I'm actually working on a new product (for a fairly small B2B niche) and planning to do a soft launch to work out all the kinks before I publicize it more widely. I'm thinking that'll allow me to work out any issues before I risk my reputation with people who might dismiss the product out of hand if they run into major issues. If you have more experience with it, does that make sense or should I forgo that first step?
Find an aspect that you are passionate about. There are a lot of niches, whether it's specific types of companies, specific problems, or whatever. It's like saying "you can't make money with consumer apps." The space is far too large to permit such blanket generalizations.
Does each person have their own mailbox, just all together (which is what most US apartment buildings have) or is it just a big open box with everyone's mail?
You might think that most people hold that view and I would guess that a lot of the people I socialize with would agree but the majority of Americans don't. That's why people like Jon Huntsman didn't win the Republican primary in 2012, Chris Dodd got almost no votes in 2008, and plenty of other candidates have fallen into the same trap (Chris Kelly, for instance, lost badly in the 2010 California Democratic Primary for Attorney General). If Americans really didn't agree with either party, you'd see them winning but the only real insurgent challenge is coming from the Tea Party on the far right.
Don't eat it like rice, then you'll just be disappointed. Quinoa is a different food and (I say this as a quinoa-lover) just tastes boring if you eat it the way you'd eat rice.
While Shyp might be a great company (it seems like a great idea), I worry about this being the start of a flood of dumb money into startups. I wouldn't consider myself knowledgable enough to invest in a new startup and I follow tech news; what happens when everyone with a few extra dollars tries to spot the next Google?
One of the scariest parts of this is that it seems like surveillance (if not censorship) is much more targeted. If you aren't the NSA's focus or on a TSA watch list, you might not know anything is going on. But if you are unlucky enough to trigger something, you might be visited with unimaginable torment like @chimeracoder was.
If it was just the false positive, that would be one thing but the utterly humiliating, quite frankly stupid, way they treated him was completely unjustified. There's nothing that warranted denying him water and not treating him with dignity.
If only it was something you either "got" or "didn't". I think it really depends on your personality and what you're working on. I find that it works best for long, drawn-out projects where each single task can take hours (so I used it a lot during school). Now, sometimes a task will take 10 minutes, others 45 minutes, others 3 hours, and so I find that it's much more difficult to break down work into Pomodoros.
How do other people who bill on a project basis deal with changing requirements? I generally do just a flat fee (unless the scope is really unclear) but then if a client changes their mind about a feature, it leaves me in an uncomfortable situation. If it's a small change, I'm generally willing to do it for free but those small changes can add up pretty quickly.
I find that many of my clients aren't eager to do retainers because they don't trust that I'll actually be around (I did only start consulting this year). Do you have any advice for overcoming that?
In part because America is much larger: NYC to Los Angeles is similar in distance to a trip from London to Baghdad. At that scale, trains are always going to be inconvenient.
Now, that's not to say trains in the US are good, but they are never going to be the best form of transportation for a 3,000 mile trip.
Not okay with it but I suspect that the NSA (and other governmental agencies) would be able to access it no matter what I do. I'm also more concerned about people I know getting their hands on things than about the government doing so.
Probably slightly safer using a US hosting company. At least some civil rights apply but I don't think there are any rules against the NSA spying on people outside the US.
Alternatively, and maybe combined with #2, I'd suggest looking at LinkedIn for brokers and property management companies. Sounds like they're your big customers and individuals or small landlords will help but won't make or break your business. Therefore, it makes sense to specifically look for the potentially big customers and go hard after them.