instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
|---|---|
Any good books on graphing/charting/visualization? | dmlorenzetti: A colleague says great things about Cleveland's "The Elements of Graphing Data." It talks about how to leverage the way people perceive graphs in order to convey information. I've flipped through it, and it's on my to-read list. Sorry I can't say more about it. |
How to turn my web application into a lifestyle business? | eliot_sykes: Clickable link http://weekplan.net/ |
what SaaS do you currently pay for? | eliot_sykes: DNS made easy, Get Clicky, couple software development related ones |
How to turn my web application into a lifestyle business? | adammichaelc: Start charging. 3 plans -- good better best. use the money to hire another developer. maybe eventually build an iphone app; charge $5 for it. build an iPad app. charge $15 or $20 for it -- you're still selling to early adopters who have money so they will buy. i think the Getting Real book would be a good read, as @steveklabnik mentioned.How many visitors do you get to the site currently? With a decent landing page with the paid option you could probably start out around a 0.5% - 1% +- conversion rate, and improve from there with some intense A/B testing. What's your free conversion rate?Other random ideas:
1. Partner with a small company that has a popular paper day-planner but no technology. Grow together and cross-pollinate.
2. Partner with a huge company that has a popular paper day-planner but whose technology is lacking.
3. Partner with another planning company, Apiggo (ToDo) and work out a deal to play off each other's strengths somehow
4. Add team-tasking and sell that version to businesses
5. Partner with somebody that sells to people that love productivity stuff, like David Allen. There's probably somebody at HN that knows him, or knows somebody that knows him.Anyway, you're an awesome designer! Great work. Good luck. |
How to turn my web application into a lifestyle business? | nudge: pedalpete is right about the number of other online todo lists available, so you need to be quite careful about your monetization, but I think it can still be done.The Covey model is more than a todo list anyway, right? It's kind of like todo plus. It's already a premium entity. It takes more effort to use, but with the promise or more return. I think your users - your repeat users - will already therefore be slightly more convertible than the users of any other todo list.If it were me, I would sell things that are not necessarily features but which still emphasise the premium aspect of the service, and allow the user to demonstrate their commitment to their own self-improvement through committing monetarily to you. Kind of like people going out and buying a very expensive filofax, if you know what I mean.Some examples of things you could charge for:- Themes for the plan page (see Tumblr and their premium themes)- A small visual token of my premium status, e.g. a star icon that appears next to my username or the logo (you may think this is worthless, but it has been known to convert quite effectively when users of a website are committed to it - see kdice for example)Also, you could take the rememberthemilk strategy of selling certain extras, like mobile apps. I think that would work quite well for you. Just don't sell yourself short. You don't want to compete at the bottom end of the todo list market - you want to be a far more sensibly priced Covey system, so the low end of the top end of the market. A $5 iphone app (maybe more?) wouldn't be out of the question if people were really finding your site useful. |
founder dating website | JarekS: I'm actually looking for the same thing :)
It's such a great idea for a startup btw - at the moment we have "job search" like co-founder directories/searches.What we need is "dating site" like services. Co-founder is like a husband/wife isn't he? |
founder dating website | puredemo: Partnership site, not a dating site. ;) |
founder dating website | DanielBMarkham: Lots of those around.A better question would be "How do potential cofounders date?" ie, how do you do small things to try to figure out if you're going to be good working together?Solve that one and you're on to something big. |
iPhone/iPad online app-development | wallflower: Check out:It might make more sense to buy your own Mac, after all.
