BenjaminDyer

No glasses, No Party!

No HPUX, No party!

I agree totally with your point about learning to rest. I am a startup founder, do way too many hours, plus family life, social, volunteering etc. The funny thing I am just back from a two day break (viewing universities with my daughter) and that hard stop caused me to get some virus, it always happens. Work so hard to the point you need to stop, stop, get ill. I can't be the only one.

Aside from that, it's hard for people lots of people to know when to rest when you have this moronic grind culture buzzing in the background. I despise this crush it, work more, do more things attitude in the start up / tech scene. I would have hoped with a better understanding of peoples mental health this would have vanished by now.

Ah super. thank you for your reply. We have the Adobe creative suite here so I think I'll go on a crash refresh course. I'll also take a look at PenPot!

I would assume so, all email content is surfaced for serving ads, so why not AI training.

Thats the one!

I used to actually work in radar on the Isle of Wight, lots of people think of it as simply a place for tourists and old people. However, at least to recently, its the home of a lot of the worlds greatest radar and antenna designers. Sadly its all in decline now.

Agreed, its a good place to explore! I live on the Isle of Wight, its full of interesting historical places. I'd like to discover the Nuclear bunker but yet to find it!

UK, Electronic Engineer originally. We tend to use both terms I think.

TIL: Not everyone uses the term earthed!

Thats quite fascinating to watch, however I'm not sure if I missed it but I didn't see the tower being earthed. Those installers must have some impressive protection in place.

I used to be a volunteer on an emergency lifeboat crew, we would do a lot of drills with a man on a winch and the first rule is, don't touch until he's earthed. Helicopters pick up a hell of a lot of static electricity so you normally see a small earthing line hanging below the man on the end of the line.

One time we were practicing fast recovery, the boat and the helicopter doing crew exchange at high speed. We screwed it up and the static charge blew a hole in the side of the boat!

As a previous owner of a Pixel I have to say it was one of the most beautiful and well crafted laptops I've ever owned. The Pixel had some major flaws, the CPU and overheating was a killer. However the biggest problem here is the underdevelopment of ChromeOS, such promise but it seems to be going the way of most of Googles products.

Front End Developer (JS, HTML, CSS) - Budapest (Hungary) - Full Time

Powered Now is currently looking for a front end developer to join our team in Budapest, HU.

As a Front End Developer, you'll be a key cog in our growing team. As a startup we have a level of flexibility you'll rarely find in other roles and your influence will be huge. We are changing an industry and if you have the ambition for it, we want you to join us.

We are looking for someone that relishes a challenge and has an instinctive grasp of how things work. You'll be working closely with the rest of the development team as well as our Digital Marketing group. Your focus will be to continuously improve the user experience while hitting an aggressive roadmap for 2015 and beyond.

We operate a mobile first policy and during the next quarter you'll be a critical part of our next big project, our cross platform and multi browser compatible release. Its a great time to join.

* 2-4 years of experience of the following areas: HTML5, CSS3, SASS, compass, responsive design, javascript. * Portfolio that represents a range of developed websites or mobile apps * Strong knowledge of website development * Passion for emerging technologies and hunger to innovate * Excellent written and verbal communications skills * Strong organizational skills and an attention to detail

Read more: https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/81537/high-growth-sta...

Apply: ben@powerednow.com

To apply, just drop me an email ben (at) powerednow.com

Powered Now - REMOTE (possibly) - UK - Marketing Engagement Specialist, aka Growth Hacker, aka Digital Marketing Expert

Where: UK South Coast, working from home (office to open within 12 months) Salary: Great salary DOE with bonus linked to MRR targets Benefits: Share options (subject to shareholder approval)

Well funded startup run by experienced entrepreneurs with a brilliant technical team seeks someone special to lead the digital marketing side of our business. The right person will be a digital marketing expert with a background in online products and services, there are extra points if you’ve worked in mobile.

Your immediate goal is to find a repeatable process to capture early adopters. Therefore, we need someone who can experiment with various strategies to find one that works.

The short-term objectives for this role are to:

- Draw up a plan of ideas (brain-stormed with the founders) to test, building on what has already been achieved. - Test those ideas, measure their success and report back.

At the end of this period:

- You should have a clear understanding of what strategies work and where you should focus efforts to grow the user base - Demonstrable growth in the subscriber base, for this we will reward you with a bonus linked to MRR.

In the long-term you will be immersed in our customer lifecycle, from acquisition to retention, so that you can serve as a subject matter expert and implement initiatives to reduce friction. This means you will be working with teams across the company on initiatives that deliver value to our users early and often.

You’ll like this job if you are (aka essential skills):

- Analytically focused. - Methodical, consistent and diligent at recording all experiments. You won’t get bored and stop recording the results! - Smart enough to spot trends. - Into digital marketing and advertising. - Like working with smart people in a fast paced environment. - Happy to work remotely (although we are planning opening an office in the coming months) and capable at managing your own workload. - You can work within a budget. - Know how to use Google Analytics. - Like occasional travel to exotic European destinations.

Extra points awarded for:

- SaaS or Mobile products background. - Knowing additional analytical products like Mixpanel, Kissmetrics - Living on the South Coast of England, although if you are the right person we can be flexible. - Creative, comfortable when writing website copy and designing landing pages for campaigns (we use Wordpress). - Any qualifications to do with SEO or PPC (Google adword certification would be exceptional). - Startup mentality, we all have to ‘muck in’ from time to time.

Nice to meet another "South Coaster" on HN :)

Maybe, however in these times of austerity there's also nothing like a large corporate playing smart to irritate the natives (speaking as a UK income and corporate tax payer).

