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twanlass

44 karma · joined April 24, 2007

Entrepreneur, designer and hacker.
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twanlass··on The Codex App
Link to the site?
twanlass··on Safe Financing Documents
Not starting your new company with 250k in debt sounds great. It will be interesting to see how fast this takes off.
twanlass··on Show HN: Better photo filters for web
The nicest / most surprising thing to me was the instant image preview. In less than a second I had 'uploaded' a huge image and was editing. Nice work.
twanlass··on Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture
+1 for a static jekyll blog :)
twanlass··on Things that suck in AngularJS
I felt like Backbone.js (when I was actively using it) had really clean and complete docs. Couple that with the fact that the source is incredibly readable and debugging anything strange was never that tough.
twanlass··on LinkedIn Intro: Doing the Impossible on iOS
I'm with everyone else - give LinkedIn access to the contents of my email? No thanks.
twanlass··on Forge - Static hosting made simple
Agreed, though as others have noted, if you're capable enough to build the static site in the first place you probably get the zip & deploy stuff.

Forge is probably better off selling this to designers or agencies and giving them some multi-site controls.

twanlass··on Forge - Static hosting made simple
I think you're pretty spot on in your analyses though. We use static sites for our landing pages (currently using Jekyll, Grunt & S3) and I can't see a real reason to switch to something like this.

From a business standpoint I worry Forge will have a really hard time building a sustainable business off of $10 / month / user. That's a lot of users they'll need to build something profitable. There is likely room here though for add-on services or some unique features.

Curious to learn more about TurboJS as well.

twanlass··on Animation to Explain CSS Triangles
Ahhh the hatin' HN crowd. For what it's worth - I've built this bit of CSS over and over but seeing so uniquely presented was great. Thanks for that.
twanlass··on Idea to App in 2 weeks
This sounds awesome. Can I ask how you go about getting shipping details, etc from the sender if they simply give you a name? Is there more to it?
twanlass··on Show HN: Get Paid on Time - Simplified Payments for Freelance Developers
As a fiduciary you'll need to add a lot more content to your landing page to build trust. While the idea sounds great you're asking someone to put a lot of faith (and there paycheck) in your hands.

I'm also curious - what's to stop a client from never releasing payment? Who resolves disputes?

twanlass··on Show HN: Spotify for Independent Music
Just wanted to chime in and say this is awesome. I'm already finding some great new music.

One question - are artists paid for streams or just track / album purchases? I'd likely pay a monthly sub if so!

twanlass··on Show HN: Contacts finds email addresses
I think you're pretty spot on. A PR agency might pay 10x times this, but for a one off use by a startup or SMB a monthly charge doesn't make sense. Maybe offer pre-paid credits as well?
twanlass··on How to create UI framework agnostic Website/Application
Maybe stop changing frameworks? At least in a given project...
twanlass··on VC's apathy towards founders without elite college education kills a startup.
Have you considered a sale of the business?
twanlass··on Ask HN: Is 30 too old to start in software engineering or CS?
Nope. Get going.
twanlass··on Show HN: Sieve - filter webpages and watch changes
Probably want to avoid that as well - https://sifterapp.com - #1 Google result for sifter...
twanlass··on Ask HN: How would you validate this idea?
Hey guys send me an email - twanlass at gmail.com
twanlass··on Ask HN: Pros and Cons of an invite-only launch?
How many signups have you see / are you expecting? In my experience, it's much easier to open the flood gates and close them if need be than the other way around. Remove all friction and just get users in.

Good luck!

twanlass··on Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
Seriously awesome. I have to say though, you're not charging enough! Find a reason to add another tier!
twanlass··on Ask HN: Why is it so hard finding a Freelancer?
I'd be happy to give feedback on your email and provide a quote - twanlass @ gmail.com.
twanlass··on Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users
What sort of inbound traffic numbers are you getting? I have to be honest - I was completely turned off the landing page. Further more, the content structure reads like a blog to me - I had no idea it was service at first glance. I'd be happy to give you some action items / critique over Skype or Hangouts if you're interested.

Drop me a line - @twanlass.

twanlass··on Looking for a designer co-founder
Hey Jared,

Great work thus far. I'm curious, do you have any paying customers yet?

twanlass··on The Chromebook Pixel
Why is the screen nearly square???
twanlass··on I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
Emmanuel,

I can't help you get back the money that PayPal has frozen, but I can help you keep selling it and ensure you keep what's yours.

Email me - tyler [at] simplegoods.co

twanlass··on Heroku shouldn’t be sandbagging paying customers who have low-traffic apps
It's just semantics. They are giving away the first dyno. Would you prefer they took that away when you purchased one for real? 2 for the price of 1 seems pretty nice.

That and fundamentally (as you noted about being optimistic) you're paying $100+ a month for an app that gets zero traffic. That seems to be the core issue.

twanlass··on Ask HN: Percent of time spent developing internal tools?
Very little. A lot of people automate waaaay to early (it's the engineer in you). Of course this is very dependent on your situation (startup vs agency/shop).

I always suggest a digital assistant first. Pay $4-10 an hour and let someone else do it. Wait until that cost becomes a thorn in your side.