for DropSend a couple of years ago on Vitamin: http://thinkvitamin.com/business/will-your-web-app-make-mone... |
How does this AddThis.com make money? | tdavis: I don't think they do, unless they offer some premium plan I am unaware of. We use AddThis and honestly don't have much faith in them; it took over a week to reply to our e-mail informing them of a bug that was keeping us from logging into their analytics. |
When Does a Startup Need Management? | known: Give engineers right tools to do their job. They will manage themselves. |
www and non www redirection issue. Somebody help! | RobGR: Are you using some kind of hosting company's graphical configuration ? It sounds like you should not have made www.abc.com forward to itself, and that you are probably ok now, but it's hard to tell.To really know what is going on here, we would need to know more details -- for instance, by "domain forwarding" do you mean a CNAME record, or a rewrite rule on an apache web server ?Also, can any cgi code running on abc.example.com tell what name the browser is being used to reach it ? This might matter for the code you use to run the site.You can educate yourself about these issues without learning everything in the world about the internet, and if you are going to be making money from web sites that would probably be a good idea. |
First startup / cold feet. Any advice ? | smwhreyebelong: Thanks for the invaluable advice, everyone. Really appreciate you guys taking out the time to reply !!I've made the decision ... it's going to be a startup. If nothing else, it will be one dandy adventure !thanks again! |
Stats on freemium services | pierrefar: Don Dodge from Microsoft had this post a long time ago: http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/05/freem...Money quote: "The average is less than 3% conversion." |
When Does a Startup Need Management? | vikram: Management is to general. What specifically do you want this person to do? Build plans? Make decisions? Make sure the office is clean?If it is shape our business. I would say you need someone with a background in what you guys are working on. I think it'll be difficult to find this person out of your core group. One of you needs to do this job for the time being. |
To porn or not to porn? | SystemOut: I'm the head of software engineering for a decent sized porn company so I know a little about this. I personaly wouldn't worry about your VC concern but then again I don't see myself ever doing a project where I need VC money. That's just the reality of me disliking the large VC firm approach. I doubt angel fund types would give a rat's ass about whether or not you did porn related work in the past. That being said, if you're doing anything that is easily traceable or even moderately traceable then I would say don't do it. Why? Here's why:The only way you can make decent money quick in the porn business is if one, you know how to get and drive traffic to the right sites and two, you can optimize which sites to send your traffic to based on their conversion ratio and payout amounts. There's no way to make money quick as a porn producer...just as an affiliate or some other traffic referrer and even then you are going to wait a minimum of a month to two months before you see that money because porn companies are going to make sure you're aren't scamming them with signups where you are buying memberships with stolen numbers. And as a true distributor? Well, that's going to take a while because you have to shoot the porn, edit the porn, get the bank to approve the type of porn you're doing, setup an affiliate network, get the traffic to come to your site and actually sell it. And that's after paying out a bunch of money to models and other folks. Therefore, I'm concluding you are going to be an affiliate. Good luck. Even sites like YouPorn don't make that much money from affiliate sales and they drive a crapload of traffic...although admittedly their traffic is sucky because they like free porn. It takes a while to get going as an affiliate. I have a friend that drives traffic to dating sites and he makes decent money at it but it's a time sink to be honest. Also, vanilla porn is way down from what I hear...there's so many companies making it and there's so much free stuff out there that it's just not the money maker it used to be.I'd ask your friend how long it took him before he was making REAL money. I mean, unless you guys are just amazing and finding good quality traffic (that's the rub) it's really hard to make money quickly in the porn affiliate world.Why don't you just have him "hire" you to make rent money and start up a bunch of new sites or projects for him so it's under his name and you never have to worry about it. He can keep them going later and reap the profits. You can even do it under the table if necessary so there's no messy legal trail for someone to find. Seems a lot easier to me. |
Stats on freemium services | zokiboy: To cheer things a bit, here are some higher numbers:Flickr: 5-10%
Ning: 3%
Online free-to-play games: up to 25%
TurboTax Online: 70% (!!)Source: http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2008/11/freemium-math-...My opinion: it depends on a lot of factors. From my experience without much effort you can get 1% users convert. But like I said there a lot of variables that can mess it up or down. |
Does anybody have the link to the trading systems post? (couple months back) | MaysonL: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=390413 |
How does this AddThis.com make money? | bemmu: Seems difficult to make money with this, but here's a few ideas.They could charge new link sharing sites for the privilege of being available in their widget, or for better placement.They could start their own link sharing site / link aggregator based on the data they gather from the widgets, then of course also get prominent placement in the widget for the new site.They could show a small ad in the widget. |
Stats on freemium services | Jem: Not flickr or last.fm, but... 16 out of 757 users on one of my sites. I work that out to be 2.1%-ish? (The site opened in November 08) |
To porn or not to porn? | mroman: From recent, direct experience:9 out of 10 people you come across in that industry are not people you want to deal with.Trust me. |
