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I’m Flaviu (flah-vee-yoo), a Freelance Ruby on Rails, Python and JavaScript Developer with a passion for startups. I’m currently available for hire. Email me if you have an interesting project.

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flaviusim.com 12y ago

Why Blinkist Doesn't Work With Ben Horowitz's 'Game of Throes'

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flaviusim.com 12y ago

Startup Founder Prostitution

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flaviusim.com 13y ago

How to Avoid Startup Stress and Anxiety

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www.readncode.com 13y ago

Prufrock's Startup Observations

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www.marketwatch.com 13y ago

Affordable Care Act provisions spark a tech and app gold rush

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blog.ctf365.com 13y ago

Hacking servers with passion

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www.readncode.com 14y ago

The Value of a College Education

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readncode.com 14y ago

Pair Programming with Tmux Screencast

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readncode.com 14y ago

Why ack can't find some queries

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blog.eval.me 14y ago

I quit my job to do a startup.

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blog.eval.me 14y ago

So, I quit my job and built a startup. Here's Why and How.

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readncode.com 14y ago

The 80% Lean Startup

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readncode.com 14y ago

How to do a git merge with Vim

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readncode.com 15y ago

Why I Hate Ayn Rand

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code.google.com 15y ago

iTerm2 hits 1.0

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readncode.com 15y ago

5 Lessons Learned at Startup Weekend

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closedbracket.tumblr.com 15y ago

Scalable Business Card

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readncode.com 15y ago

ReStructuredText vs. Markdown

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readncode.com 15y ago

Eric Meyer's Lukewarm CSS

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readncode.com 15y ago

How to give an Ignite talk

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readncode.com 15y ago

Learn Python (and everything) the Right Way

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www.readncode.com 15y ago

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five and Erlang

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news.ycombinator.com 16y ago

Startup Meetups

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Thank you so much for bring this to my attention. I have now changed it to LeagueGothicRegular.

I apologize for any harm I may have caused with the previous font. Please let me know if you are having trouble viewing the font.

I agree. That is a good metric. Some say you should only build products that you would use yourself. While I use surveys, I don't think I'm the target market. So, your metric of building something that can keep you focused is much better.

Thanks for the feedback. I am working on the $1 to be processed separately from the 25 cents so that you can write the amount off.

That's a good idea to give customers the option to do it on their own. However, in that case I cannot guarantee to their respondents that the company will make good on their promise.

I agree. However, freelancing takes a bunch of time and focus and it's up to you to make sure you still give your startup enough focus. Otherwise, it may be better to take a lax job instead.

Thanks man. This is very helpful feedback from someone who has done it.

This is hard to test before having a product because most companies will say they would donate to charity, but then do not when it comes down to it.

I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks again.

Thanks. That's a great idea.

I want to keep it manageable for my users. If you give a user infinite options, they will be overwhelmed. So, I am not entirely sure how to strike that balance.

Currently a company chooses 5 of 20 charities, and their customers choose 1 of those 5.

Because it's a lot easier to spend other people's money. Instead of hiring people when you need something done, you learn it and do it. That way, when you do hire someone you are more knowledgeable and careful with your decisions.

I think it's a good way to teach yourself to be "lean" (in the parlance of our times)

Good point. That's not inherently obvious.

The correlation goes more like this:

Scenario 1: Company wants to take 20 minutes to complete their survey so they make more money. You delete it.

Scenario 2: Company wants you to take a 5 question survey, and they will donate $1 to a charity of your choice if you do it. You are more likely to actually take it because the company showed they're willing to do something selfless in return for your selfless act.

First, thanks for the feedback. It's very helpful.

1. I thought shorter = better in domain names. No?

2. It's an interesting point. Some think it's too much. Some told me it's too little. This covers credit card charges as well. Anything less than $1 donated is not worth it (hence why iPhone apps are .99).

3. By that reasoning any software should be free. But I would like to continue eating and sleeping in a bed at the same time.

4. Interesting point. I hadn't thought about it sending that message.

5. The research I looked at shows that if the company does a selfless act, their customers are more likely to be genuine in their acts. So, while you might give trash answers to get in to an iPad drawing, you're less likely to do that for the Red Cross to get a $1. Basically, people who like giving to charity typically aren't the type to give junk answers to surveys.

6. Response rates vary by industry. The university I worked at had a 80% response rate, whereas a local bank has a 10% response rate. So I tried to use an average response rate.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Thanks so much for the feedback. I appreciate it a lot.

3. I will do that. Maybe a feature comparison page. Good suggestion.

4. What do you mean by a "panel of respondents" ? Do you mean that I would have people of different demographic areas taking public surveys?

Thanks. I will try that. Talking to a designer friend right now, since I am not sure what would work best.

If you have any other suggestions, please email me (flaviu@eval.me)

This is great feedback. Thank you.

Pricing: It may be a lot but I think every customer's opinion should be worth at least $1.25. If a company does not value their customer's opinion that much, they shouldn't send the survey.

Sample: I would argue the sample is already skewed towards people who either love or hate your product. I think the charity component skews it less because the act of giving your time and opinion is very similar to the act of giving to charity. Hence, more of your customers can connect with that charitable act than say, entering a drawing for a prize.

Video: I am sorry you were disappointed about it not being an in person survey system. That was not my intent.

   3. There is more information on the About page, but I think you're looking for a feature comparison page. That's a great idea and I will get on it.
   4. The results is a webpage report, with the option of downloading it to excel.
Personal: Customer feedback is very important to me and if I am online I want any customer to be able to talk to me directly immediately.

I am definitely not insinuating every job is soul sucking. I think every job that doesn't challenge you is soul sucking.

As for self-justification, I don't think my blog post is any more self-righteousness than your comment.

This is great feedback. Thank you.

1. Somebody else had mentioned this and I am working on it. Currently, the list of charities will show up when you create the survey and you have to select 5 of 20 charities.

2. This is a great suggestion. I wil A/B test whether Register or Sign Up gets more sign ups to be able to decide which is better.

3. Product based incentives are a great idea. I am not entirely sure how I would implement that though.

As for skewing the survey pool, I would argue the pool is already skewed towards people who either love or hate your product.

I think the charity component skews it less because the act of giving your time and opinion is very similar to the act of giving to charity. Hence, more of your customers can connect with that charitable act than say, entering a drawing for a prize.

Thanks. I used http://www.revolution-productions.com/ and @lukedupont helped me a bunch with the design.

Lesson Learned: I thought you just pay and a video gets made. But there's a bunch more work I had to put in, like write the exact script, and make sure the story boards matched that script.

Same goes for design. You want the designer to have some creative freedom, but also enough guidelines to make what you want. I had already designed the site and logo and most of the functionality myself, so the designer had an easier time improving upon the ugly design I had made :)

Nothing stops companies from doing their own survey system, and then counting responses and making charity donations.

However, this is a service already built to do that and it may save them the time and money to build their own.

Moreover, customer feedback often needs to be anonymous. So, if the company runs it, the customer may not feel as comfortable sharing their true opinion. A third party would be more desirable in those cases.

Because some research shows that people are more motivated by a donated dollar than being entered into a drawing for an iPad. What do you think?