409 karma · joined July 10, 2010
As a teenager, I picked up a lot of important anecdotes and slices of wisdom from a friend's father who was just a mailman. That said, I don't expect to consult him on any topic of importance to me in the future.
The alternative of large schools (and what is being championed here) is home schooling children. Not only does that not scale, it also disproportionately favors the wealthy as families with already limited means are unlikely to be able to commit neither the money nor the time (on top of work everyday) to teach their children.
Even if you fix the scaling issues and the disproportionate income problems, you still have parents that simply don't care. When I was in school it was in vogue (in my locale) to take your kids out of public school and begin to homeschool them. But it turned out that parents' seemed to think that was the magic bullet, and their children were largely left to their own devices to figure out material, a schedule, and to somehow still be able to interact with kids their own age.
Obviously, I am not a big proponent of home schooling. I actually liked going through public school. I will forever wager my small town public school education against any home-schooled person's education any day.
But the biggest error I see that it suggest I am inclined toward spontaneity and impulsiveness.
I can see where this comes from - I marked that I do not methodically examine choices before I make them. Which is accurate, but not so much when viewed in a vacuum.
When faced with a decision that is not time sensitive, I like to think about the idea for a few minutes, then come back to it a week later, not explicitly thinking about the problem as the week progresses. During that week of not thinking, it is typical to have a sudden breakthrough. If that doesn't happen, when I revisit the problem and commit to thinking about it, I discover that my decisions have already been made without me trying to figure everything out. In a sense it is letting my subconscious do all the heavy lifting.
I very much enjoyed reading through the results.
Anonymously bashing someone with your only real argument being that he is arrogant is ridiculous.
You have zero credibility and for all we know you are bitter for not getting selected for SeedNYC.
And please quit spamming this board with random messages from another website.
Finally, point of order - 20k for 5% is better financially than YC.
What I imagine is troubling to most is your claim to entrepreneurship skill, but your lack of anything derived from it. 2009 and 2010 were both losing years for you. June 2010 you only had 9k in the bank (related post about your goals for the next few years).
Especially since this community is based squarely on entrepreneurship, I think "money talks, bullshit walks" is especially relevent to the typical HN user.
Also, probably not the same for most people, but I do not understand much about your first paragraph filled with many extra details that don't excite me (full ride to umass, 65k this year, paid cash for everything in Boston, etc). I dont think that explains who you are (well, some might say braggart) or what you're about.
I have never met you, but I know many users here have and every single one vouches for your credibility. That is something I believe in.
I know several people that got into programming, hated it, but stayed involved anyway solely for the money -- They rarely like their jobs.
With that out of the way, I think the two most important traits are curiousity and good problem solving skills.
The topic outlines the person in question is interviewing for a coding job.
If you come into an office looking for a coding job, but have never attempted to program before, you have not shown any level of commitment to the job of being a coder.
I am not so self-righteous that I refuse my friends/family favors.
jQuery is the standard in terms of javascript frameworks. Knowing this, why build something in a non-typical framework?
2) First item under work experience "Summer Intern, Senior Technician"... This sounds like you were interning as a senior technician. Not believable. It wasn't until I saw you worked there for 4 years that I guessed you were listing all jobs you had at that place.
3) There is so much boring/unrelated trash in this resume it is hard to get through. I dont care that you were a paper grader unless it has some impact on what you'll be doing for me. Tell me about what kind of projects you spearheaded as a lead developer for your university. (As an aside, virtually no employer will believe you were a lead developer for your university as a student -- you sound like a liar and I'm not even half way through the page).
4) On your activities section, REMOVE HACKING! Your boss may know the colloquial meaning of the the term, he may not. But I would bet the farm that HR thinks you are spending your free time trying to steal people's passwords.
4-b) Remove your activities and interests entirely.
When women (or couples) are having a baby, they have a baby shower. This is a get together to celebrate and typically the party-goers bring a gift for the parents-to-be and their baby. Sometimes clothes or a stroller or diapers or other baby related items.
It is similar to when someone gets married and they create a wedding registry of household items they would like as gifts.
If the Fiero parts guy is primarily selling to end users (which it looks like he does), his profit is probably closer to 33% per item. Standard markup for auto parts to private customer is 1.5x
Source: Family run auto repair shop for 20+ years.
1: Create a free option. 1 page, include email optin, limited to 2-500 views/month 2: If you're not hosting these pages and allowing them to be called from your server via js, start doing that 3: Advertise the free option along with the other two. Tons of research has shown that given 3 options, users will tend toward the middle option, even if it paid and there is a free option available 4: Include more info. Build a new page for the "Plans and Pricing" include the "Go Back" link, but also include more info on how it's hosted, how easy it is to use the service, and any other relevant details
Your home page is way too cluttered. I don't know what to do, I don't know where to go, I have no idea what the random text boxes are used for.
Also, your homepage just isn't very pretty. The sample at the bottom (which I only found by looking at comments here) looks good though.
My first instinct is to set your homepage to look like your product. A few lines of copy and a big "Click here to make your own" When you click to make your own, it is completely dynamic. If I decide I want an orange background, the page background changes to orange. If I want to edit the text, I click on the text and edit it.
Salary negotiation is inherently adversarial. It will remain that way until employers start offering potential hires more money than they are asking for.
