lloydarmbrust

I hate talking to sales people--that's why I buy reconditioned Dells from websites that publish their prices.

May I ask the terms? How long ago was it, and how has it served you?

Wow. Going up against College Publisher? Nice--I wish you well. Maybe there's something we can do together. We hate about 90% of the CMSs that we have to implement our products in and have contemplated building a CMS that we give away just to avoid the hassle.

Currently we are only working with small daily and weekly papers, but obviously college papers would work too.

Huh. I can't agree. Granted I'm new but what makes HN is the community.

For example, my startup is at a critical juncture right now and we posted a question here and on TheFunded. HN immediately responded with about 15-20 really helpful comments. TheFunded? I've gotten one spammy response so far.

Co-founder here. Did something similar for start-up costs (about $18k).

Ha, you've been to my website. Thank you for your words--I do feel better.

You must know my wife.

Our current clients have proven to be reliable. Once we launch them they directly profit from our product by adding about 5%-8% to their bottom line (our customers are newspapers, BTW). It's unlikely that they will pull out unless they close, and our current customer are all smaller newspapers which make this less likely.

Do you think it would serve us better to wait until we have the revenue to support me? What experiences bring you to this conclusion?

I'm jnovek's co-founder. The company has about $10k in cash and about $7k in computer equipment--also, they include your incoming receipts as assets. We are only asking for $20k-$30k and I have a CR above 860.

Unfortunately to get to this point I have maxed my vacation and sick days. Our sales cycle in this mode is about 3-4 months because we are B2B sales right now (this will change down the road).

Hi, jnovek's co-founder here.

RMS below shared a link pointing this out. It warned that "Non-Accredited Investors Trigger a Larger Disclosure of Information" . . . do you know much about this or have any experience in using Non-Accredited investors? I'm wondering how much of a legal pain it is.

Hopefully will be getting $20k-$30k in SBA loan. Already put $20k in (credit card). I need $5.5k/mo for mortgage, taxes, and childs/wife living--sub optimal for "ramen" profitability. Also, mortgage only two-years old so no room for second mortgage although I do have a CR above 860.

Currently working about 40 hours @ work and 40-60 on startup per week--so when I say I'm working two jobs I'm not exaggerating. My hobby is working. Problem is businesses are closed during my free time, and I can't sell while at work.

I'm on borrowed time with my employer anyway--been pushing the limits of civility already (maxed out on sick/vacation). I doubt I have the political stock left to make new arrangements, but appreciate the ideas.

I'm jnovek's co-founder. Unfortunately for the startup I have two kids and a WAF to deal with. Honestly you're right that bootstrapping would be easier, but we've been at this for 10 months and working two jobs is really starting take its toll.

This is really interesting--I've always been annoyed by this problem, and amazingly Google hasn't fixed it yet. My startup is actually selling a product that is very similar to this, and looks to solve the same problems, but I really really like the "if a business isn't open, it'll tell you about similar ones in the area that are."

I'd like to hear more about your app, how much traction you have, etc. The biggest problem with making this work, of course, is to have city-wide (or country-wide) buy-in by all the businesses. Because is a good percentage are not updating this product with info for you, than it's useless to the end user. This last problem is the one we have solved.

Feel free to contact me if you'd like.

Will you still be reading all the applications then?

That seems like over optimizing. Setting up a limited app would probably take longer than just having the four YC people read all the apps themselves.

Ha. That's great. Too bad I didn't have gmail back then, because my site names would totally be archived.

So, who's going to make the next spymaster?

Both Facebook and LinkedIn also do this with external links from their sites, but that makes sense coming from M$-esque companies.

I guess this is a good point though, as twitter will automagically shorten URLs that you enter anyway.

I love the internet for things like this. Awesome job. I remember back in the day hoarding hundreds of geocities accounts to store and distribute MP3s . . . and of course I owned the copyrights to all of those. . . .

The easiest way is make your product appeal to the widest range of users possible. If half the people on an airplane could benefit from your product than your onto a good idea.

Unfortunately my product deals with a very specific market and by the time we have 1,000 "users" we'll be billionaires.

I'm still trying to figure out how to create a SaaS product that provides water or food . . . because everyone needs that.

Very timely post for me as I started up earlier this year--amazing how many of these things I've already learned the hard way.

#1 is aptly chosen. I've always heard that picking the wrong business partner is worse than picking the wrong spouse and I have to agree. Some days I spend more time talking with my co-founder than I do my wife, and right now he is currently six states away.

But I wanted to add that #5 also plays a role here. I vividly remember the first time my co-founder and I had a disagreement: we were both pissed and thought the other was pretty stupid. Some things were said and I got offended but we were both able to take a step back and remove our emotion. I told myself, "this is how start-ups die." Once we both removed our emotion from the situation we were able to address the problem and ultimately make the product better. We needed to be persistent not only in our work, but also in our relationship.

Ever since that time we've decided that while we may at times offend each other (it is a natural reaction), we just need to get over it, and quickly. Now we can say things like, "you're doing this wrong" or "that looks ugly" or "we need to completely rethink this" and no one wants to take their toys and go home. By removing emotion we can more direct, more efficient. And our product is better and we have more clients because of it.

I've been unconsciously practicing number #13 since the beginning of our start-up. Every time I close a deal I'm thinking, "it's not over until we start getting paid from these guys."

That attitude has served me well, I mean, I've had groups back out on us after they signed an agreement. What are we going to do? Lawyers cost to much and who wants to work with someone who doesn't want to work with us? Our customers are our partners and we love them--but if the feeling's not mutual I'd rather cut it off.

It's funny, I'm so optimistic about our success--I'm an entrepreneur after all--but I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop when closing a new customer.

BTW: I should mention that our customers are newspapers, who are notorious for taking a long time to make bad decisions . . . so when we close someone, it's time to break out the scotch.

Yeah, you're not married--you can't hide that stuff from a wife forever.

I'd put money on it being RIM's fault. Ever since they switched to the "bold" OS I've really lost my taste for the brand. I have a 9000 and have to constantly swap both the SIM and battery to make the thing dial. RIM = Fail. I'm switching to Android.

Verizon's network is larger.

I have an BlackBerry with AT&T and a Verizon Mifi that provides 3G internet to my laptop. When traveling, the BlackBerry is pretty much useless here in Texas because there seems to be a lot of holes in their network--but I can drive from Austin to Dallas connected to the web with the Verizon mifi the whole way.

Great idea. Hearing the barista yell the drink she finished making every 30 seconds tends to interrupt my train of thought.