I initially assumed this service rented Mac Minis."We are a mac mini colocation service. In other words, we place your Mac mini in a high-end data center where you can use it as a server. We provide you with a menu of services including redundant very high speed internet connections, remote control electrical power, a highly secure location to house your Mac mini, and remote human hands."http://www.macminicolo.net/ |
When did Stack Overflow become Attorney Overflow? | tmorton: "How do I pick a deadbolt lock, disable an alarm system, and arrange transportation for a big TV? I'm just wondering! This is theoretical! Stop lawyering!"In other words - you might be doing something legitimate, but it sounds fishy. You can't expect people to help you without further explanation. |
When did Stack Overflow become Attorney Overflow? | rcfox: Down-vote those answers and carry on. Maybe add a bit about not wanting legal advice. |
When did Stack Overflow become Attorney Overflow? | nudge: Yeah, those answers weren't incredibly helpful in technical terms. The problem for you is that what you want is actually very, very difficult to achieve, if indeed it is possible, and this is exactly because, for the most part, the only reason to do this kind of thing is for sinister reasons (e.g. phishing). For this reason, and also because website owners just don't tend to like it when you surround their stuff with your stuff (for a number of reasons), whatever solution you come up with will probably be worked around.As I understand things, you've got two ways to do this. Either client-side or server-side. Client side would be an iframe, for example. I use this on my website, http://minutes.at, which just sticks a timer bar on top of any website, by sticking the website in an iframe. It's simple and it usually works, but as you say there are the occasional navigational problems.Now, for server-side stuff, that's where you've got problems. It might work better - you could just take the entire website code and stick it in your own - but that's where you really do enter legal-problem territory.You shouldn't mind people giving you advice - they are actually trying to help you avoid getting sued. The reason you found no technical help, though, is probably because what you want is going to be more or less impossible to achieve. You got no answers, perhaps, because there are no answers.Perhaps if you offered a bit more information about what you hoped to achieve, someone might be able to suggest a way of doing it. |
I am unable to start my startup because of its scale | brk: Most of the startups I've participated in have been more on the scale of what you're describing here (FWIW, I like these kinds of challenges more than something that is "just" software in the cloud, but to each his own).I'm more of the business-guy than the hacker guy, but I've been known to make a double-sided PCB layout, toss on and program some PIC chips and create a server-backend when need-be.Anyway, if you want to discuss your idea offline/non-public I'd be happy to offer some free advice (it's worth what you pay for it) and maybe point you in the right direction or give you some idea as to how to proceed to bring it all together. |
I am unable to start my startup because of its scale | vorador: Are you sure of the worth of your idea ?
And seriously, people are not out to get your idea. It's okay to post it here. |
I am unable to start my startup because of its scale | byoung2: "When accompanied by and development platform and strong contracts with major market players this can easily reach the scale of an iPad market and buzz"I would try to be more realistic about it. Even Microsoft or Google sometimes have trouble building the type of buzz that Apple does. A more practical approach would be to combine your three suggested approaches:1. Make a concept video of your product in daily use. You can recruit film students in the visual effects department to help with that.
2. Use the video to recruit one or two cofounders and apply to YC.
3. Start working on a prototype of your hardware, software, service, etc.
4. Sell it to Apple/Google/Microsoft and let them worry about creating buzz for it. |
Web typography app | garrickvanburen: Are you looking for a snippet of CSS for the @font-face declaration like this http://kernest.com/fontconf-com.css ? |
Any good books on graphing/charting/visualization? | gourneau: Has anyone had a chance to check out "Beautiful Visualization: Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts"(http://j.mp/9SxXza)?It was just published today according to Amazon. |
I am unable to start my startup because of its scale | Travis: I applaud you for aiming high, and for the confidence you exhibit with your idea! Best of luck on it.However, you definitely have a problem with the scale / scope of your product. As byoung2 points out, there's only 1 ipad, and there's really only one company in the world that could produce it. So it's not out of the question, but it will be difficult.I heartily recommend that you undergo Steve Blank's Customer Development model. Read his book "4 steps to the epiphany", as well as his blog. His philosophy is very straight forward, and it will show you the steps that you need to use to get going on this project.First, I'd recommend you do some more Customer Discovery/Validation. Don't believe people who tell you it's a great idea. Go TALK to your customers, ask them point blank if they would buy it, and for how much. As he states repeatedly, "no business idea survives first contact with customers." It's very true. Go talk to them. Get people to sign a piece of paper (non-binding), saying that if they had your product with features X,Y,Z, at price point $N, they would purchase one. You will learn a LOT doing this.Once you know who your customers are, and what they want, you start to develop your product through an iterative cycle. Build your "minimum viable product", which is the smallest product that you could sell and still consider it your product. As a hint, that won't include the SDK or any of the app store type stuff you discuss above. What is the ONE thing that defines your product?Then build that one thing. I suggest you read the Paypal story in "Founders At Work" and learn from their initial demo. In short, Paypal was to be a way to pay other people by beaming virtual currency through cell phones / PDAs (use case: split checks at restaurant). They didn't have the cash to actually build one on a PDA, so they made a little interactive website that would demo the functionality.The interesting conclusion is that so many people actually tried to send money through the webapp that they realized their entire product was wrong. So they pivoted.To sum, think big but work small. Cut EVERYTHING out that you can. Talk to your customers. Realize that your original idea probably will need modifications (pivots) to succeed.Once you get through all that stuff, you will have a better grasp on the potential for your idea. If you do Blank's steps well, have a good idea, you will be in good position to raise money / find partnerships for anything you want.It's a long road. Best of luck! |
How to teach HS students HTML & CSS in 1 hour? | jqueryin: I'd keep it fairly brief, trying to explain the difference between block level and inline elements. I'd focus on a standard header/body/footer type layout with usage of an H1, body, span, and p tags. You can throw in an em or strong for the sake of demonstrating more tags, but you've only got an hour to try and get the basics engrained in their heads.Once you've mocked up the page with absolutely ZERO styling, it's time to delve into the CSS. I'd show them the basic selectors for background-color, color, height, width, and some font styling. If you have time, demonstrate padding and margins.Lastly, time permitting, throw them a curve and demonstrate floats, relative positioning, or absolute positioning. This really might be overboard for an hour.. so it's merely a suggestion. |
I am unable to start my startup because of its scale | Mankhool: "One way is to use standard non expensive (and perhaps far less shiny and integrated) hardware plugged some peripherals and write a quick demo for it."
