mattcurry

I've taken to getting DVDs from my local library.

- I can reserve online and they'll get it from any library in the network.

- Generally get new release DVDs much faster then Netflix

- Get entire seasons of TV shows at once instead of a disc at a time.

- Free

The big negative is I have to actually go and get them, but I generally pass the library daily, so it isn't that big of a deal.

Won't the new Pandora HTML5 site have this same problem?

Also they F-ed up the RSS feeds. Take a look at this one for the top stories on Deadspin: http://deadspin.com/tag/top/index.xml

Barely anything since Feb. Before then there were 4-5 items per day.

Not sure I follow your reasoning for #3. Filling out this form seems to be the absolute least someone can do if they really want to work at a particular company.

I think taking 5 minutes to find someone at the company and emailing them a personal email will be way more successful for a candidate.

Plus I'd worry that you will sound like just another recruiter when presenting me to the company, so it may end up hurting my chances.

Involve your SO in your startup and then you don't have to choose. They don't have to be a co-founder, but maybe they brainstorm ideas with you or help with customer support.

I actually like the concept of color, but they really fucked up the launch. I don't see the use case as you describe.

Imagine being at a baseball game and in between innings you can pull up pics from all over the stadium.

Or you're a high schooler in a suburban town bored on a friday night and you can see pics of what your class mates are doing all over town.

The 150 ft range is stupid...it should automatically adjust to cover an area of interest whether that's a sporting event, party, apartment building or small town.

Can anyone give examples of #2, a good story?

I've spent the last few weeks trying to brainstorm the story for my biz and just keep drawing a blank.

Hey wasigh, I'm in a similar situation, developer w/ teacher wife and education business. Two most important things I've learned:

1) You can sell to schools, but not by "selling" to schools. Instead sell to the teachers and they'll sell to the school for you. There are lots of ways for teachers to get schools to pay for stuff they want (grants, discretionary funds...). If you create a great product one teacher will tell another and before you know it a group of them want it and they'll pitch their principal.

I sold to 15 or so schools last year (big, small, public, private) and every one of them started with the school contacting me. I realize 15 is not a lot, but total time I spent on those sales was maybe 10 minutes and $0 each. I replied to emails, setup accounts and generated invoices.

2) As a developer you're going to want to solve the scale problem by coding. You need to fight this.

Take the money you make and buy adwords - they work (http://pseudocoder.com/blog/my-adwords-spending-for-2010)

Talk to your customers constantly - make incremental improvements based on their feedback. Only when there is overwhelming demand add a new feature or in your case expand to a new area.

Do more SEO. You're top 5? Not good enough. The difference between #1 and #5 is huge. Figure out what keywords make you the most money (might not be what you think they are) and attack those.

A final note (this one is tough and I'll try to be tactful). In the end your wife (however awesome she was in getting the site started) is just a user. If she's not interested in the business side then you need to take ownership. That means you may make changes without consulting her and that are unpopular with her that are better for the rest of the community.

Email me if you want to discuss anything offline.

I found that when I removed the second password field users thought they were signing instead of registering. This lead to users creating multiple accounts and panic-y emails about lost data.

You may want to checkout http://www.heyamigo.net and http://www.barenakedapp.com/category/amigo/

HeyAmigo sounds like exactly what you are talking about. It was built by Carsonified a few years ago and sold (I think). The Bare Naked App blog was a chronicle of them building it.

I don't see any "con" here, just a great demo.

- Site is simple and clear. I like.

- I'd get rid of the Magic, eh? link. Doesn't really relate to the rest of the product and some people probably won't "get it".

- As for promoting the most obvious thing would be to email a bunch of high profile blogs (that would have use for this) and give it to them. If they use it others will notice. Maybe add a little "powered by loudly" link over the pic.

- Why the subdomain if the main domain just redirects?

Congrats on getting your idea built. Without knowing the industry I think the idea is great.

However, I think the landing page still needs a lot of work. I was suspicious when you were asking about monitor resolutions and had a separate mobile version. It really needs to be simplified greatly. There are a million articles out there that can help (clear/short desc of value, clear call to action...).

I realize it probably took you a lot of time to do the animation, but I would scrap all of that. Sorry :(

Also design wise there is nothing "music" about the landing page.

A 9 minute video seems excessive for a landing page. Cut it to 60 seconds to get the customer interested. Save the 9 minute version for after they sign up.

Thanks, great advice.

Any tips on the best way to approach admins or department chairs?

That would be great.

I actually emailed you in the beginning of '09 after reading about your site in Bob Walsh's MicroISV book. You took the time to send a lengthy and detailed response which was very appreciated.

Most of the traffic still comes from Google search, so I'd say a combination of user interest in this type of thing and being near the top for most of searches.

As far as features I added sharing which allows teachers to generate links that they can send to other teachers and embedding which allows teachers to put their planbook right in their website.

Nothing revolutionary, but both helped w/ SEO and increased visibility with target customers.

Going forward I'm also listed in the Google Apps Marketplace in the EDU section (http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pro...), which has gotten me a few inquiries.

All the ones I've gotten so far have all come to me. So I'd say win over the teachers and let them sell it for you. Especially since a lot of districts will pay for stuff like this, the teachers know that and lobby for you.

You're right. I fixed it.

I've been going after some big schools and entire districts lately, so I worry that they'll be less enthused if they knew I was just one guy doing this on the side.

I did a few years ago, but it went poorly. Might have just been my implementation. Either way I removed it.

Thanks. Will do.

Yes, exactly.

Sorry, that was unclear. Off the top of my head I probably spent $5k in 2010. I'll know for sure once I write the next post.

FYI: The json that powers the ajaxy interface includes pretty much their entire users table, including email address. When they first launched the hashed password was also in there, but at least they fixed that.

So their claim: "your email address is not even available to be scrapped up by a bot when the web page loads" may be true only in the sense you don't even need a bot to scrape the emails.

I sorted the comments by oldest first and skimmed them looking for people dumping on facebook with things like "flash in the pan" or "i could build this in a weekend".

Surprisingly few. In fact most people loved it. So if you're looking for indicators of startup success they'd go something like: 1) 85% of target demographic has signed up. 2) 3.5 millions users. 3) TechCrunch commenters love you.

These benchmarks are from two years ago. The version of Cake used isn't even a stable release (1.2 RC1). Either way 1.3 has replaced 1.2 and is plenty fast for 99.99999% of sites.

I'm about 1/2 way through it. The chapters are short so they generally don't go into too much detail. Often times there will be a interesting sentence that I wish was blown into it's own chapter.

To answer your question: Most HN regulars will probably already be familiar with the topics.

I got this one too, back at the beginning of Sept. $45 then. I guess he must be doing good enough to raise the rate.