HN user
Founder
Terlici Ltd.
http://www.terlici.com
I love interesting and useful technology. Business, Marketing & Economics help you understand the world.
It probably depends on your project. For a smaller app you can probably start using it without any disadvantages, but I see that some larger apps have problems with it, especially during slow compilation times and bad xcode 6 support. Check this out:
http://swiftopinions.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/swift-1-0-some...
No it is not. The IT sector is one of the highest paid in the world, and there are so much possibilities to choose from, that no agreement between Google, Apple, Microsoft or any other can keep the salaries low, which they are not.
When going the union way your give some of your freedom. You don't have freedom to negotiate everything yourself on your own terms based on your own needs, knowledge and value. No one knows better than you what your needs are.
Looking at the graphic for the reasons from top to bottom
No Market Need - This is real Ran Out of Cash - nobody wants their product because of "No Market Need" Not the Right Team - unable to build and sell the product because of "No Market Need", so blame the team Get Outcompeted - Everybody buys our competitors products but nobody wants to our product because it doesn't solve their problem ("No Market Need") Pricing/Cost Issue - I don't know how to price the product so that it covers my costs and attracts clients, because I don't understand the market (again "No market need")
I can go on like this for each and every item in this list. Basically, it seems there are two problems on the surface why startup fails. They either build what nobody wants or they expect that clients will come by themselves buying a their product.
First understand your market and their problems, and only after you find a problem they are ready to pay for solution, build that solution.
Not buying this. Mainly statements with very little research and almost no connection between them. Written so that it's sounds convincing for the people who want believe in it.
Bad design is most of the time a simple lack of research, or not enough research, of what are the actual needs and problems that people encounter.
We bill weekly, so we don't need a time tracker and everything is simple. No need of guessing hours, or removing distraction time. The clients are happy, and we are happy.
sublime or textmate with Railscasts. It's a dark theme, very nice. I find it very clear, easy to distinct keywords, variables, methods, comments just by the color.
Trademark is an expense. You are startup and you need to make an expense only if it brings something to you.
You are launching so right now your mark is worth nothing, so $18K or any other amount is just not worth it.
Launch, if you are successful and I mean successful in terms of revenue and profits (not user base) then you can start thinking of the trademark.
What do I have to lose?
I have my time to lose and my time is precious.
You offer to work for free. Therefore there is always the risk of lack of commitment to the work.
By the way, I often receive similar offers from Indian consultancies, by phone or by email. Your offer puts you in competition with them and positions you in the same playing field. If you want to grow a successful high paying consultancy that is definitely not the place to put yourself in.
So they call to replace one bullshit metrics with other bullshit metrics. Nice.
Not once in this article there were the words "Profit" or "Revenue" and yet they talk about business and companies.
Here is a surprise for you. Real companies are interested in real profits from real revenue and you count revenue and profit only after the money is actually in your bank account.
Otherwise one day you get the kind of terms of service just like Instragram these days.
Pointless. You can ask with the same success "Just how big Walmart is, if it is only one store?" or "Just how big is Chevron, if it is only one gas station?"
Agreed, if that is the case it is a fraud. If there was an official offer and they hide it, it is fraud. Every shareholder has the right to choose.
However, what I also meant is that in the article they talk only about the money side, there is no mention what else was on the table. For example, may be the strategy that Instagram is interested in is closer to that of Facebook than to the one of Twitter. Or maybe something completely different. We don't have the full picture.
Not a fan of Instagram, and I think FB purchase was stupid, but still, it is a private dealing between two companies. Even if there were thousands other offers, they can choose the one that they prefer. Moreover, it's not only money, when choosing such an offer.
When I read this I remembered when few years ago DHH(also from 37signals) was talking that there is no place for the "The Idea Guy" in today's companies.
Similarly, that is what I think about software/web designers not been able to implement their own designs, due to the lack of knowledge about programming. You don't need to be an expert to implement them. All you need is a basic knowledge of the platform for which you are building the design.
I realize that acquiring this knowledge may be difficult, and it may take some time. The same goes for programmers who don't know how to design the interface of their products. They don't need to become experts but they can teach themselves the basics. I was in such situation with time and experiments my designs improved, but I am not an expert.
To sum up, "Dancing Without A Partner", you don't need a partner for this dance, you just need to learn a little hip hope and turn on the music, everything else its just an excuse for laziness.
Personally on one man projects I have some sort of a text file where I organize everything that I may forget but I consider critical. I don't put everything, I also rely on my memory. One important thing, keep that file short. If the file grows, too much and as this is a side project you don't have much time and motivation to re-read long paragraphs, keep the file short, one screen page at max. I've dome some complex one man projects and this has worked super well for me.