"Few days ago, I actually tried the concept on two "potential" customers, by using some hardware peripherals I managed to put together, and a very basic software, something which is far away in terms of design, quality and user experience from the final product, and in fact, the two customers simply didn't want to stop "playing" with the product."You have answered your own question. A minimum viable product. Add to that a demo of how you envision the final product and how customers interact with it. Go! |
Web typography app | faramarz: I think you'll find http://www.typetester.org helpful |
Any Enterprise Rails application you know of? | nudge: Github |
Any Enterprise Rails application you know of? | aaronbrethorst: Skytap Cloud: http://skytap.com/ |
How to turn my web application into a lifestyle business? | ig1: Ads, you've got a valuable source of information, a list of thing people want to do. Give them relevant ads related to their todo list and you'll get a much higher click-through rate than usual.People are in an "action" mode when going through thier todo list, take advantage of that ! |
Review my start-up Add yours while your at it. | pinksoda: Clickable link: http://www.sinkfloat.com/ |
Review my start-up Add yours while your at it. | meowmeow: Really cool actually. Good luck! |
Review my start-up Add yours while your at it. | pizzaking: I added my site, thanks! |
founder dating website | aren: This exists, name and all! Though it's more of a real-life networking event than a website right now, it's still great and they pull some amazing entrepreneurs. I know, I've been to some of the events. Check out founderdating.com and sign up for an event near you. |
ASK HN: From lit major to Computer Science Masters? | porter: How about the Master's in Computer and Information Technology at UPenn?http://www.cis.upenn.edu/grad/mcit/Looks like it's designed for people like you. Not sure how this would be seen by employers - perhaps some others can answer this.For anyone on the hiring side of a web company: would it be better for a non-CS undergrad to go through a masters program like the ones at Penn/Chicago, or would it be better if someone took a year off, taught themselves, and actually built some stuff? |
How to be a responsible single founder? | jhancock: "damn thing looks and works great"If this is the case, don't worry so much. If your app uses a well-understood (by you), proven (by others) software stack and you've been testing well enough, your worries may be for naught.Some folks around here recommend tools like pingdom. Get something like that if it helps you enjoy a break with your friends.Good luck! |
How to be a responsible single founder? | pedoh: You've got two questions here, I think, and they both deserve careful consideration.1) How do you monitor your site to alert you of problems?2) How do you prevent your site from going down in the first place?In my opinion, #1 is more straightforward than #2, and the more uptime you need for #2, the more you're going to pay.a) Write a script to send you an email / SMS when your site is down. Run it on a separate server, or run it on something like Google App Engine.I'm sure there are some simple free tools out there to achieve this for you. A quick search provided:http://www.siteuptime.com/They offer a check per 30 minutes for free. Can't beat free, but this is not an endorsement, I've never used them.b) Use something with more features. Run it on a separate server or use someone who provides it SaaS style.Nagios, ZenOSS, Zabbix, Groundwork, OpenNMS. I can personally vouch for Nagios. It's pretty easy to get a simple configuration going, and then it can get very complicated (you might want to monitor the monitor, right?).2) If you've got two servers that you can connect to a load balancer, you may be able to run in active-active mode so that if one fails, you simply lose 50% capacity. For your data store, options include a database solution like MySQL in master-master form, or a relational database that has data redundancy as a feature. In my opinion you don't choose your data backend solely because of it's redundancy and failover capabilities, but it could be a factor.If you can't do active-active mode right now for some reason, then active-passive can allow you to stay up enough to deliver that message until you restore your services. If you can get an "extra" IP address, you can even do this without a load balancer involved. Take a look at keepalived.org to see how you can float an IP address between multiple servers. CDNs such as Akamai also provide site failover features that might be worth investigating.There are so many ways to skin the cat on this one, and I'm just scratching the surface. If your site is more than informational (e.g. if you're building a web based service or application), then monitoring and failover / redundancy are critical to your success. If you just want your informational site to be up, it's still pretty important. The fact that you're thinking about this now and not after your first 24 hour window of downtime is a good sign!If you provide more information about what your startup is doing (at least from an tech architecture perspective) and what sorts of resources you're willing to spend to improve your uptime and failover capabilities, you might get more specific suggestions.Best of luck, and congrats on the startup!Pete |
