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This isn't far from the truth with one of the companies I was involved in!! The non-techs had these totally unrealistic projections for millions of users and the tech wanted to write in their own PHP framework instead of Drupal so that it could scale.

Haha

blenderon Ask HN : What would you do if you had to switch to a "manual" job?

Mailman

blenderon Ask HN: Marriage

Wives are like startups. You fail at the first one.

I speak from personal experience on both counts.

;-)

blenderon Ask HN: What to do when you lose faith on a project?

Until you get some feedback from real users you'll never know. Just put it out there asap and then you'll know.

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: Open-source project as startup?

He said:

"Because making something people want is so much harder than making money from it, you should leave business models for later, just as you'd leave some trivial but messy feature for version 2. In version 1, solve the core problem. And the core problem in a startup is how to create wealth (= how much people want something x the number who want it), not how to convert that wealth into money."

Cheers

blenderon I'm leaving my day job. But my CEO doesn't want me to leave.

Chances are you will fail. Even if you do the right things.

Don't mean to be harsh but that's the statistical reality.

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being?

I had a Prof once that said there were two ways to become a Psychiatrist.

1. Go to medical school

2. Read The Bible, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky

I'd tell them to read The Bible, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky

Cheers

blenderon Tell HN: I didn't get a job due to a failed startup on my resume

Tailor your resume to the potential employer - remove the startup for the conservative ones.

If it's a really long time just say you were a free lance consultant or something.

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

I have tried the lids. My cat is so fussy that it just will not eat it once it has been in the fridge.

I'm very serious about the 1.5 Oz cans - I'd be a customer immediately.

blenderon Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

I want 1.5 Oz

blenderon Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

Single serving cat food tins. i.e. Half the size of regular tins.

You might think I'm joking, but I'm not - I looked for this earlier today online.

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: How can I tell if I'm working with a savvy business person?

I would test them by suggesting some shiny objects and see if they go after them. i.e.

"Yes, Bob, we should do what you're suggesting but we should also do X, Y and Z."

If they don't say "No" or something to the effect of: "Those are good suggestions but I think we really need to focus on getting a prototype out the door, some real customer feedback, etc. Then we can revisit these great suggestions and see if they are still in alignment with the product."

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: Re-architecting on Slicehost to handle 50+ apache processes?

"I don't know what the bottleneck is really, that is part of the problem. But I know that every now and then when we we get bursts of traffic I can find with a /server-status that 50 apache processing are in a write state."

I think you do know what the problem is ;-)

What is your PHP Error handling and logging set to? How big are your Apache access_log and error_log files?

Cheers

blenderon Help me pick a name for my app

chronvert.com is available...

blenderon Tell HN: I think I'm quitting my job today

There is ALWAYS work for bright, hard-working people. You sound like you've thought things through and even prepared a bit - do it!

Rivers always reach the sea...

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN : What do you look for in a project monitoring app?

Trac and a daily standup?

blenderon Poll: How old are you?

blenderon Ask HN: Where should I buy an SSL certificate for my site?

I recently researched this and I thought Digicert looked pretty good. Digicert includes Subject Alternative Name.

Our CEO insisted on VeriSign so that's what we went with - way more expensive and to get both www.example.com and example.com you either have to buy another cert (for example.com) or go through their Sales team's Managed PKI to get a SAN - ridiculous!

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: How to you create and manage passwords?

blenderon Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?

Swordfish.

Yah, that was a joke...

blenderon Ask HN: What web framework(s) do you guys use?

blenderon Ask HN: How to write a business plan for an Internet startup?

I'll second mattmaroon's comments and say that you're probably barking up the wrong tree. You should try to self-finance or go after love-money (family and friends) first. Once you have traction and revenue a commercial or short-form business plan might make more sense - until then it's all wishful thinking.

With that said I have found SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis to be a useful tool...

Cheers