To porn or not to porn? | greyman: >>> My question is this: Would you (startups/entrepreneurs/VCs/funders/anyone in the industry) do business or be associated with someone in the porn industry?No. Don't do it. Your name will get associated with porn and you will not be able to get rid of it completely in the future, even if you will want to. Just my advice... |
When Does a Startup Need Management? | paulsb: I don't think you are looking for managers, but rather advisor's. At your stage you need people who have "been there and done that". I imagine that you and your team are technically focused (building the tech and filing for patents), but you need advisor's to help you shape the business.My experience is that I am too technically focused, but my advisor's help me and teach me about the business side of things. At a later date, when I have employees, then I will think about getting managers, and I will also try and keep hold of my advisor's as directors.People who have done it before and raised funding will help you shape the business to raise funding, not managers. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | pclark: I'll give my thoughts. I'm a nobody though.* very slow to load* Awesome logo - did you make it?* I don't know what it is. "s3mer is a complete dynamic digital signage solution designed to be easy to use, cross platform and feature rich."Does this mean digital code signing or advertising signs? The image with the reflection doesn't indidcate what it is.* your sign up form is too long. Which fields are required?* there isn't an "other" field for the industry.* Why is there a captcha?++++ for not having email verificationI stopped here because I still have no idea what it does. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | Harkins: Who is the audience for your homepage?People without offline advertising experience don't know the phrase "digital signage". If you're lucky they will leave through the Wikipedia link and learn the term, but that page only tells them "Ah, this is something I don't care about" so they won't return.People with offline advertising experience won't learn about s3mer from your homepage. It doesn't explain why s3mer is better than other products. The only information is a few bullet points about video encoding, and that's selling features instead of benefits. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | sanj: Have you considered working with someone in PR?I used to be dead-set against that advice, but good PR folks act as a quality filter to many of the big-name tech bloggers. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | Maro: Even after browsing the site, it's not clear what it's about. It has to do with playing ads on a screen, but what's the concept? Do I get payed for playing someone else's ad? Is this a piece of software for creating ads for myself? You mention a downloadable application, but in the movies everything is happening inside a browser running something on localhost. It's all very confusing to me. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | riklomas: I immediately clicked on the video because I didn't understand what the concept was. You should make the video larger (I don't want to full screen) and maybe do a commentary soundtrack with it to help get across what you're doing |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | markessien: Start of by explaining what the software does. It's not explained on the frontpage. Secondly, people don't cover technology, they cover human interest stories. You have no angle at all. Create and angle and retry. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | ryanwaggoner: Is this software that's designed to run on flatscreens in coffee shops and retail stores? Who is the audience for the site? |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | damienkatz: I had no idea what your site or product page did until I found this link, then it instantly made sense.http://www.s3mer.com/tour.phpI suggest you change your homepage to be a lot more like the tour page. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | ssharp: Spit in their face.I deserve the down mod. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | RiderOfGiraffes: You need to tell me what problem it solves, and only then tell me how marvellous it is. Don't give me loads of buzzwords - the "Ginger Factor" is very large. Tell me the situation where it is useful. I, like others here, don't really know what you're providing.And again, the video is too small, and it all takes too long to load. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | enra: If you can't get big guys talk about you, try to contact some smaller and local ones. Atleast we at ArcticStartup are happy to know about new startups but actually very few contact us directly.And if you contact them use some to explain what the startup does, why and how are you etc. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | arthurk: Here are my thoughts:* Slow load time (I'm located in Europe)* It's not clear what your startup does. At first, I thought it would be something using Amazon S3 because of the name "s3mer". The "What is s3mer?" section is also very unclear to me.* Why the Adobe Air, Mac, Windows XP and Windows Vista logos? If it runs on Air wouldn't it also run on Linux?* The "Change Language" overlay is blinking when the site is loading and displayed by default (WebKit nightly ;-)) |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | bendtheblock: If this is what I think it is, I like the general idea of the product. It's for big screens in train stations, taxis etc. right?People usually understand things better with examples, so I would try and get some images of it in action (on an actual screen, in an actual public place) on the front page.Kudos to Harkins point - the front page should show benefits rather than features, and be targeted to a specific audience. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | gravitycop: For the past few weeks I tried to get bloggers to review my startupShow it to people they trust, who are easier to access. The reason is: startup bloggers get flooded with nearly-identical requests. They are more likely to pay attention to you if you first pass the screening test of a trusted friend of theirs. If your startup is interesting, a recommendation from the friend will be passed along. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | Mystalic: You simply have to have a compelling product. You have to have an easy-to-understand product, You have to have a very simple two line pitch.I throw all the press releases away. I care a lot more about a good two sentence pitch.Butt really, you need to email them that quick pitch to the appropriate email, or get in contact with the right people. It's about connections and promoting a solid product.Maro's right, though - I'm still not sure what it's all about. Your description's bad.*Disclaimer: I write for Mashable |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | aditya: Peldi has some good advice on this,