Subscriptions on lots of apps/services starting to add up | pedalpete: I haven't gone to using free sources, but I do consistently look at a number of services, and don't sign-up because I recognize that many of these services are going to add up to a lot of money each month.I also suspect that I would be more likely to sign-up if one service offered everything, as it would end up appearing as only one line-item on a budget.Do you feel the same way?
Is one service with multiple tools better than many different tools? Even if just form a billing perspective? |
What do you guys think about this term sheet? | fdschoeneman: Get an advisor, ASAP, who has been through something like this. |
Review my start-up Add yours while your at it. | sidmitra: Added our site http://teaspiller.com.The added sites need a little bit more info about them. Maybe twitter-like short description to keep it simple? |
How to be a responsible single founder? | shadowsun7: Hi matth,Not in a single-person startup, but there were some useful HN-linked articles in the past. In particular, I found patio11's article about running a software startup as a single-founder (and on 5 hours a week) particularly useful: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1206649I think he's made some really good points about doing a lot of time-as-asset stuff (go read the article, it's really good). Maybe you should get in contact with him?I wish you the best of luck. |
How to be a responsible single founder? | andrewljohnson: We use site canary for www.trailbehind.com.It ran smoothly for months, and then we had a bit of a problem, but site canary alerted us right away.Also, site canary was recently made free, so set it up! It will email you when you have an issue. Should definitely have some sort of uptime tool like pingdom or site canary.Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with site canary, other than I use their software. |
How to be a responsible single founder? | marcamillion: Pingdom is pretty cool. So is http://aremysitesup.com/
Here are some others too: http://sixrevisions.com/tools/12-excellent-free-tools-for-mo... |
How to be a responsible single founder? | marcamillion: Also, no affiliation with these guys, I have been watching a company that has an interesting offering. If you run Rails, or can run a ruby script on your server, this offering looks very interesting: http://scoutapp.com/ |
Ecommerce Shopping Cart Recommendation | caswabi: I used foxycart before.http://www.foxycart.com/ |
Ecommerce Shopping Cart Recommendation | samratjp: http://www.shopify.com/ |
iPhone/iPad online app-development | samratjp: Obligatory Obj-C+iPhone Tutorial: http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/ |
How to turn my web application into a lifestyle business? | adamtmca: Two ideas, one is straight forward and one is probably crazy. Either way I think it's going to take a variety of strategies to make it work.Definitely figure out if people will pay, but don't "Rework" yourself into thinking that business models don't have any room for creativity either.First, and it's been said in various forms but what about selling other self-help & organization related products alongside through affiliate links or, a store? Books planners, calendars etc. I think you might be able to get a better return than ads this way especially if you built up a community that trusted your recommendations.Second, I always thought it'd be cool to build a planner/ to do list application that had a concierge/secretary service linked into it. Sort of your man in india deal but interfaced through the planner software. |
Ecommerce Shopping Cart Recommendation | abdulqabiz: http://www.prestashop.com/
http://www.magentocommerce.com/ |
How to be a responsible single founder? | TotlolRon: I've been doin this for a while now. The problem is more mental than technical.The first thing to accept is that this is by definition an irrisponsiable thing to do...;)Then you need to flow with it. The main thing is not aiming at fixing everything as fast as possible but rather in a way that will be as reliable as possible. Or in other words, your primary consideration should not be an early alert on Friday night, but rather a wilingness to work the weekend making sure whatever happened will not happen again.The tech details really depend on the specific application. |
Ecommerce Shopping Cart Recommendation | oomkiller: Shopify +1, if they fit your needs, you can't go wrong. |
Ecommerce Shopping Cart Recommendation | aeontech: http://spreecommerce.com/ |
What do you guys think about this term sheet? | minalecs: i think you sort of answered the question yourself. If you truly believe you can get over the hump yourself, why give up equity for funding you may not need. |
