espitia

That explains why I've only found solutions for big systems - such a small niche. Tank you for the input!

Anyone have link without paywall? :-)

"The craziest Oculus experience I've had recently is playing ping pong in virtual reality. You feel like you're right there with your friend even though they may be halfway around the world. And not only can you hit the ball back and forth, but you can turn gravity up and down to simulate completely different worlds -- outer space, under water and so on.

In our new Toybox experience, you can pick up objects, build things and play games. This video shows a few examples of what's possible. What's really amazing is sharing these experiences with your friends. We're getting closer."

Hey guys, I wrote this app in order to mimic a mastermind group I have with friends which has had a profound effect in bettering our habits. We tell each other what we want to accomplish and stay on top of each other to make sure everyone is doing what they said they would. The idea is that if you have friends watching you, you'll be more likely to actually accomplish your goals (e.g. exercising, reading, etc). All feedback is appreciated!

"Stay focused on building a product your users love and hitting your growth targets."

How can you grow without a product users love? Say your retention rate is nowhere where it needs to be yet, isn't it counterproductive to work on getting more users when you those users won't stick around?

I agree. I am working as a solo-founder and think about this issue a lot. The way I see it, the time spent "networking" to find a co-founder is time wasted when compared to working on your product/customers.

I say it with first-hand experience. I spent a few months going to every possible tech event in my city and had no luck. Finding a good co-founder is not easy. It's almost like trying to find a partner to marry but every second is time against you because no real work getting done.

I'd rather build and get enough traction to the point where you can hire/attract some talent.

A year or two ago I saw my little brother and sister on Snapchat (16 and 15 respectively). I didn't understand it at all. Soon enough I was on it and let me tell you, it is used far more than Instagram and if not more, the same as Whatsapp. It is because you can share real moment of your normal everyday life. They mentioned how on Instagram most of the pictures they see there are uploaded celebrities/funny accounts/etc. Normal people don't have amazing moments to share everyday. Plus, they would be embarrassed to share what they share on Snapchat in any other network (i.e. funny faces, what you cooked, the funny kid on the school bus, your boredom).

I believe they are in unchartered territory thus comparing it to anything else is just a shot in the dark. If you could wave a magic wand and ask for the best way to share moments of your life you would probably get a hologram of your friends to show them that instant of you life that you wanted to share. Snapchat gets closest to this. Moments come and go, not all moments should be forever saved, moments should be only for those you intend to share with, moments should be feel lively (video/images) not text, etc.

Also: Discovery feature - I give Snapchat so much credit for this. They got the younger demographic watching 'TV' again. Snapchat accommodated the channel these kids are using (mobile) to connect with the big media outlets in a way that they actually consume content. That is, by short clips of < 5-10 minutes.

Read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie[1], never mind the title. Written in 1936 and still relevant today. I've recommended to many friends who come back feeling like they have superpowers, it's that good. Personally, I've read it a few times now and still can't wait to read it again.

[1]http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/15...

A bit off topic but pertains to your question: I made an iOS app with Parse.com for my backend[1]. Should I worry about others breaking in to my user's info? What can I do to protect their data?

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/habit-streaks-create-good/id...

Like this: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-...

On a serious note: Remember it is a private financing round. VCs and parties involved calculate based on current metrics future value of company. So, although it may or may not be accurate, it is literally putting a value based on other metrics. For all we know, it could all collapse in a year from now or a lion's share of businesses around the world will be using Slack as their main comms. platform in 10 and thus $2.6B wouldn't sound so bad.

Where would I be able to see app revenue alone? On the Summary Data PDF it says services did 4.8B and that includes "revenue from the iTunes Store, the App Store, the Mac App Store, the iBooks Store, AppleCare, Apple Pay, licensing and other service". Is it possible to see only App Store revenue?

Having just finished watching The Men Who Built America[1], Musk reminds me so much of the great American entrepreneurs of the last 200 years (Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Morgan, Ford, Carnegie). Ridiculously ambitious and fearless entrepreneurs who literally by sheer force of will moved humanity forward.

[1]http://www.history.com/shows/men-who-built-america (available on Netflix)

I'm glad. Skype for iOS has so many bugs it is incredible.

Hello everyone. I built my first app by tons of Teamtreehouse'ing and Stackoverflow this summer and released it early July. Over the past 5 months I put in the back burner as I concentrated on my second app which is struggling because I didn't follow to a very important rule, validate market first. Lesson learned.

So I am back working on Habit Streaks. I've been having customer interviews with people all over the world who seem to be enthusiastic about it so a lot of that is reflected in this release. My initial goal for the app was just that, to build an app. Now that I'm getting actual value from it and hearing stories of how it actually helps people (amazing), I'm very motivated to keep going.

Any and all feedback is appreciated :) !

The lack of interest kills, I've been there. College will always be there, opportunities won't. Take the semester off, you never know how much your life will change in a few months. Plus, if you have a good amount of projects under your belt, it's likely that you can find a job doing what you like and be able to pay your bills. Remember though, if you do, make a conscious decision to work your ass off. Not necessarily because this is now your 'job' but look at it as a purpose/mission. You must hit X by Y. Really puts the pressure on (the good kind).

More than anything though, ask yourself what you want to do. Analyse all the scenarios and where you would feel happiest. Do you really believe in your work? in your startup? Have your feet grounded and boom, chase your dream like it's do or die.

