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chrisrickardon Ask HN: What's with the black bar at the top of the page?

It's a sign of respect for someone who has passed away.

chrisrickardon Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

My software consultancy developed a surveying system for young people suffering with mental health issues. It was used before their sessions with medical professionals, and helped inform their clinician on their current state, along with overlaying data from previous sessions to help point out patterns and possible risks.

We met with focus groups of young people (and separately, clinicians) in developing the app, and I felt a strong affinity for the entire project. It still gets used thousands of times per day, and I'm glad I could help bring it to life.

I'd always loved building software, but this project showed me it's so much more than technology.

chrisrickardon Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

Hey Ronald, thanks for checking out Userdoc.

No it's not a dev tool specifically, I would say more for project and product managers, however the strength is involving the whole team. My initial customer development has been with agency owners and CTO's, as that's my background.

Regarding the pricing model, our initial thinking is a monthly subscription (with your plan denoting how many projects you can add) - but I hear you, we are currently testing this pricing model and open to feedback.

I can see how having a demo would be beneficial, perhaps a middleground would be having a demo video (as making our private app public would take a bit of work).

Happy to connect! https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrickard

Thanks again mate.

chrisrickardon Ask HN: How do you share and update the app specifications with your team?

I ran a software agency for 8 years, and as soon as you get past the problem of finding work, and finding good talent - I believe this is a problem we all face.

I’m working on a solution right now, a source of truth for software requirements https://userdoc.fyi

chrisrickardon Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

Yeah it was amazing. Finished the lap of Aus and a little more, and now pretty happy to be back in an apartment (at least for a while!) Started of with a converted Toyota Hi-ace, but upgraded to a beast https://twitter.com/chrisrickard/status/1527521824430608384

chrisrickardon Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

Awesome, thanks frans - I'll check it out.

chrisrickardon Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

Hello from Melbourne, Australia.

This weekend it finally started to feel warm, and I'm ready for summer.

I ran a software development agency for 8 years, sold it at the start of the pandemic, and been travelling with my wife in an RV around Australia thinking about what's next.

One of the issues we faced in our business was around centralising project requirements, and ensuring both our clients and our team could refer to a source of truth. I spent years thinking documentation was bad, but slowly started to realise in an agency setting, when you're working on possibly many a few long-term projects - it's impossible to keep it all in your head.

So my wife and I started building Userdoc (https://userdoc.fyi), and over the last few months have been doing a lot of customer interviews and and demos, along with finalising the product.

This weekend we've finished the last couple of items on our todo list, and rolling it out to our initial users very soon.

chrisrickardon Ask HN: Which job site is as sophisticated as Stackoverflow Jobs?

https://jobboardsearch.com

chrisrickardon Tell HN: I interviewed my dad before he died

I've been thinking about doing the same with my parents, so your post is a nice timely reminder for me.

Thank you, and I'm very sorry for your loss.

chrisrickardon A complete guide to creating actually useful courses

This is so comprehensive, much thanks.

Obviously it's some great marketing for SchoolMaker - but either way, as someone that possibly wants to make a course in the future - thank you!

chrisrickardon Ask HN: Anyone know cheapest website builder?

https://carrd.co

Free, or $19 / year for Pro

chrisrickardon Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?

Boring businesses are the best.

chrisrickardon Ask HN: How to get clients for a new, small software agency?

Friends and family! Take a look at https://www.devtoagency.com, especially the article https://www.devtoagency.com/referrals-from-friends-and-famil...

chrisrickardon Ask HN: Team of programmers seeking freelance projects. Where to next?

It’s the age old question, and one of the hardest parts about running a service business.

I started off in the same position 10 years ago, I think what helped me the most was eventually finding a niche, and focusing on one type of client or problem (as “programming” is way too broad, that and getting initial referrals from friends and family members.

I feel like a gross sales guy linking to my blog, but I am in the process of fully documenting my journey from developer, to building, running, and ultimately selling my software agency - so there may be a few articles that are beneficial for you at https://www.devtoagency.com , specifically https://www.devtoagency.com/think-niche/ and https://www.devtoagency.com/referrals-from-friends-and-famil...

Good luck!

chrisrickardon Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

That sounds like a great life… I like making music for the sake of making music, which is specifically relevant atm with FAWM (February Album Writers Month) happening.

I’m a hobbyist singer/songwriter, and the forced creativity of having to write 14 songs in 28 days really works for me. Shameless plug, 4 songs in so far! https://fawm.org/fawmers/christmascard/

chrisrickardon Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

I contracted for many years, and then with some good hiring, managed to start a successful software development agency., My 2 cents is:

* Finding (good) clients is key to your success

* Ongoing relationships beat new projects almost all the time

* Focusing on a specific niche(s) helps set yourself apart

I write a bunch of articles on this stuff, you might fine some helpful if you decide to take the leap https://www.devtoagency.com

chrisrickardon Ask HN: What is your recommended path for getting into freelancing?