Ecommerce Shopping Cart Recommendation | ApolloRising: If you told people what you were selling that may help ex: Downloads, physical goods, etc |
k-nearest neighbour search with circular dimensions | cperciva: Where's the problem? Just adjust your distance metric accordingly.Or if you have a kNN kernel already available which takes inputs in Euclidean space, just map a dimension t into two dimensions, sin(t) and cos(t). |
Rate my startup www.2dparts.com | WalterGR: 2dparts.com> Connection was reset while loading.<refresh>> The page isn't redirecting properly> Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.> This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.Screw it. |
Rate my startup www.2dparts.com | apsurd: Sales and marketing 101: show don't tell.Maybe I am not your target market since I don't know what a dxf file is, but it would be universally appealing to see a gallery of products you've cut. A sort of "what's possible".I don't have a dxf file so your website is one giant brick wall to me. |
What do you guys think about this term sheet? | sajid: You've got a term sheet, which means you've got something worth investing in (social proof).But, the investor is trying to screw you.I've been in a similar situation before. Trust me, what you need to do is speak to other investors before you make your decision.If you don't know other investors then a good place to start is:http://venturehacks.com/introFill in the form at the bottom of the page and submit it. |
founder dating website | alexwyser: I was thinking the exact same thing. I made a post here before I saw this.http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1270235I personally feel that this would be perfect, since it would allow some very talented people come together to build something great.BTW, if any of you are about to start a startup and need a good designer to design your website or app interface for equity, let me know, I'd be happy to help you guys out. |
How about a Co-founders Search Site? | vital101: I think that it's an interesting idea. But why wouldn't someone just put out a call for co-founders on Hacker News like you just did? |
monkeyswithrings.com or monkeysrings.com? | vital101: I'm not sure from an SEO standpoint, but from an end-user standpoint I wouldn't click on a site with the domain "monkeyshats.com". It looks too much like "monkey sh*ts". |
How about a Co-founders Search Site? | david927: People are loathe to register the ideas they're working on, for obvious reasons. Here are a couple sites that I know of:http://findmycofounder.comhttp://programmermeetdesigner.com |
How about a Co-founders Search Site? | bgnm2000: I think you should learn to code. Check out ruby, and ROR - pretty easy to pick up. |
How to be a responsible single founder? | patio11: Oooh, this would be a great topic to go in depth on for a blog post. I'll get something done for you this weekend because this is a topic near and dear to my heart. |
I am unable to start my startup because of its scale | ig1: Do you have experience in running this sort of project (i.e. for your previous employers, etc.) - if not you'll have a hard time raising funding just with an idea. There are a lot of complications from running this type of project, even when you have someone experienced running the show, so getting funding without experience is going to be close to impossible.Although if you have unique value only you can provide (strong relationships with large potential customers, etc) then you should focus on that and try and sell that rather than just your idea.I think the best route is to build a prototype one way or the other (learn the skills, partner with someone who has them) and you'll have a much better chance of getting investment. |
monkeyswithrings.com or monkeysrings.com? | hotmind: Choose a domain name that is exactly as some one might query it. Google gives a bonus for exact matches. You'll jump up a few positions in the SERPs.P.S. Avoid hyphens :) |
monkeyswithrings.com or monkeysrings.com? | gfhfghf: If monkeysrings.com has "far, far more queries", then choosing that domain is a clear optimisation. |
Rate my startup www.2dparts.com | hotmind: Here's what I recommend my clients do before spending a dime on sales and marketing: make a Facebook profile of your ideal client. Fill in everything: age, location, education, favorite movies, interests, etc. Find pictures of this ideal client.Once you have this profile completely filled out, lock your crosshairs on this fictional person. Your marketing needs to be a rifle shot, not a shotgun blast.Your marketing spend will be less and yield more ROI if you do this. |
monkeyswithrings.com or monkeysrings.com? | patrickk: Monkeysrings.com. Treat most casual web surfers as having ADD and that they are only itching to click the back button; so the easier and more memorable the name the better.You might consider having a clear, camel notation heading at the top of your landing page to make the website name clear. |