I agree. It really depends. As I mentioned, I feel if you have a goal or vision for what you want, then you can really make the decision. Sounds like you've got your goals set and if college is a part of that, great, that's what I consider success. As Earl Nightingale said, "Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal".

I felt the way you're feeling not too long ago. I'm open to talk to you if you want, shoot me an email ge.espitia@gmail.com.

I recently stopped going to college (a few months ago). I've been thinking about the decision for around two years now and it was the best decision I've ever made. I have never been as productive and generally happy as I have after leaving classes.

What I agree most with the article is that college is not the correct decision for those who already know what they want to do or have a specific goal in mind. Attending classes for me felt like a waste of time simply because they did not push me towards my goal. It felt like I was lying to myself every day by going to class just to let society know that "I am going to college, I am doing the right thing". Once I completely (and I mean 1000%) stop giving a s#!t about what anyone else thought or said (including my family), I found myself to be happier, more confident, more motivated, more everything.

Now, everyone still tries to convince me that I should go back. That I never know what the future holds. Honestly, most of my friends who go their degree have jobs that require little of what they actually learned. Not only are they getting paid borderline a minimum wage but they are being routined to death. I'd say 80% are not happy in their day to day which is crazy. I really feel like if things were to get bad, I am perfectly employable without a degree. My projects and experience have taught me 1000x more than I ever learned in a classroom. Actually, I can say that 90%+ of what I know is through my own reading, my own project, my own initiative, my own everything.

My conclusion on the whole debate of college is that if you know what you want, go out there and get it. Just like there is a cost opportunity of not going to college, there is also cost opportunity to GOING. Think about it deeply and do as your intuition dictates.

Notes:

- I was majoring in business (marketing). I believe, at least in my case, this and many of the liberal arts majors are best learned by doing. If you really have a passion for it, grab some books and practice it. Whatever it may be. As for other studies like medicine, biology etc (the sciences) I've seen it is best to go and study it. My brother is doing medicine and I really don't see how it would be possible for him to not go to college and be able to do brain surgery.

- I love this phrase from the article and to me it is an issue I feel strongly about. Times have changed, we should too.

"The idea of college education is deeply ingrained in our culture. People seem to go down the college route almost impulsively and the correctness of this path is, for most, unquestionable."

People who have accepted the fact that I dropped out, that see why the decision for me was correct, that are proud of the work and value I am producing, will still try to convince me to go back. I don't blame anyone for this, I think we were all brought up since babies to believe that college is the way to go. I just feel we need to question this belief a lot more. - Great article!

Although I read the article, I really don't understand much the theories and technicality of it. What has fascinated me for a while is the slit experiment. What I tie this to is the Law of Attraction. Say that the subconsciousness is the connection from ourselves to the universe (via meditation for example), what if this is the way for us, through our thoughts, to "observe" what is going to happen (in other words, what we want to happen) and therefore the universe "brings" it to us simply because we observed it? Thanks to having some sort of logic I can believe in, I use the law of attraction and it has proven to always bring me what I want in life so far :)

Zero To One - Peter Thiel

Tribes - Seth Godin

The Four Agreements - Miguel Angel Ruiz (life changing) The

Seven Spiritual Laws of Success - Deepak Chopra

These are some that I am reading/read recently.

Wow! Considering that Mixpanel charges $2000 for 20MM data points, this is awesome. Love how the cost of starting up just keeps getting lower and lower. :)

Also, I understand that Amazon includes 'System Events' in their free tier. Even with this included, at an average of 15 custom events + 5 system events, you can have 5MM sessions a month for FREE. This is more than enough for bootstrapped companies/projects to start and grow with.

I'm not sure who the customers for these analytics companies are (small projects that grow with them vs big projects that join them) but if it is the latter, well Amazon is def. the better choice. Although they do not offer any complex funnels/segmentation, I am sure this and other features will be added in the future.

Thinking about Peter Thiel's monopoly vs competition eating profits (Zero to One, awesome book!), I wonder if and how players in this space will be able to differentiate themselves enough to really have a competitive advantage over one another.

Yup. The network is a true competitive advantage. What other incubator can get this caliber of speakers? Amazing.

I'm truly thankful for this.

I can understand what most of the code does and I am really an amateur. So I think it is more along the lines of "fairly straightforward code but not built for easy extension and lacking proper layout/architecture then a few days is enough."

Thanks for the input! I appreciate it.

> You have a masters in CS and 6 years of management experience. You are so far from fucked.

Really. Employers everywhere are looking for people like you. Breathe, accept what happened, DO NOT BLAME YOURSELF FOR IT and move on to the next thing. Remember, if you are going through hell, keep going!

Awesome project! I've passed by many of the cities mentioned in Asia and I have to agree with most of what is up on top of the list. Specially Chiang Mai. I spent a 2 weeks up there and enjoyed it a lot. Met a lot of great people as well.

Thank you Patio for that reply, it really helped. As for writting IOUs for cash alone, why not my time spent working as well? I am guessing since my vesting schedule started 3 months ago, that would cover that correct?

Also, being new to this, excuse my ignorance, what does vesting prevent? what does it encourage? First things that come to mind is if there were to be a fall out, the equity would remain under the one who stayed. On the opposite side, it encourages a long term commitment?

Native.

HN got me to top 65 app in the productivity category for the USA. Thank you!

Will get in contact soon :)

I definitely recommend Treehouse. All it is putting in the time and more importantly, at least for me, was having a purpose. Knowing what you are going to build to have in mind while you learn is key to staying motivated. It is also very rewarding to implement little by little what you know towards your project.