To me scrum and similar practices provide value when you are at least two people, and it gets better when you are more.
There is no shortcut to get better. You have to write software. Write, write and write again.
Take part in different kind of apps. Small web apps, big and complex web apps, simple mobile apps or more complex mobile apps. Each of these will teach you on how to think and organize your work. Try learning different programming languages for example Clojure, python, ruby, javascript, C#, java and haskell. You don't need become an expert but each language will teach you a different way to tackle problems. Another thing that I've found useful is looking at other people's code. Github and the thousands open source projects there, make this super easy. Learn what you should do and what you should not.
Not too much. The content of your posts is much more critical to the success of your blog.
No it doesn't. I hate PHP with a passion, but there are lots of PHP devs out there who will welcome it if your project solves some problem they have, and they will contribute.
Don't change the language of your project just because of popularity. Use node, python, ruby only if the end result will be a significantly better then the current is. When I say significantly I mean compared to the time you will spend to convert it.
In terms, of end users, those that will actually use the dashboard. They don't care what language you use.
not a fan of each those, but Java. I think it is easier to learn and especially as you come from python you will know how to avoid common misunderstandings. If you learn java, please, please, please don't learn from "thinking in java". This is one of the books with huge influence which is totally wrong in 99% of the times.
There is no percentage. Before you ship a product for the first time, it should do what is supposed to do. For example a todo list should be able to manage tasks. If it does that you can ship. Is it speedy, may be not, that is not essential.
Identify your core offer (easy to use todo list). Once you cover it you can ship. Everything else (marketing, security etc) can be done afterwards. + In the mean time you will gather feedback.
You are right. Its hard + I suppose some VC companies will try to prevent revealing such data, as it will not show them in the best possible light.
1) Focus and concentration, without distractions.
2) Think a little bit before writing on what you will write. Thus I have better program with less need to rewrite.
3) Using a 13inch laptop. The small screen estate forces me to concentrate on what I am doing right now. No place for other editor windows or browsers or anything else, just my code and my work.
What does NOT make you faster:
1) Having a special mechanical/ergonomic/whatever keyboard.
2) Having multiple large screens with tons of windows open. This is most of the time distraction and not helpful. Avoid it.
If you have really a lot of whitespace (like one of the js "gurus" from the Chrome team) then minify may help.
Most of the time GZIP + minify is not significantly smaller then GZIP, and thus minifying HTML or JS is not worth it + may prevents good debugging.
WoW! Really good news.
Funny table, but does not showing anything about the success of those businesses or the VCes. As far as this table shows, each of these companies may have been a total failure, which I am sure is not true.
There should be columns like "profits", "revenue", "median profits", "number of profitable companies". Such type of columns will show how successful are both the companies and the accelerators.
Also the "average lifespan" and "number of companies still operating" could be other interesting metrics that provide an insight on how sustainable are those companies.
Gerrit (http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/) It is not a clone of github, but still is Git based and has some very good things.
1) Code Reviews & User management
2) Very easy to install
3) Runs on any hardware and OS
4) Actively supported by people at Google.
5) Used by large projects like Android.
Read successful blogs, books and marketing sites and look how they use words and sentences. Then write, write and write again. Each new sentence your write, the better you will become. There is no shortcut to learn this.
Retention is definitely not the main problem in mobile. It may be in social stuff (ex. the games referred in the article) but that has nothing to do with mobile. Retention in social stuff is a big problem.
In mobile the main problem is discovery. There are so many apps on each market, and the ways to find one are much more limited then a web app.
http://37signals.com/bootstrapped <- not a blog but a lot of useful examples
These are the best I've ever read.
I don't know when you've looked at Braintree but you can accept credit cards. Just look at here: https://www.braintreepayments.com/tour/international
It is not fully international but at least EU and Canada. Another option is PayPal.
I have a kid, a life, and I running my start-up and still there is enough time for pet projects. I do pet projects mainly on weekends, not the entire day, but a few hours of it. I also do a few hours at night, but that is rare.
You don't need many hours, you need to make a good use of the hours you get.
For example, I know that I will have only 3-4 hours on Saturday and Sunday. If I don't do what I need to do, I will have to wait another week. As a result, I am really focused on the core of my pet project.
This works for me. I know people that prefer doing it a few hours a night, but I rarely can. At end it is just a question of focus and organization. If you do those two things well I am sure you will find the right amount of time for your projects.