How to be a responsible single founder? | petervandijck: http://pingdom.com is great for monitoring, they can send you an sms message when your site is down too.As for automating restart, are you running on AWS? Then you can automate that. For that part of your question, you have to give some technical background on your setup etc... |
Rate my startup www.2dparts.com | sidmitra: Clickable - http://www.2dparts.com |
How about a Co-founders Search Site? | symbiotic: You might want to check out: http://builditwith.me/I posted an idea on there a while back and got several responses from interested developers and designers.In the end I decided that I wanted to work with someone who I could meet face to face and who I had a previous relationship with. I think it's hard to set this type of thing up through a website. |
How to be a responsible single founder? | Tawheed: I'm a single founder as well, and here is what I've done:1) Look into chef to automate 99% of your sys-admin tasks (setup, tear up, tear down, deployment)2) Set up pingdom for monitoring your servers externally3) Set up hoptoad (http://www.hoptoadapp.com) to monitor for exceptions and errors internally with e-mail notifications4) Set up a laptop with a MiFi for remote access - you're going to keep this in your car whereever you go (if you're in a city or something, set up VNC on an iPad or something and have access to a workstation where you can look into emergencies)The above will a) notify you of critical things happening and b) give you a way to act upon them. Thats pretty much all that you can do at this point -- and I'd look into Rackspace managed services to see if you can leverage them for basic system troubleshooting (this is on my ToDo list).By the way, we've got a single founder community going, its new and we're still getting to know eachother but it is great for moral support - let me know if you want to join. |
Rate my startup www.2dparts.com | HeyLaughingBoy: Have you looked at BigBlueSaw for ideas?Look into RC car/plane hobbyists and people on Make. Probably a lot of potential customers there. |
How about a Co-founders Search Site? | Serene: A few more sites that help to find co-founders:http://founderdating.com/
http://startupsquare.com/Why don't you start a meetup group like this one?
http://www.meetup.com/Co-Founders-Wanted-Meetup/
Briefings from the meetings:
http://aurametrix.blogspot.com/2010/03/bay-area-startups-loo...
http://aurametrix.blogspot.com/2009/11/bay-area-startups-loo...If you want to build something similar to what already exists, you will be able to do it by yourself.
If you want to create something like e-Harmony - matching people based on demographic, educational, job history, psychological and behavioral characteristics and their encounters, feeding gigabytes of data into sophisticated models on a daily basis, think about measurable expectations before proceeding. |
what Twitter apps do you use regularly or recommend? | monkeygrinder: I use Hootsuite, instead of Adobe's TweetDeck, because it's a web-based app and I'm a pointy clicky type of person.I don't have an iPhone, but if I did I'd use Tweetie.It really depends on how you use Twitter, but Mashable have a great guide include a list of their picks of best apps. http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/ |
Anyone interested in co-hosting a weekly podcast? | j_baker: I think you may want to be a bit more specific about what ideas you're thinking about having in this podcast. There are a lot of areas that fall under technology/startups. :-) |
How to be a responsible single founder? | gte910h: Automation, Automation, AutomationHire part time or temporary first, then full time.Get a phone with push notifications. Setup a second system to constantly check for failure in the primary system. Get the second system to notify you in case of failures. Better yet, if you can, have the second system be a failover clone and have the notification dashboard be a third system. Base all these systems on different vendors systems if you can.Buy 3g/laptop/other mobile ssh solution and use this to fix things when you're more than 30 minutes from your office/home.And lastly, don't worry so much. Money isn't everything, and you honestly sound like you're possibly going to worry so much about this, it will make your life a net negative. |
Anyone interested in co-hosting a weekly podcast? | dugmartin: I'd recommend just going for it solo and make a short one to draw interest. That said, I've been doing one for a while with a co-host at http://foundercast.com/ and it has been a lot of fun but it's a lot easier with another person. Good luck. |
How should we approach remote code interviews? | samratjp: You could do an iChat/Skype combination with Google Docs/Etherpad. All you need to know is in the face, so a webcam can be fine to see how they react and such. |
Anyone interested in co-hosting a weekly podcast? | Tawheed: If you're focused on entrepreneurship and startups, possibly themes around debunking startup myths (e.g. you HAVE to get VC) then I'd be interested! |
founder dating website | samratjp: What you need is HireLite: http://hirelite.com/ It's speed dating for hiring |
