I can't see any pricing - I'd like to use you guys for a project, but I don't want to invest time writing a bunch of custom software to send our metrics to you, if you're going to disappear in 12 months... What's the roadmap re pricing and sticking around?
We're going to put pricing on the public site too. We plan to stick around of course, the major advantage for us is that this project has almost no burn rate and is a critical component already of another one of our projects. So it's not going anywhere.
Nice piece - as a coder turned entrepreneur, the sales and marketing side of things has been exceptionally hard for me. It's a battle everyday, and if I could turn back time I would have ensured I worked in a marketing department, or with people skilled in the area before embarking down my current path...
That said, I'm in the hole now, learning as fast as I can, solo. Can anyone make some current/and also seminal marketing book must-haves?
As an entrepreneur turned doer-of-everything, I recommend you reconsider your path unless you're truly confident in your ability to execute on whatever skills you learn in RL, for real money. I'll give you vague suggestions anyway, but please realize you not only must have the sales and marketing down pat, you need serious money and cajones to go "solo", else you better have an impossible string of luck or one idea of the century after another.
This is not directed at you in particular, but HN is no different than other forums in other industries: you have a ton of people fronting like Jesus but who make shit revenue, then you have the people who make shit revenue, meanwhile 5% or less of the total posters are truly raking it in. Don't be willing to forefeit your field of specialty and competitive advantage after getting starry eyes on [insert website here], and 2) when you go to learn sales and marketing it is critical you learn only from truly proven people.
Well how about some suggestions: everything from copywriting classics (Ogilvy), contemporary marketing video course legends (Kern), to psychology and successful sales trainers.
stackthatmoney.com (not an affiliate)
If you are a coder, you have a significant advantage in that - assuming you're willing to approach your marketing and sales learnings like you approached learning to code - you can become better at sales and marketing than a (surprisingly) large number of life long salespeople and marketers. The question is, are you going to make the sacrifices necessary to both learn it all and then go out and do it.
Thanks for the tips - I've worked as a freelancer for the last 10 years, and have now run my own company for the last 2.5 years, so doer-of-everything is in my nature, and its just a matter of making the decision to really knuckle down with study and hard work.
For me, it's really about being frank with myself and rapidly addressing the areas of my knowledge and experience that are lacking, even if part of me doesn't want to. I'm surviving in my own business though, and my stronger concentration on sales and marketing is what will push me to the next level. Thanks again.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this... I don't trust Drobo/Synology etc because if the unit dies I need another one to retrieve my data. Jungledisk adds up if you have 100+GB, Backblaze is the best of these services, however they are proprietary, and imagine if either were cracked and your life ended up on on a torrent server somewhere... In the end I decided upon a HP Microserver running Ubuntu with disks in RAID5 + a cheap UPS. I then have an rsync cronjob on my laptop. I tried FreeNAS but it was slow. I may consider an offsite backup of the Ubuntu server (critical files (photos etc)) to AWS with Duplicity and PGP... So far I feel the safest and happiest I've been in awhile about my backup situation.
My dad has been a huge coffee drinker his entire life - He was recently been diagnosed with early onset alzheimer's. Obviously this doesn't rebuttal any large-scale scientific study, but this topic is of particular closeness to me.
I couldn't agree more. I need a quiet place alone to program, and I've just recently moved into a coworking space. Total loss of productivity. I'm going to start working from home again, at least 2-3 days a week...
While the article is a bit lacking, in my own observations traveling extensively around the globe, I encountered very few Americans, considering their population numbers, wealth, etc. I realise the article is more about interstate travel for work, etc, however it always just really surprised me about how few young American kids were out there bumming it around the world with backpacks on. I met more Israelis out there than North Americans, and they have a population of what, 6 million? Or Australians? Those guys are everywhere.
