SabrinaDent

I always make the client prove the business case before I work with them. I have zero interest in building toiletware.

That said, I had a conversation today with a client who has a fun, cool idea that it is going to be very hard to build revenue on and very hard to market. He's 46. He's been an employee all his life. He's poised for a mid-life crisis. Guys like this either get a mistress or an MBA. What I told him is that this is going to be cheaper than an MBA, so probably we should just build the damn thing.

This is a detail but both of your testimonials are from people in the same state. That's better than none but the fact they are both from the same place makes me suspect one is your wife and the other is your accountant. Solicit real user feedback you can use to build your testimonials - bribe people with an iPad contest or whatever if you have to!

Actually, doesn't YC suggest you not incorporate when you partner or launch so that if you apply for and get into YC, they can help you form with their preferred structure?

Someone is going to have to show me an assesment of the true liability exposure of a website with no personally identifiable user data, no financial information, and presumably no personal assets to collect against before I'm convinced that's not a perfectly sound initial plan.

We formed a partnership agreement, no incorporation, FWIW. The agreement is binding.

I'm a web designer by trade. While I think I have a good innate layout and design sense that I've been working since the days of print, I certainly do not believe it can't be learned. If your goal is to produce product, though, you have to consider if there's a long term time/money benefit to learning. I license layouts from Theme Forest and icons Graphic River for clients all the time when budgets are tight and money is an issue. There's no shame in it. It's very efficient and in the right hands, effective.

For me the biggest advantage is that they do backend stuff as well, which since that is God's most tedious job, is a real bonus. It is so much easier when you have somewhere to start.

Are these typically equity relationships, and if so, how much?

While you have good links on how it can work when they are, they don't need to be. Good people are generally nice and want to help. The tech community can be very tight like that, in a good way. A lot of people will give you their time for the asking, with nothing in return except the satisfaction of paying it forward and helping to nurture a promising startup.

If you;d like to contrast the MailChimp "shiny on the outside, shitty on the inside" experience with a direct competitor, log into Campaign Monitor. It is comparative bliss. I am also a fan of the outside, as it happens - its a nice site:

http://www.campaignmonitor.com

However, I have never seen non-EU based companies do this. Why is that?

iStock charges VAT based on billing residency. So does Big Fish Games. That's just where I've spent money today, so yeah, it's common.

Try Plendi.com - snapshot receipts with your iPhone, it goes up and is entered by an actual person. Then you throw out the reciept - it's fabulous. You or your accountant just downloads them to do expenses at the end of the year. It integrates with other accounting packages too.

You need to radically re-pitch this. What is the benefit to me? Why would I take the time to do this and why would I give you my email address?

You need to make this about me, not you. "Nominate the smartest person you know and help us find the web's smartest person!"

We have a three person startup with one programmer, one design and marketing person, and one "other." The "other" person on the team had the original idea, pays the dev bills, and is our primary non-technical tester.

We value all three partners equally - literally and figuratively. Sure, we could outsource the code, or outsource the design, or decide no idea has value if you can't build it yourself, but that is just not how we are constituted as people. We're very comfortable with our configuration.

I am so delighted you like this idea! With the caveat that all business models are pie in the pixel sky until they aren't, the idea we've been building toward is this:

Membership is free. A number of themes are free. Other themes are not free, and are $5 (or less) each. (Tumblr does themes this way and we like it.) You can use any theme you buy for as many of your events as you like.

We are not clear if people will simply buy each theme as they want it or will buy credits to spent on themes ala iStock and Envato marketplaces. The credits model seems to have a lot of advantages. With credits, you could also gift the themes to friends for occasions, which is nice.

We will likely also have a premium membership model that lets you upload video, create slideshows instead of having a static main image per event, and gives you archival cloud storage of your original uploads. This would be $20 per year or less. Premium membership will likely come with some credits, too.

I'd be very keen on feedback about this if you have any thoughts.

Thanks! "Viable business" is good to hear. Will for sure take the big signup button advice when we're ready for public beta :)

I'm smoking Lights instead of Reds.

Clickable links: http://www.lifesnapper.com/

Demo timeline: http://www.lifesnapper.com/CaraFitz

LifeSnapper's timeline: http://www.lifesnapper.com/LifeSnapper

Jacking the point-of-sale terminals was inspired - very elegant problem solving.

Selling WP Themes and the GPL:

http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=vie...

All PHP files (with WP code) must be distributed with a GPL license. Images, stylesheets, and JavaScripts do not need to be and can be sold commercially.

Theory: The key sign that business/life coaches just want your money is that they call themselves business or life coaches.

I think that's idealisitic. I design websites for startups and small businesses, pretty much all of whom are broke. I also spend a lot of time helping them with their online marketing because very few 3rd parties can provide those services inside the kinds of budget my clients are working with.