I would love to see the impact the UK boycott of Starbuck has had on their bottom line. Sure, not everyone cares but clearly enough people have forgone their red cups over the past few weeks for Seattle to take notice based on todays headlines.

With the UK being the biggest userbase in the EU for Dropbox its a shame they've decided to open up in Dublin, as my accountant would say its a good "tax optimisation" strategy.

Sure, hate the game not the player, but they could have scored some major plus points on the day Public Accounts Committee in the UK have poured scorn on Google, Amazon and Starbucks:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20559791

Yep, my startup business Powered Now is pure B2B. The same methodologies apply regardless of the market, however I take your point about stable processes. I think (and would love a discussion on it) the idea of a "stable process" comes with scale, the larger the orginisation the less likely they are to consider adapting or trying new things, although that might be a sweeping generalisation.

Regardless of the size of the business there are always people on the cutting edge, the early adopters you need to find and involve.

Best of luck, I'll watch this thread with interest.

The challenge is to take enough from the feedback to be useful and informative while keeping your focus. Its VERY easy to become obsessed about delivering what your customers / friends want and loose the original vision. Its about time for everyones fave Henry Ford quote "if I listened to my customers I would have built them a faster Horse".

Rather than simply asking "what do you think of X" I like to ask people about their pain points and then try to put two and two together. It can be frustrating and rewarding at the same time.

Good luck.

Thanks for the reply Chris,

How has the office impacted the way you hire freelance staff, do you look for people within reach of your office?

Thanks for the reply George,

Did you bring the whole team under the same roof including the guys from Brighton?

Thats a great post, to some extent I think its true.

Most people tend to specialise in a particular skill set (development, sales, marketing), people with a broad spectrum that are suitable for high flying roles are very hard to find, just ask HP. Most CEOs I've worked with have tended to have a natural slant towards a particular skill and this tends to influence strategy. I know this only too well from my own experience, I try to counter this by getting involved in areas of the business I don't know so well, every day is a school day. Back to the post, IMHO its impossible to set any vision (especially a successful one) unless you spend time understanding the business as a whole, this means getting involved.

Zombie CEO's = fail

You've made a great point. Its very easy to get blinded by metrics that don't really matter. I am sure we have all been there.

"My app was downloaded over a gazillion times last month"

"So what, how many of those that downloaded it are engaged and actually using it?"

I think this makes complete sense for HBO, although as a consumer its pretty irritating. I'm hunting for the reference but I seem to remember reading about (UK) Sky signup accelerating after the launch of Sky Atlantic, which shows HBO content pretty much exclusively, their content brings people to providers. Until the cord cutters outnumber the cable subscribers its not going to change I'm afraid. Also the providers also have their own IPTV solutions so whats the benefit to HBO?

Payments is a really exciting space at the moment, its being disrupted at an impressive rate and it seems a new provider pops up almost every day. While its great to read this story I believe to a certain extent at the moment its better the devil you know, especially if you are an established business.

I always recommend PayPal to our merchants, not only is it the quickest way to send and receive money online its also backed up by one of the largest payment networks in the world. Also lots of people have money in paypal accounts they would like to spend, not everyone links it back to their bank account. For E-Commerce sites you can expect to loose about 10% of sales by not offering PayPal. However, I appreciate its not for everyone.

For alternatives, here I think it really depends on the size and type of your business. If you are doing any type of volume the only serious way to receive payments online is via a Payment Service Provider (PSP), and there are millions of them. You can seriously reduce your transaction costs and often you get some pretty weapons grade anti fraud protection thrown in. Unfortunately setting up a PSP isn't as simple as it sounds, its a two stage process starting with a Merchant Account. This space is pretty dominated by the traditional banks so get ready for a little red tape. Once you have your Merchant Account the PSP slice is normally fairly painless.

With regards to Stripe, I'd personally give any startup in this space some time to debug and increase transactions before you trust them with your business.

Nice read.

No Hermes is a different company, same piss poor attitude.

Good post.

The logistics industry (in the UK at least) is in utter turmoil. I have about 10k ecommerce merchants using our platform and I hear these points on a daily basis.

Speaking to a few logistics and delivery providers recently they tell me the cost of delivering this service has tripled in the past three years. However this hasn't been passed onto the merchant / customer, this industry is living in an artificial bubble and I predict its going to pop. The truth is the price has gone down as companies such as Yodell have arrived to disrupt the space with rock bottom prices (and rock bottom service), this puts huge pressure onto the other providers who are dropping services at a rate of knots.

Its not an easy thing to fix, especially as there are so many interconnected services and companies.

Oh cool, thanks for the nice comment :)

Hungary, UK, Possibly Homebased. Full time.

Great Developer Wanted - Javascript, CSS3, HTML, UI / UX

http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=2475685

Based in the UK and Hungary, we are an innovative, well funded startup with a unique product. We have exceptional leadership who have already built other start-up companies from scratch and made them into success stories. Currently, we are looking to hire an extremely bright developer that wants to make a difference within our business.

This is an excellent position for a talented developer with a great knowledge of HTML and with a passion for producing high quality, functional web and webkit applications. Day to day you will work closely with other developers in the company, working on a range of high profile clients requirements.

The job is home based with regular meetings at Budapest and occasional travel to UK.

Desired Skills & Experience

Must have skills:

- Object Oriented PHP - HTML - Very strong Javascript - CSS3 - MVC experience - UI / UX experience - Good written and spoken English

Additionally any of the following skills would be beneficial:

- PhoneGap - Mobile app development - Objective-C - Java - Sencha Touch - Experience with web services architecture and SOAP/REST interfaces - Good visual design skills