What do you think of the domain industry right now? | madprogrammer: I think it's cool |
Worries about a cofounder | mnemonik: Sounds like you have already made your decision. |
What do you guys think about this term sheet? | jamesshamenski: Welcome to the poker table!Take this social proof and run around to other VC's. Having other people interested is the only way you can improve terms and push anyone to close.The best option is to say you dont need their money and would rather boot strap operations (even if that is a bluff).As a rule of thumb, always turn down your first offer. Always. |
What do you think of the domain industry right now? | kbrower: I think the market for keyword based .com, .net, .org, and .us is still healthy and growing.One data point:
I was lucky and was able to purchase a .us domain with 135k exact match searches a month for $200, when the .com, .net, and .org were all asking 30k+ and not budging.What domains are you sitting on and what do you expect to get for them? |
Anyone interested in co-hosting a weekly podcast? | mapleoin: will it be about Dwarf Fortress? |
Anyone interested in co-hosting a weekly podcast? | dannyr: I think it would be interesting if the podcast is about the stories shared on Hacker News (ala Diggnation). (e.g. Discuss the most upvoted stories and comments) |
Worries about a cofounder | bg4: An emphatic yes and the sooner the better. I was in the same situation and it cost us dearly because we let it drag on for way too long (a co-founder systematically not completing work and talking often of short term sell/profits). |
Worries about a cofounder | chriseidhof: Do you really need him? If not, ditch the guy: it's already hard enough making good decisions with the two of you. It sounds like there's quite a lot of negative energy going on: I would focus that energy on building your product, not on dealing with partners who are only in it as a no-risk sideproject. |
How should we approach remote code interviews? | briandoll: see[Mike]code was written for exactly this problem. I haven't used it for remote interviews yet, but we tested it out at the office and it seems perfect for what your describing.http://i.seemikecode.com/ |
Anyone interested in co-hosting a weekly podcast? | braindead_in: If you need a tool for recording podcasts then check out our Skype recorder. https://callgraph.biz. If you'd like to go a bit further then check out our Podcast Publisher Program. https://callgraph.biz/podcastpublisher |
Worries about a cofounder | maxdemarzi: "could sell for a couple hundred thousand dollars"Start-ups are high risk, high reward and ton of WORK endeavors. The PM is treating it like a high risk, low reward, no work endeavor.Has he put in a ton of work into this?
Did he pass up opportunities to do something else because of this?No? Then he doesn't fit. |
I have a concept for packaging of a popular product. And some questions | nudge: If you publish a description of something, it immediately becomes unpatentable, by anyone (including you). This is because you cannot patent something that is in the public domain, and if you publish it, that's where it is. So that's patents. You may not have the money now, but later on when you do have the money, it won't matter, because you'll have put your invention into the public domain, and no amount of money will get it patented for you. (The other side of this, though, is that you can stop other people patenting it too, which is a tactic some inventors go for).As for other kinds of intellectual property right, I'm afraid I can't really help you. It really depends on where you live. I would suggest you read the information on the USPTO website (US Patent and Trademark Office) if you are in the US, or the equivalent for where you live. There may be some information there on your rights regarding your designs. |
How should we approach remote code interviews? | FreeRadical: With caution. |
Need advice on an idea I started (craft beer related) | binarymax: I like it! One note: if I am not logged in, and I browse to a beer, and click the 'I drank this!' button, it just kicks me back to the root, where instead it should probably show a login/register dialog.[edit] Sorry I missed the original point of your post and did a re-read...your site seems to be just another niche pick/rate/review which is fine, but if you want to expand it then you need to innovate. I rated a Beer and it just gave me a dumb list of other Beers with no (noticable) reason for the list. Maybe this is because you dont have enough data yet? Maybe you could capture some user-centric locale data and tie them with places to find recommended or favourite beer. Enable your ads as quickly as possible and make darn sure they are relavent, (you dont want an Anheuser-Busch ad showing up on your site), maybe evolved companies that started as craft such as Magic Hat etc. Perhaps find ways to get revenue sharing group discounts on brewery tours, coupons to microbreweries, or craft beer equipment stores. Let users submit photos of beer labels. Sorry if I am rambling. |
