I'm in no way affiliated with the project. I just thought it needed some more attention because it is awesome.
154 karma · joined December 4, 2012
Blog posts like these are interesting but do they really belong on Hacker News?
First, the ecosystem is designed in such a way that "popular" or "interesting" content (disclaimer: this may not include things you find interesting) get bubbled up so others can discover it. If it truly didn't belong on the site, it would just get buried.
Second, I'd wager that a decent percentage of the reader-base either use or have considered using Sublime Text. This information is thus relevant to them.
Third, it's about a startup (makers of ST), a business decision, and a customer's response to that decision. That basically reads "hacker news" moreso than a lot of the content I see get bubbled up.
Furthermore the sense of entitlement is a little obscene...
Unlike anything else, when you buy software it contains issues and bugs. You do so knowingly with the caveat that the vendor will continue to address those problems. This agreement, whether in SLA form or unspoken, is what enables software companies to actually ship products.
If a company chooses to cease support before an expected time frame is up in favor of building a new, isolated version without backwards compatibility then there will undoubtedly be upset customers. This is especially true for products that have an ecosystem built around them.
Re:price
I guess for me the current pricing structure is a bit more vague. I get that knowing how much I'll be billed before I hit the button is a good thing but I don't really know what I'll get in terms of quality or quantity of reviews.
My recommendation is to setup brackets based on word count and then tiers within those. So, for instance, (using completely arbitrary numbers):
0-50 words: 5 reviews ($5), 10 reviews ($8), 25 ($12); 51-100 words, 3 reviews ($5), 10.....and so on. Rigging up the javascript to make that determination would be trivial.
The reason I prefer this approach is that the content that I would need reviewed are fragments. Writings such as product blurbs and headlines are often extremely small in length but are the content that is likely to be hot-swapped most frequently, thus needing the most reviews, for AB tests.
In more cases than not, getting those small content blocks right is far, far more crucial than having a blog reviewed. A small blurb may only need 3 passthroughs but I may want to start with 10 on a headline and continue to buy revisions until I'm satisfied or the AB tests are concluded.
Reviewers currently only see the original. I don't have a feedback mechanism in place yet for the reviewers to see how their changes are getting accepted. It's on the todo list.
This way, I could submit my changes into you (and you send them over to whomever) for review but I could also send them over to my wife (whom is also subject to my persistent requests for reviews).
Most importantly though, the history gives the reviewer a sense of state and a better indication of intent and direction.
Anyway, good luck man. Keep HN informed and I look forward to kicking the tires.
Do you mind disclosing the fee structure? Is it word count based, editor count, or a combo of both?
Also, do the reviewers get to see the versioned accepted/rejected/proposed rev history) or just the original?
GPU vs. CPU; GPUs are much better at the number crunching needed in producing the hashes ("mining"). I doubt very seriously that you can get the kind horsepower out of a vm. I could be wrong; they may have machines dedicated to scientific numeric calcs but then you would likely need to produce a driver for harnessing it, if it even exists.
Computational pricing would likely dwarf any kind of return. Electricity costs alone can be enough to offset profits. I can only imagine what adding AWS fees on top of it would do too.
A) it's difficult. Since the vast majority of miners didn't get in early, they weren't able to get in on the "gold rush" that enabled them to ramp up hardware in accordance with their output. When mining first started, you could find blocks with a decent CPU. Since then, dedicated rigs have become almost a necessity if you plan to make any kind of money at all.
B) Electrical efficiency. Since the recent decrease (reduction from 50 bitcoin per block down to 25 per block) and the rise in popularity of bitcoin (thus rise in difficulty of finding a block.. it scales naturally), the "cost" of finding blocks has gone up. By that I mean it requires more raw computational power to mine, raising the bar on both the hardware needed to be relevant AND the amount of electricity consumed during the process.
There are a lot of calculators out there. They will give you some insight into how much you could make (or very likely lose) depending on your local electricity pricing.
The bottom line is, regardless of what people may say, working at a startup is risky and you will more than likely end up working more than your cubical-dwelling counterparts. Ownership is what makes this okay at the end of the day.
Keep in mind that people will naturally appraise your abilities on your perceived value. If you are coming in 50% lower than the competition, they instantly think that you are worth at least 50% less.
Something that seems to work fairly well for me is I have a base rate of $85 (for rails or UX dev) and then offer discounts depending on the duration (in months):
2 - 3: $80
3 - 9: $75
9 - 12: $70
This tells them that I'm "worth" $85/hr but because they are saving me money by reducing downtime, I'm passing that savings on to them. They feel like they are getting a good deal and I get longer contracts.
