chrisgoodrich

Thanks, that's good feedback to make sure I'm more clear about my offering.

My goal is not to be a full-time outsourced product manager. Instead I'm trying to fill the gap in early-stage startups that don't quite need a full-time product person.

Founders of early-stage companies must carry the vision, but sometimes they need some help in execution. My goal is to help them execute on a monthly basis.

I left full-time employment at a startup after facing burnout. After taking a few weeks to recalibrate, I'v decided to make a go at building a business from my home office.

I have taken my skills and experience as a startup product manager and packaged them up to help early stage startups ship incredible products.

Would love to hear HN's feedback on the value of this type of service offering.

Some ideas from my experiences.

1. Take a deep breath.

2. Take a walk and regain some perspective.

3. Do something that makes you feel successful.

4. Tackle one of the biggest concerns of your product head on.

Steve Blank calls it Customer Development in his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I highly recommend reading his book.

Market research is imperative to success, but it may not always look like you'd expect. Note that I come from a B2B software product management background. Market research is a major part of my job, but I don't think I have ever called it market research.

Big companies often place a lot of value in more formalized research studies to drive corporate strategy. This is very top-down.

I prefer, and often drive, more lean research initiatives. Working in startups, there isn't budget or time for formalized research studies. Instead I have often used more scrappy methods of customer development to test ideas with prototypes.

A one hour conversation with 10 people in your target market will likely give you enough information to form a hypothesis about what problems people are willing to pay to have solved.

This is great work! There has been a recent shift in the last few years of limiting customization to "cover photos" instead of full backgrounds. In the Myspace days, this would have been a goldmine.

Twitter still allows this type of customization and I see many marketers customizing profile backgrounds as another way to push their brand imaging.

I wonder if there's value in using this for editing of cover photos for various social platforms like Twitter & Facebook.

This is something I have been pondering for a bit now. As the chair of my church's outreach ministry, I struggle with church communications. The church is a unique community of groups, sub-groups, etc. And the activities are just as varied. There are many activities that need to be communicated and only so many channels available to do so. Not to mention making sure that everyone is connected and "plugged-in."

You touch on some good points on how to monetize and build a for profit company that is theologically sound. I have this idea that I'm considering for my next venture.

The idea is to build a self-funded startup with a mix of talented developers, designers, and product people. The company would not ever take outside investment so that the focus is never on dollars and return. Instead the focus is to build awesome software that makes a difference (inside and outside the church), grow our craft, and enjoy life. Nobody will earn millions, but we'll sure have fun making a living to support our families.

What types of roles are you looking for?

Agreed. That is my next step. I know there will be restrictions and limitations.

Any recommended resources?

Similar, but focused on the people close to us. Our friends, neighbors, and coworkers.

Upvote for presenting a hypothesis and then committing to testing it. The only way to know for sure how well something works is to test it.

This calculator is crap. Expect to shell over the full price of the car in cash or pay $1k per month.

Aside from gas, the remainder of the "savings" are BS attempts to get the "effective monthly payment" as low as possible.

First of all, you have a bright future. Don't sell yourself short or give up. Failure is the key to success.

Contrary to what many commenters have indicated, don't get a job if you can avoid it. If you can get by without a job, put every last waking moment into your passion.

1) If you want to be a programmer, build something innovative and cool and tell the world about it. If nobody cares, try something else. Build a portfolio of things you've done that compensates for not having a degree.

2) Network. Meet people, talk to people and get involved. Help others and others will help on your projects. Network locally as well as with others in areas you want to live.

If you pour everything into your passion, you'll get better at what you do and everything will fall into place.

> But with the biological piece of the disease taken care of, a big part of the battle is already won.

I completely disagree. IMO biology is responsible for a very very small part of the problem of addiction. As somebody who lost his mother to liver disease stemming from her addictions, these types of treatments lead to even more dangerous outcomes.

A week in rehab will remove the biological dependence of alcohol.

My mom's addictions started as a teenager with food. Food was her indulgence of choice. After years of trying to rid herself of the consequences of that addiction by dieting, she turned to weight loss surgery to help. Sure, she lost a lot of weight but this merely relieved the symptoms of her disease and did nothing the disease itself.

Years later she no longer possessed the biological ability to be addicted to food so she turned to alcohol instead. The weight loss surgery combined with only 4 years of alcohol abuse (with several stints of sobriety) was enough to ruin her liver to a point of no return.

I don't dispute that this drug could be effective for the newly sober individuals who need a little extra push to remain sober. A doctor that administers this vaccine without careful followup and psychological treatment is doing the patient a disservice.

Let's not kid ourselves, this "vaccine" does nothing but mask the symptoms of the disease leaving the patient troubled, alone and without help.

Addiction is a lifelong disease and it needs to be treated as such. Without proper treatment (psychological help), the disease will morph and before you know it have ahold of your life once again.

It doesn't sound like they really understand the point of user testing.

