Hacker Monthly Presents: Hacker Bundle

by rmldsky • 13 years ago

171 76 13 years ago

apashee• 13 years ago

This is pretty awesome. For someone that's starting out it offers basic things like version control hosting for cheaper than it already is. Also the fact that it comes with Growth Hacker is pretty cool too, along with a 90 day money back, you honestly can't go wrong here. Big thanks to HM for this.

pestaa• 13 years ago

Earned my upvote because this is indeed a nice deal and probably tons of effort went into creating this kind of relationship with that many companies.

However, am I the only one who enjoys setting up Graphite and CI and similar software? (No email, though. Did it once, and don't want to give up sleeping time for a week to do it again.)

pbiggar7• 13 years ago

[disclaimer: I work at CircleCI, which is in the Bundle].

Good question! I think a lot of devs get therapeutic enjoyment from setting up CI. It starts out as fun for the first few hours, while everything is new and exciting. However, it turns to disdain very quickly when:

- you need to remember how to set up postgres/rvm/lucene again

- you need to add a 2nd server and realize you now need to manage a cluster (and you didn't automate the first one!)

- you're away on vacation with your family, and someone calls you because the company CI server is down

- you realize the tests run too slowly and now need to figure out how to make them faster

- you get a bad performance review because of all the valuable engineer time you're wasting managing the CI server, which you could have outsourced for a fraction of the price

- you wonder how you turned into "the build guy" when you actually signed on to make great products.

These are the sort of problems that hosted CI like https://circleci.com solve for you :)

olalonde• 13 years ago

For some reason I keep getting targeted by your ads. I guess I must have searched too much Jenkins related stuff recently. Unfortunately I don't think our tiny startup can justify a monthly expense for CI at the moment. Great ads by the way!

philsnow• 13 years ago

you're away on vacation with your family, and someone calls you because company the CI server is down

This is a general problem with any kind of maintenance or setup that you might do. Did you write a diary of how you went about setting it up ? Did you communicate to the rest of your team how it's supposed to work / how you suspect it might break ?

If not, don't be _too_ surprised to be The One Person who gets called about that thing.

drdaeman• 13 years ago

you need to remember ${process} again

That's why sysadmins should be encouraged to never configure systems directly, but use write-apply-observe-refine cycle of Puppet/Chef (or alike) declarative configurations.

Sounds like a hassle (and sometimes it is, especially in cases where to-be-configured software has Turing-complete configuration files), but in my own experience actually proved very helpful.

ultimoo• 13 years ago

- you wonder how you turned into "the build guy" when you actually signed on to make great products.

Being "the build guy" is an important role in delivering great products. In fact, SaaS CI offerings in my experience cater to a small subset of real world apps, none of which are usually heavily used non-trivial apps. I helped build one SaaS CI product and really hope this changes in the coming years as we abstract more 'things'. But for the time being, 'build guys' or DevOps guys or whatever the latest word is play a vital role.

resu• 13 years ago

Seems like a pretty good deal! Do the memberships automatically renew?

bearwithclaws13• 13 years ago

It depends. But good point, I'll add this to the redemption key page on which providers automatically renew and which did not.

Thanks!

jtsnow• 13 years ago

Most of the bundled offers provide savings for a limited time. After purchasing, does one have control over when each of the services start or do they all start immediately?

bearwithclaws13• 13 years ago

You'll get a redemption key page after purchasing. You can then redeem the services (selectively).

alexenko• 13 years ago

Do the redemption keys expire?

chinmoy• 13 years ago

This is awesome and inspirational. My sincere respect to Lim Cheng Soon. Doing this with 12 companies must have been tough. VERY tough considering he lives in Malaysia. Lesson for those outside of the US and complaining about it. It really doesn't matter where you live as long as you are hustling. Lim Cheng Soon, take my bow!

bearwithclaws13• 13 years ago

Thanks!