Need advice on an idea I started (craft beer related) | adelevie: Pandora for Beer. |
Need advice on an idea I started (craft beer related) | maxdemarzi: I think you have a great thing here. I like the polish of the "Unidentified Location Object" and there is plenty of GUI "Ajaxiness" going on.Maybe a Map feature? What high rated beers I haven't tried are near me (you can add high rated beers as rated by users who are similar to me aka recommendation engine later)?One quick improvement is to add <A Link> to the city and state where the person had their drink and then list beers had there or near there. Improve it later by adding Zip Code/Geolocation to the user registering, and then you can find/sort by distance to beers and people which can then create beer connoisseur groups ala meetup.com |
Need advice on an idea I started (craft beer related) | qtvali: Advertising? Beer advertising in banners? Joining with a beer review newspaper? |
How to be a responsible single founder? | imp: I use Binary Canary to alert me for down-time, which is about the same thing that Pingdom does.Just do whatever it takes for you to fall asleep at night. I recently bought a smartphone (N900) that allows me to ssh into my server from anywhere, so if a small fix is needed, I can do that quickly. Before I had that, I actually took my laptop camping with me during a busy period last year and drove to a nearby coffee shop periodically to check for any important issues.Other than that, I'd say to scale up your architecture as your site gets more popular. If you later need some dual-DB setup with a heartbeat monitoring system then you can add that when the time comes.Have good backups too. That might be more important than just uptime. |
What do you think of the domain industry right now? | csomar: I think it's not getting a buzz anymore (just people no longer talk and write about it). Actually, the domain industry is still alive and many people are making some decent money with it.However, it won't make you a millionaire; the domain rage has ended. You can monetize your domain (rank high, place ads, make money) while waiting for an interesting buyer. |
Less features with new releases. Have you done it? | qtvali: I think that some operating systems have gone like that way - features are not always removed, but some feats are harder and harder to find; other parts are replaced with automatic parts, which will have hardcoded or automatic answers to questions, which were asked before; some tools are removed, because things get better and you dont need them anymore. I am sometimes really surprised when I think that nowadays OS is basically desktop, window and one toolbar and start/K/whatever menu - of course, there is a lot more, but it all orbits around this simple set of things, which clearly do not evolve into bigger complexity and more functions, but more like into elegance, simplicity and features over functions. |
Need advice on an idea I started (craft beer related) | timdellinger: First: recommendations are a Must Have.Geolocation: craft beers often have limited distribution, and are only available in certain states, or in areas where the distributors decide to carry them. Reviews of craft beers that you can actually find in a store / bar near you are more valuable than finding the one beer that you will totally love, which happens to only be available in Western Montana.Monetizing: sell your data! To breweries, to retailers, to distributors. Your correlations reduce the risk inherent in deciding to carry a new product.Dreaming: point the iPhone at a beer menu, and the app OCRs the beer names, and up pops ratings.Minor criticism on the website: I typed "bell's oberon" into the search box and couldn't figure out how to click and make the search go. It wasn't until I typed "oberon" really slowly that I got it to work. If I were just casually stopping by the site, I would have given up. |
I have a concept for packaging of a popular product. And some questions | cjlars: I understand the basic process of licensing a product is this:1) File for a provisional patent (cost $110), this will get you a year of weak to moderate legal protection2) design, mock-up and create a sales page for you product3) attempt to license the product to a partner, in this case, a packaging or manufacturing company.4) in the unlikely event anyone wants it -> profit5) otherwise, go back to the drawing board, content in having pursued it.Net outlays, probably less than $1,000, and perhaps 40 to 200 hours of work.This guy's a wealth of information for this stuff, btw:
http://www.inventright.com/
Also: Provisional Patent info:
http://inventors.about.com/od/provisionalpatent/a/Provisiona... |
What do you think of the domain industry right now? | andrewtj: Have you ever considered leasing domains (with an option to buy) out of your portfolio? |
what Twitter apps do you use regularly or recommend? | benashkan: Personal Use: Tweetie desktop and iPhone.
Business Use: Tweetdeck.From time to time I use Seesmic web. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.