User testing is not about being critical/positive, it's about if the user can complete the and if not why?

I don't care what my user testers think; I care what they are thinking. A very important distinction.

They also lost a major partnership with Starz which bolstered their catalog for a long time with newer releases and movies from the major studios.

Svbtle sounds eerily familiar to the old 9rules blog network. The only difference (from what I can tell) is that Svbtle provides the bloggging platform and site design as part of membership in the "network."

If Svbtle is to ever monetize as a "publication" aren't they going to pay the writers? Or maybe they'll take the HuffingtonPost route and not pay them?

Not a hater, just voicing some legitimate concerns.

Simple is building a product that they are certain will be successful. VC's should be clamoring to get involved with Simple.

Look at the Simple Twitter feed and you'll see people begging for invites.

I am still hoping for an invite Spring '12 as my last email from them indicated. :)

Central Desktop is hiring for its product team. We are looking for a Vertical Product Manager, Sr. Manager of User Experience and a UI Designer.

Location is Orange County, CA.

We're an awesome group of people working on B2B SaaS software. We're growing rapidly and solving big enterprise software problems.

You can find more information on our jobs site here: http://jobs.centraldesktop.com

Agree completely. I actually find his posts on TC the most rewarding.

All the other TC writers come across as childish pushing out the PR agenda of the latest startups. Very little originality or reporting.

Who even thinks TechCrunch still has any shred of objectivity? Let's face it, the days of objective reporting are gone for TechCrunch.

We have to start looking at TechCrunch as the conduit of PR coming from the valley rather than real news. Then I think everyone can chill and just accept TC for what it is and forget the expectations.

This seems scary. The risk of the confirmation emails being interpreted as spam or not seen is just way too high.

Due to the sensitivity of the information being sent out, there is zero margin for error. Even an after death personal message is pretty hefty if it's a false positive.

I would much rather prefer a service that requires my family to get to the info from a will or lawyer to gain access to my sensitive info.

I'd be interested to hear about the business model to this.

Value proposition is surprisingly similar to PicPlum. Printed photos are important.

PicPlum as a platform?

I will add that I don't argue that fewer prints are made. Even 10 years ago the majority of photos were printed. Digital photo sharing was still in its infancy. There's no arguing that fewer printed photos exist, but that doesn't mean that a market doesn't exist. It means that the market hasn't pivoted in a relevant way.

The value of printed photos has significantly shifted. 10 years ago, printed photos were necessary for archival and sharing personal photos. Today, photo prints serve a very emotional purpose.

>> It's harder to share a tangible/printed picture at any price, so how does PicPlum solve this at all? What you said above supports my thoughts more than it refutes them (IMO).

My point is that if you have 4 sets of grandparents that each want several prints of your wedding, it's generally not economically viable to pay $50 each for prints to share with them. Thus people order fewer prints from photographers and more digital/albums that they can share without incremental costs.

PicPlum seems to make the sharing of printed photos easier by removing the friction in getting prints done and mailing them out to family members. Note that PicPlum's target market isn't (yet) the professional photographer.

I disagree with your assumption. You're saying that because people order fewer prints from professional photographers, that people don't prefer tangible prints.

I think this points more to the fact that consumers don't value a photographers copyrights. Consumers know that it doesn't cost $50 for a 5x7 print and thus they'd rather buy the digital copy to have more control over what they can do with their own photos. Photos are meant to be shared and it's hard to share photos that cost $50 each.

From the vantage point of the consumer with a smartphone, PicPlum offers a very attractive value proposition to share tangible prints with family members. I don't believe that the desire to have printed photos will go away anytime soon.

Interesting that Paul & Akshay decided to take over another YC company rather than run with their own idea.

This is such a tragic situation. I am shocked by the lack of response by Airbnb. The very least they can do is provide her assistance and connecting her with the right resources to move forward.

When I was in college, a classmate in a philosophy class found out I was a business major and turned to me and said "you guys are just so heartless." I resented the statement but brushed it off as a gross generalization. Situations like these just prove my classmates point to be more real than I was willing to admit at the time. Putting profit above the safety and well being of your customers/users is a terrible business practice that will certainly lead to the death of your business. This isn't even about PR, this is fundamental to the future of the Airbnb platform and they aren't even listening.

The hotel lobby has a huge opportunity here that I don't think they realize yet. With this being on the front page of the Financial Times today, the hotel lobby should be swooping in anytime to pick up the pieces of Airbnb's failure to act. If I were the manager of any hotel in the SF area, I'd be offering her a free stay until things got sorted out. Airbnb is going to be left in the wake wondering what the hell happened.

My first thought would be to check out inDinero (www.indinero.com).

Seems like exactly their product domain.

This is exactly what happens when the free markets are not allowed to rule. These loans should be nearly interest free as there is little to no risk in lending.

too bad it won't stay like this. the old look is oddly refreshing.