Ask HN: Your Startup Progress (November 2011) | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Your Startup Progress (November 2011)

8 pointsjames-fend30 comments

What progress have you made on your startup for the month of November?? (full-time or on the side)

Launch something? Almost launching? Got featured on a great blog?

Guess I'll start off: Still making progress on http://www.Freelanceful.com and waiting for the developer to finish. [there's been quite some trouble/drama with the developer]

In the meantime; I've also decided to pursue spending 6-8 hours a day learning Ruby on Rails [I'm a freelance UI designer currently] and also started up a new blog on Web Startups: http://www.webstartup.me

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1. Incorporated in Delaware 2. Have hosting, domain and email squared away 3. Launched a squeeze for email signups http://chef52.com 4. Made a ridiculous video and submitted to yc 5. Found a hacker to begin work on MVP 6. Called a legal guy to iron out the details of said hacker 7. Had the overwhelming feeling that I haven't a clue 30x 8. Been validated by the market and some strangers along the way 9. Started a business/marketing plan 10. 3/4 of the way thru UI/UX designs

forgot to add - made my first post on HN

Launched my site into beta on 11 Nov

Submitted site to TechCrunch, Sitepoint and Mashable's Spark of Genius series

Fixed a ton of minor little things and a few major ones - expand/collapse, media uploads, frontend profile editing

Read as much as possible about startups, community management, other entrepreneurs, etc.

Realized how little time there is trying to develop and launch a site after a full work day

1. Got lesson from YCombinator rejection. 2. Launched landing page http://ninjaci.com and got initial feedback 3. Took part in Warsaw Startup Weekend in Poland

Now I am working on MVP - full continuous integration stack in the cloud that covers Django, MongoDB and Git - should be ready withing 2 weeks

Hej Marcin! Ja też jestem w Wawie - I couldn't make the Warsaw Startup Weekend, but if you fancy meeting up for a drink and having a chat about this kind of fun sometime, let me know :)

Hi! Send me an email to marcin.mieszek@ninjaci.com and we'll be in touch.

Care to share the lesson learned?

1. Spent a week or two confirming that the concept was possible

2. Left my day job to work full-time on the new project

3. Gathered some basic feedback

4. Got hosting, domain, and email sorted

5. Put up a notify signup page at http://blueprint.io

6. Made 50% progress on my MVP web app

good luck!

Aw, thanks! :)

Finalized service name. Finishing UI. Finishing the stories and pitch. Working on building a network in the bay area to build the team.

Not a bad month considering 8hr workdays including a full weekend release. Land at http://shelfmine.com

neat idea, I like the bartering aspect of it.

Thank you. Thanks to facebook, online bartering may just be a way to reduce how much we consume. Atleast that's the guiding philosophy.

Launched my Twitter competitions tool:

http://interactwive.com

Got some interest, but still working hard on the marketing side of things. Few people have registered to use it, but am still chasing the elusive first sale! ;)

just curious; how'd you come up with the name?

Stupidity, frankly. I was looking for something that implied interactivity and Twitter in its name... and came up with that monstrosity of a name ;)

Your navigation is a little messed up. The "Interactwive" link looks like it just goes to "#" which means I can't get back to the home page. Also, once I go to the demo page the "Register" and "Contact" link disappear. It looks pretty cool other than that though.

Thanks, great feedback! I'll see about fixing these up shortly :)

Like the app concept - think it's too dear for the average PR blogger to get behind and use. But very cool idea!

Like the app concept - think it's too dear for the average PR blogger to get behind and use. But very cool idea!

Thanks! I'm still not convinced that I'm charging enough for Interactwive at present, but will see once I have a few more visitors coming along so I can start testing :)

completely understand! If PR bloggers aren't your market it won't be an issue and it really is a very cool idea. Right now I think Rafflecopter has the market share for them - can be used direct in blog for giveaway. Personally, I'd prefer the 'twitteractiveness' you offer in your app as I spend far more time there...

edited to add: check out your spelling on homepage "If our example conest runs for 10 days: $19.99 + $9.90 = $29.89." nitpicky yes - but important! Also, in creating the comp. can you add a field to list the prize? So people know what they're winning?

It might be worth putting an example of a competition on the homepage, preferably somewhere up at the top. I kept scanning around trying to figure out what "Twitter competitions" even meant, but just found the phrase used without ever really being explained. It made sense after I thought about it, but to get there was a little bit frustrating.

Ooh, good point, thanks! I don't have much time this evening, but have just briefly reworked the homepage - if you can tell me if that makes a bit more sense, you'll have my eternal gratitude :)

Much better! Eloquently explains what it's for and what I would need to do were I to use it.

Implemented a cool new Google docs integration feature on job-buddy.com, thought it was going to really shake things up... Except no-one understands why it's there, how to use it. Back to the drawing board.

It is still under development but major part of MVP is done. It should be ready in a week. I guess I would be able to show it to HN at end of this month to get feedback.

Way to go! Can you give us a general idea of the concept, i.e. "It's _________ for ________."?

It's a social web application to discover, organize and share music videos.

In MVP you will be able to search and filter music videos by keywords, band, album, artist, genre, tempo, and emotion tags(e.g., sad, depressing, motivational etc).

You can create playlists and add videos to it. You can share individual songs or playlists on social networking sites like facebook, twitter and google+.

Launched fancyapps.com Don't know if you can call it a startup but I like it as a side-project

In November we:

1. Made a critical hire

2. Completed "holiday rush" preparations

3. Expanded the warehouse and office

Ties.com?! That's one hell of a domain name.. Cyber Monday.. woot woot

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