dhruvkar

I use puzzle.io

I have a very small business so can't say how it compares to running a bigger business on qb

How does zed.dev compare?

I don't use vscode because it's always felt heavy on my (older) machine.

Zed seems to work okay. Curious to know how it compares

Brother black and white laser printer

brother-usa.com/products/hll2460dw

I have one personally and installed it in many a home and business

haha... I'm slow..needed the dozen years of data.

For 12 years, I did one year ON, one year OFF (2012 - 2024).

On my ON years, I felt compelled to drink, every night I had at least a beer, if for no reason other than, I wanted to make the "most of it".

On my OFF years, I didn't feel the need to drink, and generally slept better, lost weight and was more focused.

Stopped drinking completely after that.

I'm collecting caught-in-the wild use cases at https://www.clawdrop.org

I use it personally for cold outreach - specifically list building, enriching, and qualifying.

build distribution first. treat this like a product.

simplest - email list.

if there is an area you are interested in, start writing weekly.

post it in 5-10 relevant subreddits. post it in 7-15 relevant facebook groups.

daily.

give yourself 6 months to get to 1000 subscribers.

now when you launch something, you have a warm audience.

protip: to grow email faster, niche down. and try to talk individually to each subscriber like you would a friend.

Exploring my own bio-electricity.

Something is stuck within my body most of the time.

Doing certain movements makes this something flow better.

I feel better when this happens.

Breathing in certain ways enhances this something.

I feel A LOT better when this happens.

Still early, exploring.

yeah, it's not there in a lot of ways.

I've found a lot of value in using it as a scraper and enrichment agent

Following.

I'm using Openclaw + Opus. Several subagents.

However, performance is degraded when using subagents - scraping is less smart, content is worse written, etc.

I'm curious about using different instances instead, but not sure how to use a shared memory foundation effectively.

ah, thanks!

I run https://wwww.clawdrop.org entirely using openclaw.

- it crawls/scrapes to source the material (like this thread).

- dumps it in a sqlite db

- breaks apart raw source into individual use cases

- scores it based on the types of readers I have (solopreneuer, creator etc.)

- creates the template in my CRM, ready to send

I review and edit it at the end.

Still working out kinks, but its been great for:

scrape -> dump -> content/digital product

doing this on both, the supply and distribution side.

https://www.pranadrop.com

A recipe collection from Eastern spiritual traditions.

If you follow certain traditions, there may be a certain way to eat and cook.

This is the start of a collecting them in one place.

Buy an existing business.

If you have any cash saved up, this would be a way to go because:

- cash flow - existing customer base to talk to - product - market fit has happened (hopefully)

You'll get a crash course in everything after the 0 to 1 phase of the business.

And you'll get some energy from talking to customers and building for them.

source: I'm doing that with https://www.fundedlist.com after many years of doing what you described.

Ah, that's interesting. Would that be a valuable lead list for you?

I bought it.

I was tired of spinning wheels trying to validate ideas.

I have experience working in a commodity business. And I tend to believe most things fall in this category.

You can differentiate yourself based on various factors, but the fact that other solutions exists is a good sign. You don't need to create an entire market to sell your product.

Do your product really well, but don't get hung up on it. Learn and lean into good client service. That will create the most opportunity as you expand.

You are running a business not a product.

When everything is a commodity (nothing runs outside of the market economy), the incentives are skewed to this type of behavior.

'Hate' the player' and 'hate' the game.

Some things shouldn't be part of the market economy - education, health and food.

Sleep is rest.

Rest and Activity go hand-in-hand.

I had sleep issues for 10+ years. I couldn't fall asleep most nights, would wake up tired, couldn't function without severe caffeine, which would lose efficacy over time and cause even more sleep issues and mind-bending headaches.

Sleep issues were just a symptom. It was my life (Activity) that needed fixing.

Look to your life -- if you fix things there, you'll fix your sleep.

If you want to talk further, feel free to reach out on email.

> fly the drone with no physical effort and no direct exposure to pesticides—some of which have been associated with diseases of the eyes, ears, nose, throat, skin, and gastrointestinal tract.

Slightly tangential, but what's the thinking here?

We don't want to get it on us while spraying it, but then we'll eat it and it'll be fine?