If you're proficient in building and delivering projects, that's a great start, but unfortunately (and sometimes surprisingly) not the most important thing. I would say at this point it's sales.

Personally I would build a marketing website showing off your skills, talking about why your the right person for the job, and ideally, some examples of what you have done (these don't need to be live/online, can just be case studies with some description on the problem, your solution, the tech, how it helped the customer etc). A random example I just googled: https://www.fromthemountain.co.za.

But at this stage don't overthink it. Just get something up, something you can link to and point people towards.

Finding projects (sales) will be the hardest thing. Personally I would recommend steering clear of freelancer/upwork/blahblah, as it's all a race to the bottom. Maybe its good to get started, but generally I would first look towards your own circle of contacts.

I started as a freelancer 10 years ago, then levelled that up into a custom software agency, and last year sold to a larger company. I'm (slowly) writing my experiences over at devtoagency.com - whilst they are written more towards a freelancer who wants to start an agency, perhaps some posts would be useful to you, e.g. this one about asking friends and family for referrals https://www.devtoagency.com/referrals-from-friends-and-famil...

Good luck. Going out on my own was the best thing I ever did.

chrisrickardon Ask HN: Is it still worth it to switch companies every few year?

People who make $180k still have questions.

chrisrickardon Ask HN: How do you do estimates in 2021?

I've ran a software agency for 8 years, and whats worked best for us is using PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) estimation, or 3-point estimation, where you individually estimate optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely cases - to then calculate a weighted average.

Whilst I've found this can help weed out biases and gut feelings - I still add a multiplier that i've refined over the years. Basically chaos allowance, that aims to take into account the things you can't possible take into account yet.

I think me the most common cause of estimation issues arises more from unclear acceptance criteria, rather than calculation issues, so i've learn to work with my clients to capture a huge level of detail in the user story acceptance criteria (kind of anti-agile I know), and only then do a fine grained estimate for every story. This undoubtedly takes a lot of time, but in the end it's what works well on the majority of my projects (i generally do this in a paid scoping phase).

chrisrickardon Show HN: Data-minimal Mailchimp alternative built on top of your SQL DB

Very cool, interesting you can connect to your own DB. Good work guys.

chrisrickardon Meal Plan

Have you tried Soylent? https://soylent.com

chrisrickardon OpenMoji: Open-source emojis

Take a look at https://github.com/SebastianAigner/twemoji-amazing

chrisrickardon Show HN: With a 9-5 job and 2 kids I have finally finished my first MVP

First of all: congrats on shipping, not an easy feat.

Constructive criticism: I had no idea what this site was about until I spent a minute looking around.. and now I only _think_ I get.

Granted I am (probably) not your target market, however I think maybe a landing page or at least a popup tutorial - which I can then "Skip" at my peril would be a smart addition.

chrisrickardon Show HN: LemonadeJS – A micro JavaScript library for building web interfaces

Because there was once a time when Vue was being introduced on HN. They need to start somewhere.

chrisrickardon Ask HN: How did web development become so bizarrely complex?

It all started with XMLHttpRequest (slightly serious).

Ajax spawned "Web 2.0", which in turn spawned the batteries-included-JS-frameworks (which overtook simpler libraries & plugins). Resume driven development then made them the standard, and we now have a generation of programmers who think a GET request only returns JSON, and were never taught it can also return HTML ;)

chrisrickardon Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

Have you tried posting to Indie Hackers? https://www.indiehackers.com

IH is a community of people working on their own products, often solo devs, and it may be a good place to introduce yourself and your project (possible customers could read IH), but also ask for some more advice.

chrisrickardon Ask NH: Where to go from Front end Development?

The frontend/backend divide is very large at the moment, especially for new (or recent) developers.

I feel this is limiting, as I was lucky enough to learn at a time where it was all smooshed together (2000), and I felt comfortable enough jumping from one to the other and back again.

chrisrickardon A new chapter – full-time working from a van in a forest

I envy you Geoff (as you know!), and my plan is to do the same later this year.

I'm not sure how my wife and I will go long term, but living in campervan has always been a dream - so only one way to find out! :)

chrisrickardon Best online communities for people building the future?

Count me interested!

chrisrickardon Ask HN: How long did you continue working your day job while working on an MVP?

I just checked to make sure you weren't one of my co-founders ;)