Actually it's not tough. You could get a lot done using email ALONE. And, living in Malaysia gives me unlimited runway to keep shipping and experimenting. :)

atrniv• 13 years ago

Looks like a nice place to test out what happens when you type 'sudo rm -rf / --no-preserve-root' on an ec2 instance :)

xauronx• 13 years ago

What does this mean?

jebeng• 13 years ago

Recursively deleting everything.

jaxomlotus• 13 years ago

Is this credit card info input secure? The credit card form comes up, but i'm not seeing any https listed in the browser url.

bearwithclaws13• 13 years ago

The overlay is in a secure iframe (much like a Facebook “Like”). All transaction information never touches hackerbundle.com.

p.s: You can use https://hackerbundle.com if it still concerns you. I just set it up last night.

tyilo• 13 years ago

It isn't secure, even if it is in an iframe, as the href of the iframe could easily be changed with a man in the middle attack. You should force https for the whole site.

Rickasaurus• 13 years ago

I would love to see this same thing but for box software tools, like sublime text and such. It worries me becoming dependent on external services like this.

dsirijus• 13 years ago

Then it wouldn't be the same business model as this (conversion to paid customers for services bundled) and it would probably not work out really well.

wingerlang• 13 years ago

It seems to work alright for the humblebundles (games)

bearwithclaws13• 13 years ago

Noted. Any particular apps you'd like to see? (please send an email to me cheng.soon@hackermonthly.com)

sanbor• 13 years ago

Maybe you can make a setup of FOSS tools that hackers uses (OpenSSH, vim, tmux, Ubuntu, etc.) and make a big donation to them as a way to say "thank you".

chm• 13 years ago

Here are some OSX apps:

http://www.postbox-inc.com/

http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

https://agilebits.com/onepassword/mac

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription...

I already own 3/4, but I'm sure some people would be interested in a bundle.

robbiet4802• 13 years ago

No matter what browser I am in, I can't purchase this. It just says it can't verify my card information. Chrome and Safari on Mac. I checked the card 3 times and just used it a few minutes ago.

Edit: Lim instantly reached out to rectify the issue. Turns out my bank (Chase) flagged it for fraud. Cleared it with them and now I own the hacker bundle :)

bearwithclaws13• 13 years ago

Just dropped you an email.

wmat2• 13 years ago

I'm so uncool! I have no idea what any of the included services are. From what I can gather, it's SaaS stuff. If it had included a free monthly neck beard shave, I might have purchased. I'm sure this package is useful to some of you out there, but honestly, I don't know one person that I consider a "hacker" that this would appeal to. Nice marketing use of the term "hacker" though.

Excuse me, I have to get back to yelling at the teenagers to get off my lawn.

fishtoaster• 13 years ago

I would imagine the "Hacker" bit is because this is affiliated with "HackerMonthly", a monthly print compilation of Hacker News. The actual services seem mostly aimed at early stage startup projects.

wmat2• 13 years ago

Yeah, I suppose. It's all good. I'm just feeling somewhat surly this afternoon :/. I also realize I'm in no way the target market for this package.

dlhavema• 13 years ago

it says it's a "Print magazine of Hacker News", but then what does this mean "Digital subscription for 12 months*" Do they mail you an actual magazine, or do they email you a PDF/e-book of the articles?

pbiggar7• 13 years ago

I think the target market is hackers doing startups, not individuals to use on their own.

poxrud• 13 years ago

This is great. I was planning to purchase a few of those services at full price anyways.

yaddayadda• 13 years ago

The only one that looks useful to me is the Geckoboard @ 50% lifetime off. But I'm confused, it also says, "50% lifetime discount off any plans* (usually $294)". Which of their plans is usually $294 (http://www.geckoboard.com/plans-and-pricing/)? And is it lifetime for the initially selected plan, or can I maintain the 50% off when I upgrade?

bearwithclaws13• 13 years ago

I kinda forgot how I came up with the figure $294. I remembered (vaguely) it was taking one of the plan with the assumption that customer would stay for 3 years or so.

I think the 50% discount applies even when you upgrade. Let me shoot an email to Geckoboard to confirm this.

pmjoyce• 13 years ago

Paul from Geckoboard here.

The discount applies even when you upgrade - it's a pretty generous offer and could save you substantially more than $294 depending on the plan you choose.

lobotryas2• 13 years ago

I would buy this but - like the hours on an AOL Free Trial CD - I would never have the time to extract value from each of the offered services.

These services have confusing end times (3 month, 6 month, 12 month, transactional?) At a bare minimum I'd have to keep a calendar of what expires when and that's just an extra hassle. Next time, please work out a deal where ALL offered products end on the same date so there's less complexity buyers have to keep in mind.