(Startup Marketing Advice from Balsamiq Studio) http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=198 |
Business and programming? | pj: The two are not mutually exclusive. You can do business while learning programming. Programming /will/ help you in business because with programming you can find answers easier.The first thing I would do if I were you and I know what I know now, I would investigate Platforms as a Service. These services allow you to get up and running with a database driven application very quickly and they reduce the amount of "stuff" you have to learn to build systems. Your goal as a business person is not to be the person everyone goes to to get code done, but they'll come to you for answers in the form of reports, charts, and analysis. Today, you can get very far in that direction without programming. My opinion is that web based Platforms as a Service (PaaS) are the future of systems development. Many will disagree.Lots of people will also disagree with me when I say this, but I would suggest if you are going to learn programming, start with SQL. It's not /that/ difficult, but it is very very powerful. What you want to do as a business person is get complex answers out of a database of numbers. If you sit at the top of a company, you want to be able to drill into any piece of data, any aggregate you want and get the answer you need. These are the kinds of answers you will find yourself relying on a computer guy to get for you.Why do I say SQL? Because nearly every system you will ever use will use SQL. It'll use SQL to create, read, update, and delete data in those massive databases you use. Even if the SQL isn't exposed, you can use SQL to mine your own datasets outside applications. Export them, then import them into your personal database and go to town. You'll be amazed at the answers you can dig out with SQL that you can't get any other way.The first thing you will have to do is install a database server, which you'll need for nearly any kind of business programming anyway. Go with Microsoft SQL Server Express, or MySQL. It depends on your work environment and what most people around you know. Use whatever most people around you use. You can choose something else later.Now, once you learn SQL, you will naturally want to display the results you find on a web page. At that point, you'll learn JavaScript and HTML, plus a connector language like .NET, PHP, or Java (unless you go with a Platform as a Service).If you want to skip SQL, I say learn JavaScript. It's very powerful and used in the browser, so nearly every website uses it. There are tons of tutorials and examples on the web. You can use it on the Pre. It's nearly ubiquitous anymore and all you need to get started is a text editor and a web browser. Most other languages require a lot of setup, installation, and configuration of development environments.That's my $0.02. Ask programmers you know in the real world. They'll be invaluable when you run into problems installing the database, connecting it up and getting something working at all. Once you have that, the sky is the limit.P.S. Your english is totally fine. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | racerrick: I think it's best to focus on one site/blogger that you really really want to get a review from and then create a campaign to get some coverage.This takes weeks or months, not days.Start by commenting as much as you can. It's best to be one of the very first commenters and make thoughtful comments. Always make sure to link to a page that might be most helpful to the people who visit your site.After you've spent some time being a contributor to the site, it's time to concentrate on getting attention from a writer/editor/blogger. Target one of the writers and provide some information that might be helpful to him/her but not about your product/service. Example: "I saw this new feature running on gmail" etc. Also, you might want to target a less prominent writer at the publication. Mike Arrington is swamped with stuff but Serkan Toto probably has less in his inbox.If you still have trouble getting to them, follow them on twitter and figure out when they're in front of the computers. Sometimes it's easiest to reach busy people late at night or early in the morning.Finally when you 'pitch' your product, make it one paragraph description.Also potentially offer to demo your software to them in person at their office or near their home, etc. Make it stupid simple.Good luck. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | alain94040: We debated that question (of how to get coverage) at the latest TheFunded event. I'll give you a quick summary. Issuing a press release will not be picked up by anyone. Writers will write about you if you contact them and manage to actually interact with them. Phone is best.Everytime geeks hear the word phone, they revert to sending a shy email instead. If really you can't be bothered to pick up a phone, then maybe paying thousands of dollars to have a PR agent do it for you makes sense. Just think of much you are paying for phone calls...Shoot high and have a human angle, a story, some kind of connection (I do get Guy Kawasaki to reply to my emails, but that took 6 months).Bottom line: if you haven't done any of the ground work and you need your news to come out today, you're out of luck. But if you have two months, plan ahead and establish those contacts starting TODAY.Hope this helps. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | flexterra: I'm overwhelmed by the amount and quality of responses. After reading them I realized that most of you are right. In the homepage is not clear what problem we fix. That's mainly because we were aiming the digital sigange industry and they already know what "ds" software is. Now we are aiming small businesses and they need to get a simple explanation right there in the homepage.What s3mer is?