Do I like doing PPC campaigns? No, I sort of hate it but I do it because the clients I love need it and there isn't anyone else to do it. I wish more of them would get better at doing their own newsletters well, too, but I also want a pony and that isn't happening either, so I do monthly emailings for the clients who need them because I want them to do it right.

Am I passionate about PPC and newsletters? Hell no. But I am passionate about these people and these companies so I do it cheerfully because it's part of my job to do the tedious and annoying stuff that supports all the other work I love to do. I don't think that's pitiful; in fact I am pretty sure that's exactly the way it's supposed to work.

I realized I only enjoy software if I'm building what I want to build or something that interests me.

You know what? It's called work because it isn't fun. Most people do a day job to pay the bills. It's part of being a grown-up and it comes with commitments and responsibilities that yeah, sort of suck a lot of the time. Even if you're lucky enough to do something you love for a living (and I am) it isn't passionate enthusiasm all of the time.

If you can contract on the side with projects you're passionate about or build your own projects, that's how a lot of people stay engaged with the work. If you don't want to be a software developer at all, though, college seems like a good option only if you're going back to find a new area you're genuinely enthusiastic about.

PHP pinups of elephants on scantily clad women is not a great way to promote this. Really do not want.

I didn't know of Luke or even of him but I am sorry to hear that your community has lost such a towering figure. I am particularly sorry for his wife; to lose your husband and three of your six children would be unimaginably horrifying and I cannot imagine the depth of her grief or that of the remaining kids. My thoughts are with all of you.

This is a great list but it strikes me as just a list of The Realities. The harsh bit is that you will work 80 hours a week for weeks and months for no money, that you will prioritise your coding and design time over friends and family and may loose some along the way, that you will fund marketing with your rent and servers with your food budget, and that if you are successful in doing this you are statistically likely to be a rather disappointing "profitable small business" rather than the internet rockstar Social Network sensation your friends associate with entrepreneurship.

The nice bit is that if you have your feet planted firmly on the ground, all of that is probably OK with you.

It sounds like you're making decisions without data. You don't seem to have a solid job description, reporting chain or salary ballpark. Were it me, I would ask for those things so you could get a clear picture of what you're actually deciding on and the parameters of the position.

Having said that, there's the old sawhorse where employed people are always more desirable candidates, so the option to take the job to pay the bills while looking for other work may be a good one for you.

I would also add that an off the shelf cart system will come with a fully fledge back end. This is nice because you can make use of reusable product options, discounting, automated email receipts, etc. But it's even nicer because you can get admin reporting like month to month sales figures, daily totals, most popular product rankings, and running discount totals. Sure you can track this in Excel but the point is that you don't have to. The ability to update, adjust and refund orders from an interface integrated with the store is nice, too.

Absolutely you can roll your own, but unless you have a really defined and limited product range it's just likely your needs will scale more quickly than your code, is all.

Generally on HN I think the working definition of a "successful" startup is "you're making buckets of money, you have instant geek cred, TechCrunch is your bitch and Google is on the phone." The number of glamorous startups that attain this is statistically small. Most profitable startups settle into being "lifestyle businesses" and get no glory at all. Personally, I think that level of success is under-rated; there's a lot to be said to owning your own shop, getting to do something you love and love to grow every day, and supporting your family with your sweat equity.

You need to open an Etsy shop ASAP. You are providing the perfect answer to the very timely question "What do I get my boyfriend/husband/dad for Christmas?"

1/ Yes. But I'd prefer you make it easy to integrate with my existing systems. As a stop gap, a web form would be fine; I can probably post to it from my system for volume transactions, or just fill it out for occasional correspondence. I am willing to pay in advance for credits or whatever to do this.

2/ Unless I am misunderstanding something, there's no way I filling out that three-stage form for every note. Is there not an account feature? (To me, that is MVP.)

3/ I would totally use this but very likely not at the volume you're looking for. If I'm going to do this, I would like the option to ship you at my expense a supply of my own branded notecards to use. If you're using my stock instead of yours, I do not want you to charge me more to use it - you're saving on your own paper costs.

4/ International postage?

5/ Your definition of neat writing is different than mine, just as an FYI.

My boss has the tremendous habit (when he is actually in the dealership), of coming into the office and looking straight at my screen, with the now dreaded words, "Is that work?", usually followed by "Come on [throwaway_burn]! Focus! Get some fucking work done!"

"I am getting fucking work done, Larry. This right here is work. Unless you know how to code a script to get the data this site needs from our web servers with no documentation, then this is how I know to solve that problem. Did you still want it solved or has something changed?"

Placeholder images - really, stretchable white boxes with borders would be fine - or the ability to upload an image would be helpful. having to put in a URL means I have to stop my workflow to create and FTP or whatever an image.

You could also decide you're going to say what you think on the topics where you feel you have something of value to add, say it as best you can, and not worry about the karma.

I'm not being snarky. It's a perfectly legitimate way to operate if you're clear that being able to dictate your own header color isn't why you're here. It's OK to opt out of the parts of the system that are not working for you.