If someone tells you they want 80k, you aren't going to come back and tell them that you've budgeted up to 100k. You're going to tell them maybe you can swing 70k (another lie, like what the employee may be doing to you).
Just as you don't want to hire someone that will lie about previous salary to get more, I don't want to work for a boss that will lie to keep more money in the company coffer.
Overall I like it. It immediately made me think of whichever 37signals product that does the exact same thing.
Initially I thought the page was just the left paragraph and the 3 image slider. I was about to leave until I noticed it scrolled down -- If I didnt find this on HN I would have closed it anyway).
So I'd like to see you add more pictures on the right slider or replace it with a video. If you keep the slider, increase the speed! You're using 1 picture with a few bullet points, it doesn't take 30 seconds to digest that.
So you are really looking at 250 yen; Around half the break-even point by your estimates.
I think it is great to have that kind of indepth information, but probably on a deeper page. A prominent link from the homepage should give a higher level view. There also looks like there is a bunch of stuff the average person (your customer) wouldn't understand.
Here is just a short list of things: MVC, entire open source bit, under templates I'd remove everything except the talk of 19 languages and email templates. Vanity URLs, search indexer, drm, etc.
Keep that info available, but put it on a deeper page.
I'd figure up like 5-10 big features, figure out what benefits they offer and sell on those benefits.
Frequent use of the word module. Instead of telling me you have a built in message board, you're telling me a forum module is available.
Over all, it is way way too jargon heavy.
Let me browse the kwolla code online rather than having to download it.
Kwolla logo on the purchase page doesn't link back to the index page (though this may be by design)
Make the Live Demo link more prominent... And when I go to it make me already logged in so I can get started, rather than telling me what username and password to use.
<Quick moral theory> To be moral, an action must preserve agency of those involved. When any action is performed, a reciprocal standard of action is established. (When I do something, I am willing that it is ok for you to do it to me.) If the action in question strips another person of their moral agency, the actor initiating the action is also accepting that it is permissible to be stripped of their own agency. This is where the contradiction exists. If we authorize the removal of anothers agency, then we are authorizing the removal of our own agency as well, and thus our ability to determine morality.
Cliffs Notes: If you screw someone over, you're authorizing others to screw you over. This perverts your sense of morality and you are no longer sufficiently able to decide morality.
Or even better would be setting my instant queue as the default, but if it's not available for streaming, adding it to my regular queue.
She talked at Stanford and her genius was evident.
She is intimidatingly smart and has business sense most people can only dream of.
The fact that she has been doing it for 11 years for virtually all of Google's products only further proves her prowess.
Additionally, the first problem I saw was 5x^2 - 2 = 0, all possible answers were really long floats. Intimidating if that's the first thing you see.
I could see it being interesting if there was a Help button that walked you through the next step of the problem (ie: it changed 5x^2 - 2 = 0 to 5x^2 = 2, then click help again, you get the next step, and on and on until the answer).
Also adding levels of difficulty, different problem types (quadratic equation for example), maybe some kind of completion thing. I don't know. Making it more of a game than a chore.
In your sample, you have the date listed as 31-7-1965. This is not how Americans display dates. Americans use 7-31-1965.
I generalized only saying American's use 7-31-1965. That may be a standard date convention for all of non-Europe, but I have no idea. Don't want the important message to get lost in any confusion.
Assuming 1000 piggy banks at $10/week allowance puts your monthly take at 40k. Virtually all of that money eventually gets spent.
At the lowest level of amazon commissions (4%), you're looking at $1600 per month. If you were at the highest level (8.5%), you're at $3400 per month.
It's not awesome at 1000 users, but it pays some bills.
I'm wondering if you would actually make more money by only having free accounts.
You already stand to make a ton of money from affiliate commissions AND heavy cash on hand.
The value of a customer is way over $7/month just based on these two income sources alone.
Free accounts might help getting the on the fencers to sign up, while you still capture the users that would have signed up for $7/month.
Something else to think about -- If you decide to definitely go freemium, consider having a third option. There is a ton of research showing people are most likely to take the second best option given a menu of choices. Three plans makes the second best option still one that gets you paid each month.
The average user doesn't record all the time so they would be missing all kinds of great video opportunities.
With your software, they're still not recording all the time but now they don't miss any great video opportunities.
Great page by the way. To the point and great design.
Just because you learn whatever proper technique is needed (if any) for vertical jump and can kind of emulate it the same day does not mean you've realized long term gains. It only means you've memorized some technical points. Will you actually internalize those techniques? If you were randomly tested later would you still have those gains?
Not only that, it also has nothing to do with my point --
The vertical leap parts of the book aren't him telling people to learn proper technique; They are based around strength gains. And I stand by my point that he didn't "bulk up" in the morning and then jump higher that afternoon, as the book would imply.
Not a metric anyone keeps track of. Maybe he beat it because one was never set prior to that. Or perhaps he gamed the system. But most importantly, there are virtually no long term gains you can realize in a day that will increase your vertical leap.
I hate to rag on the guy, but this just sounds ridiculous.
A tip for the investment you chose to put into the site? A tip for an investment the reader didn't ask for and only tangentially benefits from?
It is so hard to read it makes me crazy.
My suggestion for now would be to just find a decent photoshop tutorial for a cool font and text effect and using that in the upper left corner of your newsletter and website. That will be free and will make a huge difference.
I'd also suggest testing against a more standard font. The current font looks too cartoon-y to me.