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s3mer is a piece of software that helps people and businesses create and maintain digital signs using flat screens, computer monitors, TVs, projectors or even giant digital billboards as a display surface. Digital signs can display still images, animations, video and even live data from the web like weather, stocks, sports and even twitter activity.With s3mer you can build a custom in-store TV network just like Walmart TV. s3mer was designed with small businesses in mind. Its affordable, easy to use and powerful. Business owners can sign up for a s3mer account and in a matter of minutes start displaying their own digital sign.For the technical folks:
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The s3mer system has 2 components: Admin website and Player application. The player application is built on Adobe AIR technology so it works offline after it has downloaded the media files from our servers. The player app is remote controlled from the website and you can manage as many Players as you like.Thanks for the tips I will make sure they get implemented. |
To porn or not to porn? | lst: Even if you succeed, you will not be happy. Peace and porn are not friends. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | mrtron: Digital signage is a pretty unique industry in terms of the sales cycle. There are some industry blogs that you could probably get on.(I used to work in the industry and sold a few of my own solutions) |
Anyone offer 110% guarantee for their products? | timf: The price of the product probably matters a lot.e.g. I don't plan on prorating monthly subscription cancellations but this won't result in any severe amount of money gone if someone tried to abuse unless there was some giant, coordinated scam. In the latter case, whoever's credit card got stolen would likely do a chargeback anyhow. |
Anyone offer 110% guarantee for their products? | tjic: I offer a 120% guarantee at SmartFlix.com.I've only had one customer ask for it. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | raffi: Rather than beat up your site, I'll take a stab at answering your question:I highly recommend reading: http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=198Peldi's advice and the links he give are dead on. I pitched bloggers before reading this and got a zero response rate.Then I adjusted tactics. I added a phone number to my website and a mediakit. Some of the articles Peldi links to talk about having a media kit.I also added the ability to give out codes for people to try the service for free. This is important as it takes replying to me out of the equation. The blogger can try things out (if they choose) at their leisure. The code also makes it easy to tell who is looking.I started looking for bloggers via Google Alerts, Technorati, etc.). I then sent tailored messages to a few and included the "try it" code. I also tried to say something to show my site added to the dialog of something they already wrote.Overall I kept my pitch short (unlike this reply :))I mentioned nothing about writing a review or any such thing. I merely asked for their opinion. Some folks reviewed my service, others sent me their opinion. Still, I had responses :)My mediakit is at:
http://www.feedbackarmy.com/about.slpAnd my welcome page for people with a code is:
http://www.feedbackarmy.com/tryit.slp?code=theircodehereGood luck! |
which way to go for bulk image uploading? | hs: ftp? it has resume built in lest u got disco while uploading |
which way to go for bulk image uploading? | jupiter: You cannot do client side resizing with flash < v.10 |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | webwright: Be worth talking about and it'll happen. Not saying that PR effort isn't worth it, but it gets a lot easier if you're interesting/clear.Read the book "Made to Stick" and ask yourself how sticky your story is (you don't HAVE a story-- that's the problem).Look at Balsamiq-- that guy had a STORY that people wanted to read, so people wrote about him.Nobody wants to read about a product with no angle. What's your twist? How are you surprising? What you can say about your product that blows people away? Have you changed someone's life? How are you going to effect the reader of this story?Clarity (and speed) of the site is a problem, but I think your bigger problem (from a PR perspective) is that you just aren't telling an interesting story. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | jtuyen: Question, do you guys support h264 with AAC? I'm in the DS industry myself and tested over half a dozen apps based in the NA market. |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | jhickner: The demo video takes a long time before you see what the end result actually looks like. It's sort of a how-to video, and I think you need a straight demo video that lets you see the goods up front. |
How does the White House prevent Obama's emails from being forwarded? | quoderat: Probably Information Rights Management in Outlook (Office):http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101029181033.aspxI have no inside knowledge, though, but I doubt they built their own system.And you can still take a screenshot with a third-party program, and myriad of other ways to get around it. If you read it on the screen, you can forward it -- just takes a little more work. |
