HN user

dclaysmith

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Originally from Gainesville, Georgia. Went to college out west (University of California and University of Washington) and now live in Dublin, Ireland.

Currently working on https://www.akitaapp.com.

Email: dclaysmith@gmail.com Twitter: twitter.com/dclay

Posts112
Comments235
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s3.documentcloud.org 4y ago

Adapting to Endure – Sequoia Capital [pdf]

dclaysmith
123pts74
www.akitaapp.com 4y ago

SaaS Integrations in Customer Success: How frequently we sync your data

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.akitaapp.com 4y ago

How We Built More Than 100 SaaS Integrations for Our Product

dclaysmith
3pts2
www.akitaapp.com 4y ago

Build a (no-code) NPS tool using Google Workspace

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.akitaapp.com 4y ago

The New Akita

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.akitaapp.com 8y ago

The Essential Guide to Customer Success Podcasts

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.akitaapp.com 8y ago

Segmenting Your Customers for Customer Success

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.akitaapp.com 8y ago

How to Lose Your First 10 SaaS Customers

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1pts0
www.producthunt.com 8y ago

Get Up to $7500 in AWS Credit with Product Hunt Ship Subscription

dclaysmith
3pts7
www.akitaapp.com 8y ago

Show HN: Akita – Customer Success Software with Over 100 Integrations

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2pts3
www.myscriptfont.com 10y ago

Turn your handwriting into a font

dclaysmith
141pts61
www.akitaapp.com 11y ago

AirBnBootstrap: We Moved Abroad to Lengthen Our Runway

dclaysmith
6pts1
news.ycombinator.com 11y ago

Ask HN: Do you regret raising capital for your startup?

dclaysmith
1pts0
developers.facebook.com 12y ago

Facebook Announces Mobile Games Publishing

dclaysmith
2pts0
www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

How I added time tracking to Thetaboard using Harvest and Backbone

dclaysmith
2pts0
www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

ThetaBoard adds support or Dropbox and Google Drive

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.reddit.com 13y ago

/r/ReadableCode

dclaysmith
8pts1
imgur.com 13y ago

Photos of an Amazon.com fulfilment center

dclaysmith
13pts0
www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

Affected by Sandy? Import your exported Trello data into ThetaBoard.

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

How we improved our conversion rate by 46%

dclaysmith
8pts6
www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

ThetaBoard integrates with nReduce classmate edocr.com to expand offerings...

dclaysmith
1pts0
thenextweb.com 13y ago

Beware the Premature Pivot, Getting Traction in Year 6

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www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

Announcing File Upload Support for ThetaBoard Θ

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

Export your ThetaBoards to JSON Θ ThetaBoard

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1pts0
www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

Manage your entire startup using "Linked Boards" on ThetaBoard Θ

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

I added Checklists (and more) to my real-time PM tool ThetaBoard Θ

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

ThetaBoard adds Markdown Support and Comments

dclaysmith
1pts0
www.thetaboard.com 13y ago

Show HN: I added rt updates (Node.js, Socket.io & Redis) to my PM tool Θ

dclaysmith
9pts7
nameterrific.cmail4.com 13y ago

"A Public Letter about Bitcoinica" Founder Quits Amidst Threats to Family

dclaysmith
2pts0
gust.com 14y ago

Everything You Need to Know About Convertible Notes (Part 1 of 3)

dclaysmith
1pts0

The iPaaS landscape was a bit more sparse back in 2015 when we started. And we hoped the breadth of integrations was always going a differentiating factor for us--something we wanted to have full control over.

Ultimately I think it was the right choice. There are enough minor but value-adding modifications we've needed to make over the years that I doubt an iPaaS could provide.

I'm eager to try this (there seems to be an issue with the VSCode marketplace so I haven't been able to install it yet).

Two people on my team use paid versions of postman and I feel like it is a bit expensive (the per user pricing would add up quickly). Do you have/are you planning on releasing a 'team' version w/ shared endpoints?

(Hopefully I can answer some of these questions myself when the Marketplace is back up).

I'm a big fan of what Sarah & Andrew have done at Canny and how they have done it.

This article (humbly) omits the role that having a really great product plays in recruiting. Canny is well designed and built and delivers instant ROI. To a degree, job applicants can sense what working at a place will be like, based on the care the existing team puts into what they are building.

I'm currently the only Customer Success Manager for our bootstrapped Customer Success Management startup Akita --https://www.akitaapp.com (in addition to being CEO/Head of Product Development).

I felt like it was the best way to get continuous feedback from customers and dog food our product.

It has really helped us improve our product but is now going from something that "doesn't scale" to something that "prevents scaling". I hope to hire my replacement pretty soon!

At this point we are targeting other SaaS businesses who already know what Customer Success is, why it's important and what their goals are. They are definitely the "low-hanging fruit".

We don't really have the resources to go after/educate other businesses about the benefits (but there are many). In time we'll broaden our marketing a bit and try and bring Customer Success to the masses.

