The 4-Hour Startup (followup) - Building It

by guynamedloren • 15 years ago

50 6 15 years ago

Yes, I know it's not really a "startup". It's a fun nickname for a little project that took off and became profitable relatively quickly.

Anyway, this is a followup to my previous posts, from which I received many requests for details of how I built, designed, and marketed the project. In this post, I went into details explaining exactly what tools I used to design and build the site, and shared plenty of valuable resources. I hope this is helpful, and I'd be glad to answer any more questions about the process.

alok-g• 15 years ago

How do you make the T-shirts though, or what service do you use for getting them made? (Sorry if this is a naive question.)

dhs• 15 years ago

There were some comments a couple days ago which might be helpful: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2173482

codeslush• 15 years ago

Hey Loren - excellent article. I often fall into the trap of over-engineering something or getting stuck in the details and not getting it done. The simplicity of what you put together is very inspiring and almost a talent in itself. Awesome. And...you just keep banging out this content too! Do you sleep? :-)

I wish I had the design chops you have. I've come to realize it just isn't going to happen for me. It's not my thing. The fact that you've got the design skills, the street smarts and the coding skills necessary to throw stuff together like this quickly makes you a very lethal weapon.

I have very much enjoyed watching your posts over the last few weeks. You've hit it hard man and I expect you're going to be the next patio11! You're on a roll -- keep it up!

Quick Question: The photoshop shirt template you linked to - where did you get that?

Anyway, you're inspiring me, and I suspect a LOT of other people too.

kgtm• 15 years ago

Most excellent writeup! The whole set of posts (when they are ready of course) should be the manifesto of momentum surfers. For me, the moneyshot was:

"One-click checkout. This was as easy as painless for the customer as it could be. There were no dropdowns for size selections, no “Buy This” buttons, and no shopping carts. Just click on the desired size, enter Paypal info, done."

A lot of people get this critical part of the sales process so wrong.

phlux• 15 years ago

I've always thought that it would be a good idea for a clothier site to ask you what your preferred size is when you sign up for an account - then by default always show you that size - but give you a link to select other sizes if you wish, for times when buying for others.

But otherwise - always show me only items in my preferred size. Anything I click to purchase is already correct. Input my waist, preferred inseam, shoe size neck size etc (all optional of course) -- and never worry.

It would be interesting if there was a "Single-sign-on" type service that I could sign up for and input all these details - then any site I go to could referrence "mymeasurments.com" deetails and always show my inventory that fits me.

anyone want to hack this together?

The 4-Hour Startup (followup) - Building It

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