How does the White House prevent Obama's emails from being forwarded? | DanHulton: I doubt they implement or worry about technology to absolutely prevent anything the president ever emails from ever leaving the office. Copy + Paste into a new email solves that pretty cleanly.The issue however, is what if someone unknowingly or accidentally forwards something the president wrote? There's easy-to-setup and use technology in pretty much all mail servers to check for and prevent that.(I'd find it super neat however, if there were a program that took all of the president's emails and inserted extra random spaces/punctuation/etc. so that if there WERE leaks, they'd be identifiable.) |
which way to go for bulk image uploading? | bl00m: Millions of Facebook users indicate that it might work with ActiveX/Java (tho I don't find it cool either). You're also inclined to trust a big and established site more when it comes to installing software on your computer. |
Is PHP more scalable than Ruby or Python? | eatenbyagrue: I assume you're asking about scalability in terms of pages per second or whatever, but what you should be more worried about is the scalability of your development effort. As other posters have said, speed of the platform is not the issue.Rather you should consider what platform you think you can get the most done in the shortest amount of time - having friends that use the same platform counts for a lot. Similarly, many people think (including myself,) that you can get more done faster using RoR or Django than you can PHP, particularly if your project has any complexity. |
How does the White House prevent Obama's emails from being forwarded? | jaxn: I bet they told the handful of people who have his email address "Of you every forward a message you will no longer be able to email the President".That would probably work well enough. |
Anyone offer 110% guarantee for their products? | chris11: The request rate for 110% cash back might be similar to the rates for rebate offers. People have said rebates get returned anywhere between 2% and 60%, but it sounds like the industry average is less than 10%. So I doubt many people would ask for the 110% cash back.And as for customers taking advantage of it, I really think the number would be less than of people who didn't take advantage of it when they weren't satisfied. Personally I know of one small rebate that I didn't end up cashing in because I never got around to it, and I would have to be really unsatisfied with a product to go through the time and hassle of asking for my money back.Wikipedia Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebate_(marketing)#Some_redempt... |
How does the White House prevent Obama's emails from being forwarded? | mdasen: It's never impossible to forward an email. Heck, you can simply take a screenshot and forward that along (or even write down the contents and re-type it). A forwarded email is just as suspect as a screenshot that can be photoshopped.I think the way that they prevent it is that you'll get fired if you do it. People who work in the White House are usually people who a) want the sitting president to do well and b) want a career path that will get them to even better things than they're at now. A big Obama supporter isn't going to forward an email that might be embarrassing unless it's something like an order for human children to be served at a banquet. Likewise, if you want to someday become a congressperson or become a big(er) deal in DC, you don't want to get a reputation as "that guy that spews everything you don't want public".So, really, you only need slight precautions to make sure that email isn't forwarded. The kind of precautions that would let a hacker easily bypass it, but you wouldn't accidentally forward something. |
Creating an image of a Macbook, to install a dev environment | wmf: http://www.macenterprise.org/macworld-2008-slides/imaging-tr...Found here: http://www.macenterprise.org/system/app/pages/search?q=imagi... |
How do you get tech bloggers to review a startup? | ahoyhere: Being exceptional and interesting is the way to getting covered. (Read Purple Cow. Seriously. And then read every other Seth Godin book.)Being famous/well-known is another. (Sounds tough, but you can really reach people by teaching.)Before you redesign your front page which -- I agree with everyone else -- is confusing, you have to get clear on why YOUR service is so special that journalists would love to write about it. If it isn't, you have to make it so.Remember that "the media" isn't there to be a mouthpiece for your product, but they are always hunting for interesting stories because that's their job.My app launch got covered on RWR and LifeHacker the next day (not to brag, this was unintentional). Apparently they follow what I launch because of personal projects I've done before that captured a lot of interest (http://www.twistori.com).Since then I've also been interviewed for WebWorkerDaily and th Startup Podcast. Those came from the interestingness of our approach with the product, and respect for one of our marketing efforts (http://jumpstartcc.com/), respectively. |
Glad the override feature is gone? | run4yourlives: Nope, I waited my requisite time and then turned the no-procast option off. So now it doesn't matter at all.I'm actually not too happy pg did this without some sort of warning. Last time I checked, he wasn't my mother. At any rate problem solved now. |