Here's a way that has worked for generations. It's paying it differently now, given the nature of business today:

1. Buy an asset, using bank leverage.

You need some capital. You need a business that's cash flowing or has fixed assets (so bank can pony up majority of the needed purchase capital).

Find a business that you can exponentially increase (e.g. through using code, marketing or some gap the business isn't fulfilling).

You can do this in the range of 100k, 1M or 10M depending on your risk appetite, ability to persuade and network.

2. Run business for growth (not cash flow) for 3-5 years.

If you had spotted the correct opportunity, with the right gaps, you can 3-5x the business in this timeframe with an intent to sell or leverage for a loan.

3. Sell or leverage the business

At this stage, your multiple for a sale will go up. If you paid, e.g 4x EBITDA, then with the with the higher revenue, you should be able to sell for a 7x. This number can vary wildly.

If you paid 1M for a business doing 250k in profit and you move the revenue to 5M with no change on EBITDA, you can now sell for 8.75M.

You could also use this valuation or LOI to raise money or bank debt to buy your next business in the next range over e.g. 10M.

4. Rinse and repeat.

0. Notes

HN crowd are typically solid programmers and thinkers (although there are a good many business people here). So ignore anyone giving limiting responses. They are only telling you what's true in their experience (career programming).

This type of path is done all the time in the business world to build wealth, especially real estate (slower but more stable). It has more pitfalls than anything and can be a brutal way to live.

This is just a blueprint for someone actually seeking.

Have at it and good luck!

Here's what helped me. I would not wake up rested, I could not fall asleep properly. I was tired and moody all the time.

Living was turning into a hellish nightmare, one sorry day at a time.

There were a few aspects to this for me, most of which I'd be cancelled for bringing up here -- so won't venture there. What I can say is:

Do the opposite.

Which means, stay awake till you can't physically stay awake anymore. But your wake up time is fixed.

You wake up at 6am now. Don't stress the bed time.

Like another poster said, go all out physical activity-wise. I'm not necessarily talking gym. We move our body a miniscule amount compared to even 100 years ago. This is manifesting itself in many diseases, the mildest of which is sleeplessness.

- do some gardening or spending time with soil and nature

- does it take only 2 type to bring in groceries? Make it take 5.

- always take the stairs.

- can you walk or bicycle to work/grocery?

Your intent should be to fall dead when you hit the sack at night.

What helped me was eating freshly made food only. Either raw or just cooked. No food from the fridge. Eating twice a day - brunch and dinner.

This will actually reduce the amount you sleep, but when you sleep the quality is much higher.

I also stopped eating anything meat-based and dropped all caffeine, but that's up to you.

It's been a complete 180 -- energy, mood, clarity and enthusiasm. I don't feel half dead everyday.

I had kar.ai for a few years before the AI craze started. It was at the regular price, I bought it from 101domains.

I let it expire around April 2019, thinking it was not a cool tld.

Couldn't expect my grandma/non-tech friend to remember ".ai". Right!??

Not sure how much it would be worth today, but definitely more than what I paid.

Pitchbook is another one, but I believe it starts in the 5 figure a month range.

true. it's based on Django, however

https://www.saaspegasus.com/

Hi Zeno, kudos on the launch!

what is different about resend compared to sendgrid, mailgun, mailjet, postmark etc. besides the pricing?

I bought my P52s in 2018 also and it's still going strong as well.

The fan was starting to make some unseemly noises, so last week I replaced the fan, upgraded the ram to 32GB and replaced both batteries (under $200 in total).

Would highly recommend a P series Thinkpad, if you like a desktop replacement running Linux.

I ran PopOS, Debian and now Linux Mint. I would have preferred Debian, but it doesn't run seamlessly with my DisplayLink dock + 2 monitors.

Right..

I'm in an antiquated space (logistics and wholesale) so most websites aren't hard to scrape and even mimic the auth.

The other avenue I've had success with is sniffing android app traffic to reverse engineer the API calls.

Thanks for the info -- this is pretty useful. Typically I've success sniffing android app interactions if the website seems too hard to scrape.

This gives me another avenue to explore!

Usually JS based websites operate with some internal API under the hood.

Inspect those, and then directly hit those with something like Python or Go.

I prefer Python (requests, lxml, BeautifulSoup).

Mimic the headers that your browser is using.

Have you tried this already and run into issues?