I recently stepped down from my fulltime position of 6 years. I picked up a job fairly quickly and have work lined up through the end of the year. I would recommend:

* Go to (and speak at) meetups involving technologies you work with. It's a great way to showcase your skills.

* Be charitable with your time. Be willing to meet people for coffee and provide free advice. These sort of meetings often directly or indirectly turn into work.

* Leave your company in good terms--they might use you as a contractor after you leave.

I would definitely recommend saving up 4-6 months of living expenses before quitting. It gives you some flexibility in setting your rate and selecting jobs.

Thanks. Yeah, I really really wanted to avoid popups and modals etc, but it introduces new problems.

Double clicking on the background will close all of the cards.

Cool. I hadn't really considered going this route--was always trying to use a combination of: # of collaborators, # of projects, # users per organization, etc and none of them really felt right. Will give the increased admin features some thought.

Task Messenger looks slick.

Thanks! I wanted to avoid optimizing. When I started working on it (before Trello came out) I wanted something really general purpose with no forced workflow, etc. I could customize it but that's not what I really wanted to build so I've resisted.

It uses backbone.js models/views, Jquery UI, and some Twitter Bootstrap JS.

I developed a similar product over the last few years (http://www.thetaboard.com) and have been waiting to see how the FogCreek guys were going to monetize Trello. I had resigned to leaving my product as free in the face of such a free, strong market leader. Now that Trello has established a price/feature point, I'm tempted to to crank out some features and see if I can't monetize it.

Trello have been pretty transparent that they would eventually offer some sort of premium package in the future but they kept adding so many free features that it was getting harder to imagine what kind of features they could actually charge for. The features they are charging here are nice but they aren't real game changers and I thought they had already offered some of them (data export, Google integration).

All that being said, I think Trello is a great product and I'm sure they'll pay for more than a few nights at the pub with this new revenue stream!

There seem to be a couple of these services popping up. This one (http://www.findexp.com/) services the Braves games at Turner Field in Atlanta. I can't really see more than one of these businesses taking off and I would think Ticketmaster would get involved if it proves lucrative (either by integrating it into their own app or acquiring one of these companies).

Looks a lot like my app: http://www.thetaboard.com

But with some more bells and whistles and a predefined PM workflow.

(In fairness, we both look like Pivotal and Trello to a lesser degree so it doesn't bother me)

Given the noticeable similarities, I'd love to hear how you get on with signups and revenue. ThetaBoard is currently free (It's hard to compete with Trello's price!) but I would certainly love to make a living with it. I've just found it very difficult to "market" something that is designed to appeal to such a broad market.

Good luck with the launch.

Launched just under a year ago.

The comments issue was a tough decision. In the end, I wanted to keep everything on the card itself and do my best to reduce or eliminate/reduce modal windows and drop down menus (I have some but they are few and far between).

I'm actually a fan of Trello myself and use it for some projects--I'm sure Trello will be around for a long time. I am actually ramping up work on ThetaBoard this year (it's been nights and weekends for the couple years) so there is no danger of it going away any time soon. And I'll work on my terms & conditions!

Clone? No. Similar? Sure.

When Trello came out I had been working on ThetaBoard for a while. Both products draw heavily from some Kanban tools that have been around for years.

If Trello had been out earlier I might not have started my project. That being said, I'd argue that the UX/UI and aesthetics of the two apps are different. I'm going to be making some improvements this year that will differentiate a bit more. As long as people keep using it, I keep plugging away at it.

I think there is little risk of Trello being discontinued/FogCreek going out of business. They do a lot of hiring and have had a pretty vocal customer segment pleading for them to charge for it. I don't really understand why they haven't tho I'm sure Joel Spolsky has a plan.

Disclaimer: I wish he was charging--I have a similar project I've been working on over nights and weekends. It is very hard to compete with free and difficult to position/market a product you have created to appeal to everyone. That being said--I love working on my project so it'll be around for a long time... Link: http://www.thetaboard.com

They were also the first (or one of the first) to (nearly) eliminate the approval process. You could go from registration form to accepting payments in hours rather than the old process of getting merchant service account and then payment gateway.

Braintree, which was the "pro-developer" option has only recently followed suit and begun offering this "instant underwriting".

http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/01/a-new-twist-in-the-three-wa...

Thanks! Glad you like it. Yeah, I've got some features I would like to add but am holding back b/c they would result in increased operating costs. I'll need to make a decision in the next 6 months or so.

I write the odd blog post but have not done any focused marketing. I've gotten a few write ups here and there that provide a trickle of traffic that converts into signups pretty well.

My goal with ThetaBoard is to keep it very simple and flexible. I think I've achieved that (which is good) but it makes marketing more difficult--it's hard to market "unspecific". And having Trello as a free 800lb gorilla doesn't help.

I have a full time job so it's not a huge priority for me right now--I'm just focused on building out new features people request (that make sense). It's growing on its own at a pace that keeps me interested.