Another concern: this bundle seems to have a mish-mash of offerings with little rhyme or reason. It's like someone said "let's throw as many vaguely web development related SaaS products together and hope there'll be something for everyone!".

Finally, why SaaS? Sure, it's a great business model for a company, but as a consumer each time I sign up for a SaaS I have to make a calculated risk:

* Does the service have a good data export option?

* How likely this service will be around for a year or longer if I'm to sink my time learning it?

* Does this company have any exposure and does it look like it knows what it's doing?

If you decide to stick with SaaS, I hope you curate better and streamline the deal, but frankly I'm looking forward to a Bundle of installed apps instead.

bearwithclaws13• 13 years ago

The deal is curated. All the mentioned apps were either from my personal experience using it or recommendation from HN.

Great guidelines on choosing SaaS (noted for future deal curation). And you are right about the end times. I'll keep an eye on that for the next bundle.

Thanks for the feedback! It's my first time doing this, and rest assured I'm listening with all ears.

tsumnia• 13 years ago

Like lobo had mentioned, I would like to see a program-based bundle. If you were to able to follow the HumbleBundle's pricing scheme for programs like Sublime Text (and even f.lux which is free), coupled with other utility packages, I would be inclined to pitch in some cash.

lobotryas2• 13 years ago

By "curate" I meant to pick a theme or clear connection between the chosen apps. For example, you might offer an "analytics" bundle that offers numerous services that either tackle different aspects of site/usage analytics or allow the buyer to cheaply sample many "best of the best" services before making their decision.

This bundle lists an e-zine, a web-tv channel, SMS/VOIP API, CI, a dashboard, image hosting... The only thing linking these disparate services is the claim that "someone on HN recommended them" and that's it (was there a poll thread that you could link? citation appreciated). Taken together, this bundle makes for an incoherent product picture.

Another observation: the site claims that there are "limited units remaining", however the deal is running for 26 more days. Does this mean the bundle will be shut down when all digital licenses are "sold" or is this a way for getting more conversions? If the latter, you could step it up a notch and display fake dwindling license counters next to each product so users are placed under more pressure to make the purchase before you "run out of stock".

Splendor• 13 years ago

I'm not sure the Humble Bundle model works well for SaaS.

robbiet4802• 13 years ago

FYI all of the things in the bundle are for new users only. I just tried to use the Twilio credit but they said trial accounts only. Refresh the page and notice that under every company it now says new users only. I was just hoping for a steep discount on many of the services I use. Teaches me to read the fine print I guess.

pdknsk• 13 years ago

It's a great idea. What's missing though, is additional payment options. That is a major reason why HIB is so successful.

bearwithclaws13• 13 years ago

Will probably add PayPal and Bitcoins in the next few days. Couldn't use Amazon Payments or Google Wallet though (outside US).

jere3• 13 years ago

Just noticed the order is random. Is that some kind of A/B test?

omni2• 13 years ago

Presentation of offerings from multiple partner companies is often randomized to prevent bickering between said partner companies over their positioning.

jere3• 13 years ago

Ah, that makes sense. I didn't think of that, though I'll note that the most popular bundle I know of (Humble Bundle) doesn't seem to do that.

WalterSear2• 13 years ago

I'd hazard that it's about five minutes harder to set up that way and makes sure that each product gets equal attention space.

bearwithclaws13• 13 years ago

Not A/B test. I just use jQuery to shuffle the order. Inspired by Stripe's team page I guess: https://stripe.com/about

jere3• 13 years ago

I only get about half the offers above the fold and some obviously look more interesting than others. I'm wondering if it would be valuable to know which offers are correlated with higher purchase rates?

zachgersh• 13 years ago

Slight nitpick, if you have limited quantities of something list the total remaining instead of just saying "limited quantities".

jlgaddis• 13 years ago

A portion of proceeds goes to Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I'm interested in knowing what the "size" of the portion is.

driverdan• 13 years ago

Nice. This is what AppSumo used to be. They used to offer package deals on SaaS products. Unfortunately they haven't done so in a long time. Glad to see someone else is stepping up.

olegp• 13 years ago

This is great! Are you thinking of making the list of offers available via RSS or an API? We would love to link to them from our web app directory at https://starthq.com

Hacker Monthly Presents: Hacker Bundle

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