450 karma · joined January 16, 2009
contact me for anything and everything. austin (at) austinbrandt.com
http://www.hackernewsers.com/users/ABrandt.html
To be fair, the waiting list with referral incentives was discussed a couple weeks back. It appears that a startup called Forkly started it, and then the infamous hipster popularized it.
I agree that it depends on the customer whether you should charge right off the bat or not, but the article does indicate its a paid site now:
"Then after two months of free – I turned the site paid."
"Subsequently Pluggio retention rates of paid users are thorugh the roof – with the average paid user sticking around for six to nine months."
I'm sorry but the bubble banter seems to have gotten a little out of hand. Yes, there seems to be a rise in startups receiving high profile investments. Yes, the flow of acquisitions has increased lately. But this talk of a bubble seems little more than fear mongering to me. Concentrate on the things that truly matter and if there's a bubble, you'll likely weather it in one piece.
A hustler, on the other hand, is exactly what business people must be in a startup. Far from having a well defined role, you must do whatever it takes to make it happen (whatever 'it' may be). Further, a hustler must operate outside the status quo whether they're in a startup or on the streets. While most programmers I know hate the ninja and rockstar labels, I find hustler to be quite endearing.
Yes, yes, yes. Music groups are small businesses and bootstrapping is now a model that makes sense for many of them. But although there are many parallels between musicians and startups (labels are the VCs of music etc.), there are some significant differences. For example, one of the tenets of bootstrapping is the pivot. If you're not profitable, take what you've learned and change your direction. For musicians this is far more difficult I believe. Like many popular artists, DMB's success stems from their unique 'sound'. This sound is a special mixture of each members personality and is very hard to change up while still remaining genuine. Founders certainly have a similar effect on their startups product, but I believe its far easier to hire a new designer than to stop playing the music you feel in your heart.
tl;dr - Music is business but its also an art. There needs to be a new bootstrapping methodology tailored towards music.
Aside from that, there are certainly tricks of the trade you might find helpful. What I've described here is widely called "consultative sales". Steve Blank has some excellent writings on this topic at http://steveblank.com/2009/06/25/convergent-technologies-war...
Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2030370
Anyone else think, "Battlestar was right!"?
A phone line could work, but is not ideal due to distance. Thanks.
UPDATE: Skype just signed me in. Anyone else have this happen? UPDATE2: Back down again after only a few minutes. Hopefully they're close to a fix.
So a hash function is used to encrypt data by translating it with a certain rule set--I've learned about a simple key%b type function before. But with md5 this hashing function isn't the same each time a new code is created? How is the system able to decode it then? _Something_ out there has to know how to translate that back into a readable string right?
And collision is when different strings end up with the same encrypted code (except if you use a hash chain structure). So how is this used in an attack?
Sorry for all the questions. I know I could probably google this but I always learn better through instruction. Thanks!
Thank you, Spencer. You're an inspiration to aspiring tech Entrepreneurs out there too stupid to program ;)
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Interesting side note: The first failed company, Verifiable, links to the sixth failed company, swivel, as an alternative. Apparently charting is a tough space.
If there was a Warner Music of app development, their products would muscle out indie developers just as record music does for indie music.
Its hard to imagine now but there will be Apple without their fearless leader one day. They are a profit seeking venture like any other--brilliant marketing has people convinced otherwise.
Great work too, by the way. I'm astonished by how far the boundaries of this hardware have been pushed in a matter of weeks.
This path would limit your potential loss of income, keep your code under wraps, and provide you with an incentive to support the free app users (make them happy = profit!). Theres risks and rewards associated with any integration strategy; weigh them out carefully and hopefully that will at least point you in the direction of your magic number
Having just a good business model can generate sales too though. Actually there's quite an argument for doing so before writing any code. Its a whole lot easier to change some words around on a word document than to completely rewrite an application.
The competition is open to all college students--I highly recommend you go check it out at http://www.businessmodelcompetition.com. I'm thinking about entering myself, so if you're interested in collaborating send me an email.
All jokes aside, theoretically there is a capital market for any combination of risk and return--as long as the latter outweighs the former to some degree. At $350k/yr (revenue?) you're just not talking about a sustainable return. An investor would likely want more equity from your startup than you'd be willing to fork over in this type of situation.
Luckily there's another capital structure you can turn to--debt. There's a much larger number of people who would be willing to hand you over $20k so long as there's relative certainty you'll pay them back (eventually). These are the family, friends, and fools who get you going. You'll probably still have to sell them on your business a bit, but these people inherently believe in you (the most important part). Pay them back and everyone wins; don't pay them back and risk damaging a personal relationship.
Hope this helps.
You remind me of myself a couple years back. If you're willing to give it a shot, I could probably save you a lot of time and hassle...abrandt@bradley.edu
I know you might feel like you're getting beat up in this thread, but every comment I've read has been constructive criticism. Take it in stride and don't discount anything offhand. I can almost see your vision for WikiTorrents; it has merit. You're certainly passionate so I believe you can do it.