shk88

Inspiring, but it looks like the business failed sometime around 2013 for violating health code / zoning laws. Disappointing, as someone who likes the idea of leaving tech to run an ice cream shop.

I think this would be more work than it's worth. Legal overhead + the likelihood of the stock being worth anything for a low possibility of future revenue seems like a losing proposition.

They'd be better off focusing resources on their core competency and giving the cloud services away for free (up to a point). See the Microsoft BizSpark program for an example of this.

I'm starting s podcast to help with this problem. The idea is I pick 1 small business / industry a week, and do 5 interviews with different business owners from that industry, asking about their business, the problems they face, etc.

Do you think you'd listen to something like this?

Let's say, for the sake of argument, this is just a placebo effect. Does it really matter? If it provides a noticeable, reproducible result that improves someones life, who cares? Is it guaranteed to work for you? No, but there's no guarantee with a double blind tested, well researched method either.

It's giving up sugar, not ingesting plutonium. Worst case scenario you don't get the 'infomercial results', but it most likely will still improve your overall health

Simplicity. It's become such a behemoth that it can be a bit unwieldy for new users.

I understand this train of thought. But, when it comes down to write this algorithm on the whiteboard or build something small but non-trivial, I'd much rather do the latter.

As far as I know, Automattic (the company behind WordPress) doesn't have offices. At the very least, almost all of their workforce are remote workers.

Branding != logo.

Not that I'm defending BBT, but they're taped in front of a live audience, so it's not technically a laugh track.

This is great!

One note about your site's landing page: for the sections about each "engine" try leading with the engine's benefit to the user, and go into the highly technical jargon in the small print. I have a feeling your customers don't know what, "adaptive learning algorithm to locate and bridge cognitive gaps" means.

1. Contact the manufacturer of a product you're interested in

2. Ask if they are willing to dropship their products

3. If not, ask for a list of distributors

4. Contact distributors

5. Ask if they are willing to dropship

Rinse, repeat.

I think this definitely has potential, but there are a few issues:

Is this only for searching/displaying courses, or is this used for registration also? If it's the latter, this is mission critical software for big enterprises. Price accordingly.

Even if you're only searching/displaying courses, I think your pricing is way too low. Selling a solution to an entire university is going to be expensive. Probably more than a year of revenue at your top-line price.

Maybe you should target individual departments within a university for the service if you want to continue at these price points. However, I think you should ditch the High School offering price. Maybe a <1000 tier, a <5000 tier and a >5000 tier.

I think what you really need to figure out is who are you trying to sell this to, and more importantly, how much it's going to cost to sell to them. That should really influence your pricing strategy. I wouldn't write another line of code until you figure this out.

Good luck!

I don't think rorr was implying that smoking was the cause of Ilya's cancer, but rather is the cause of 20% of stomach cancer cases in the UK.

Thank you.

You just discredited his opinion by stating that his perspective isn't an accurate depiction of regulatory issues for small businesses. Then you went and made your argument siting regulatory problems for small banks.

You discount an argument as anecdotal and not applicable and then support your argument with another anecdote.

Thanks for the suggestions. I've already signed up for the stanford course. I'm looking for immediately available resources, since I'll be interviewing soon.

That was certainly something I considered. However, I feel I can accelerate my learning if I focus solely on improving my skill set. More importantly, I have managed to save up a year's worth of living expenses, so I can make this decision without worrying about my financial situation.

I never considered visa issues. Sounds like finding remote work might be the best option.

This is almost exactly what I was thinking, but in reverse. Instead of plugging in your address, you would plug in the places you frequently visit (work, school, etc.) and it would spit out the ideal locations to live.

I had never seen Padmapper before. It certainly solves the some of the issues I have been having. It doesn't solve the problem of optimizing the location for commute times, etc. But, it is far more intuitive than finding a listing and then plugging its address into google maps.

I would start out with just a standalone web app since I don't have much experience with android/iOS. I'll use that as a proving ground to see what I can come up with.

Starting with NYC is a great idea. It would pose more challenges than smaller cities and rural areas, but if I can get it to work for NYC, everywhere else should be relatively easy.

Thats a good point. Is the forced turnover simply due to leases ending and people moving out or is there some sort of city regulation at play?

I was sort of thinking the same thing myself. I was hoping one of the housing search sites would have an API/affiliate program I could utilize to list places for rent. Unfortunately this isn't the case. I'll have to think this one out a bit more to figure out if it's feasible.