Framing other sites has always seemed scummy to me. Am I off-base? | tokenadult: Yes, it is scummy. I sure don't set up many outlinks to sites that frame other sites. I don't recommend them actively in online discussion either. I would never set up framing like that in any site I administer. |
Why don't you use email encryption? | izak30: Because it's not default. |
Glad the override feature is gone? | cperciva: Nope. I don't use noprocrast, but I imagine that the set of people who do are heavily skewed towards the more senior members of the HN community -- so removing the override and keeping them locked out is likely to have the effect of lowering the tone of discourse here. |
Framing other sites has always seemed scummy to me. Am I off-base? | chris11: That's why I've never really liked about.com. Looking into it, it seems like all the content has been paid for by about.com. But content on their sites has appeared elsewhere, and it looks like they frame content, so it's just distasteful.I do think it can be done well though. Isitfunnytoday.com
frames content. They are a web comic aggregator that lets people vote on web comics. On all their out going links, they have a very small frame that lets you vote on the displayed comic, vote on a different comic, and share the the comic on websites like digg. The bar is not invasive, and you can easily get rid of it by clicking the red x. It also helps that isitfunnytoday.com is actually sending more traffic to the other site. |
Framing other sites has always seemed scummy to me. Am I off-base? | callmeed: I don't think it hurts your SEO–since it's framing your page at the same URL. Google is smart enough to know that the frame comes from your site/blog.Honestly, I don't think you should be too concerned about it. After all, RSS readers, blog search engines, news search engines, meme aggregators, and other sites all scrape content and republish it (in whole or part) in their own pages–often profiting from ads at the same time. Is that any less shady to you?I'd say just make sure your pages clearly define you as the content creator. People will get the idea. |
Framing other sites has always seemed scummy to me. Am I off-base? | inerte: 1 - It doesn't hurt SEO. Sure, a directly link would be better, but a framed one is better than nothing. If it creates duplicate content problems, it's for the framer, not the framed.2 - No. Why do you think it might do?3 - No, I hate them too :) Except isitfunnytoday.com, because, you see... that's the problem. Sometimes you can clearly see value being added by the framer. But these are rare, most framers do it to stick the users, log activity or show ads. |
Framing other sites has always seemed scummy to me. Am I off-base? | chris11: "Facebook frames the destination pages for all links shared on it."Where does Facebook do this? I just checked it with a site for a food drive that I'm advertising on my news feed, and it wasn't framed. |
Framing other sites has always seemed scummy to me. Am I off-base? | anotherjesse: stumbleupon is now doing this for their non-extension based experience. |
Glad the override feature is gone? | raamdev: No, I was quite annoyed. I only turned it on to help remind me when I might be wasting time, not prevent me from reading HN. Without an override, that feature is useless to me. |
Glad the override feature is gone? | shaunxcode: I am fine with it being gone, though I must say I was finally starting to exercise self control myself. Maybe he can add an option for "allow over-ride". |
Pricing Models for Subscription Services... Your Experience? | walesmd: 1. Monthly - I like the thought I can cancel whenever I want without a big hassle w/ refunds, pro-rating, etc.2. Monthly subscriptions are really hitting their popularity peak right now. It seems to be the way to do business now - I've never attempted to offer an annual, not sure how it would perform. I would assume not as well though, knowing my target market.3. I would never offer a lifetime package. The state of my application may change drastically where the standard featureset is worth much more than the lifetime user paid. If your application is "stagnant" and kind of operating itself, I don't see the harm though. Might get messy if you change the lower-level subscription prices. |
Pricing Models for Subscription Services... Your Experience? | ctingom: It depends on what I'm buying. I like that when I buy Flickr I don't have to think about it every month I can just buy it and know I've made a choice for a whole year and it's done.But on apps like Basecamp or Freshbooks I like the monthly since it isn't a huge chunk of money up front. |
How to write financial projections? | Alex3917: www.alexkrupp.com/projections.xlsI just added this for you. It should do the trick. Just use the tab labeled "income statement_b" at the bottom and ignore the stuff in the other tabs. Then you can just swap in your own numbers.In terms of figuring out sales, just figure out how many units you can sell per day. If you are in an incubator then you're probably going to be the only sales guy, at least until you hire another. Here is what Guy Kawasaki has to say on the topic:http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/11/the_art_of_proj.htmlhttp://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/07/how-to-write-a-.html |
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