- The Lean Startup [http://amzn.to/X3SYp0]
- Rework [http://amzn.to/14DHIXG]
- Art of the Start [http://amzn.to/Vt4aMj]
Maybe some but I suspect many climbers/hikers put a great deal of faith in their equipment. Rental equipment is often abused. Beyond that, they aren't comfortable with it which adds an element of risk.
>> A business person visiting Dublin for three nights. This person would like an ipad for this time.
A business person traveling internationally will have all the tech they need and then some.
>> It sounds like your product is some sort of a marketplace where one side (sellers/businesses) will pay and the other side will come in free.
Spot on.
>> showing an angel that sellers will pay to sell/promote their product on your platform is not going to generate much excitement.
I was thinking along the same lines. The only thing that it may do is prove to them an initiative. On the flipside, it'll slow down adoption significantly.
>> Your challenge will be to build up the user base quickly.
Agreed. This is what is really motivating my interest in finding an investor now. In order for me to build up both customer bases, I'm going to need to give away the service to the restaurants and bars (paying customers) for a duration of time (I'm thinking 3 - 6 months). Once I get enough of them enrolled, I'll use gorilla marketing, social networks, and simple word of mouth to spread it amongst the buyers.
The problem I have is that pushes me out 3 or 6 months before I see any sort of revenue. On top of that, the cost of getting both user groups goes up as I attempt to expand to other nearby cities.
Thanks for all of the points man. I sent you an invite on gchat. Hit me up if you're ever in the mood to compare notes or need a wall to bounce ideas off of.
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I've been a consultant for pretty much my entire career and for the past 3 years almost all of that has been telecommute. I've worked on projects ranging in size from being the only developer to being amongst over a hundred other developers.
I pride myself in being a creative generalist that can specialize when it's called upon. I love UX, I really dig the business side of the house, and of course I love cranking out code.
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Languages: JavaScript, Ruby, C#
Frameworks: Ruby on Rails 3+, Node.js, Asp.Net MVC (any version)
Databases: Mongo, SQL Server, Postgres, Mysql (I am by no means a dba though).
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I have my own LLC and can do C2C, 1099, or W2. I'm available for either full or part-time work. I can start immediately.
Having said that, I recognize that you guys are shooting in the dark. There's very little you can do without knowing what the application is. I'm putting together a demo to cut down on the time it takes me to present to restaurants & bars (my customers). I'm also in the middle of making some changes based on some initial feedback. Once I'm done, I'll consider posting it on this thread.
Thanks for your help man.
First off, thank you for the response.
>> I don't know why you need money at this stage, but please, do not depend on angel investing right now. Do something that you can charge users for right now (today!). Charge them. Are those potential customers willing to pay you TODAY for the product to be delivered in X weeks? Do that. Do not play lottery with your life.
Great advice and I wish I could follow it. My service has a co-dependent userbase. My customers are businesses that only get value if the end-users are present. I've asked a number of them and while they are willing to give it a shot, they won't pay for it until the other userbase is sufficiently established.
>>Angel investors will invest in pretty much two types of startups: 1) startups with crazy ideas that can make everyone millions or fail miserably (think color.com) 2) startups that have a reasonable idea with good traction where return should be smaller
Very well put. I believe it falls into the first category but ultimately the opinions of the angels is what matters there.
>> try to do some consulting I have been; unfortunately there isn't a whole lot of work right now in my area & for whatever reason, telecommute gigs aren't popping up right now.
I think I'm going to continue to push ahead and hopefully build out both users bases in my area. It'll mean giving the service away for awhile but hopefully that'll be enough to garnish some weight when I cold-call angels.
The best advise I can give you is keep it as simple as possible. You don't need a logo, a stellar design, etc. Just build a clean interface that adhere's to the standards and you'll be fine.
People, especially initially, care far more about it solving a problem than how it looks doing so. Just make sure it's usable and you'll be find.
On the flipside, devoting time into something that no one wants would, i imagine, feel worse.
I could probably get enough of my friends to interact with it but I guess but I feel that I somehow need to test both groups in order to truly understand it's viability.
If any of the above are true, they are paying for people to steal from him. On top of that, there's nothing worse than knowing you spent a lot of time building something to have people steal it from you because they're too cheap to drop $1, $5, $10 despite how much time or return it gives them.
One of my company's most popular (Android) apps has a 50% piracy rate and it irritates me to no end.