richtofen

Truly a leaf from the Art of War. Confound before Conflict.

Like! :-)

Hm. So if there are say - 5000 customers like you, the business is sitting on a potential annual revenue of $300k. Sounds good! Are there 5000 such customers?

I understand the impeccable logic behind not building an advertising driven model. I just wonder about the magnitude of the 'problem'[recording ThingsToDo], and the cost of the 'solution'[$5/mo]. I would be very curious to see if this sustains the business [founder salaries and server costs]. Regardless, one wishes success to the project.

Sorry - I think I mistook your reply as addressed to myself.

You are welcome. I am seeing a potential use for this as a personal to-do list. Can I delete an atom after it is 'done'?

1. The price is a barrier of entry for me. But that could just be my scrappy upbringing of trying to hunt up free stuff, before spending a dime.

2. Is there a deeper plan to this? Any potential revenue models besides monthly subscriptions? Any future feature upgrades that would make this a unique value-proposition for users? If not, it would not take much for someone to build a similar service, have it available for free, and kll your product.

@hga: Appreciate your response. Replying late, as I was away from all possible lines of communication.

Taken to cleaners risk, technology sufficiency: I would choose to have faith, I guess. As both individual and startup, this is not the first time I would be taking decisions based on incomplete knowledge/information, and it certainly would not be the last.

Technical knowledge: A saving grace is that I am technical after all. Just a different discipline - that of putting spaces and buildings together. The hypothesis is that the principles of problem-solving are universally same - just that language, grammar, syntax and rhetoric are different. If I have managed to produce cinema and theatre using my training as an architect and designer - I am hoping I can pull it off for a consumer internet application as well.

Having said all that, a tech co-founder would be ideal - except that I do not have a shared non-work history with any - and this level of chemistry is essential for the travails of co-founding. It feels somewhat lame to go 'date' a potential co-founder, just for the sake of having a tech co-founder.

@exline: Appreciate your response. Am replying a little late, but was deep in the jungles of India [seriously] for the past few days. Quality of Code:I have found the best guys possible, within my means. I will trust them. Nothing further is possible. Development vs Sales/Marketing: Thanks for flagging this up. Being an architect, project manager and designer, I hear you on the create vs evangelize challenge. We are on to it. Lots of user-feedback and testing based on UI's and interaction demo's [knocking stuff together as flash presentations and pptx files (it is low, I know)], some cryptic splash pages, a few fire-hose twitter accounts that are trying to create some buzz [but only bot-followers till date, etc. And friends. Lots of priceless friends and well-wishers. Within all this, a tech co-founder would have been ideal, but the heroes currently writing the code have their own startup dreams to chase, kids to send to school, and mortgages to pay. Nothing is perfect, I guess.

This was a seriously crass comment. What was I thinking? My apologies fir trivializing the original inquiry of the thread.

Trouble is, we are making it a mathematical problem. It need not be. The same logic applies to human [as opposed to mathematic] problems like: 1. Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me? 2. How much money is in the first envelope, to begin with? Whatever there is, I can get it to work to better use in my business, than some class 8 formula. 3. How many birds are there in the bush? 4. What if...

All right. Comments notwithstanding. Seriously - how much money?

Answering the base question - everyone is a designer - a Hacker, a civilian, all. All persons I know of (where I am currently located) are hackers - whether they know how to write computer code, or otherwise. The way I see it, 'hacking' is a means of getting around an existing system - Gandalf and the white-cloaks wrote the machine language of Middle Earth, as do the jay-walkers of New Delhi write the unwritten civilian traffic codes, in the presence of abstract rules. 'Design' too, is nothing more than creative problem-solving. Anyone is engaged in the act of 'designing' as much in figuring out the best way to tie shoelaces in record time - as figuring out user interaction in a computational setting. Just apply the art. And science. Together. A hundred years ago, they were called Architects - of building, because code did not exist, and building was the only code available.

Cheers!

@ido: I am a designer and architect [built spaces, not code], have managed major projects and programs over the last ten years, and I have a solution to this, which is immediately implementable as a product/service. Applicable to hackers and civilians alike. It has social/semantic implications as well. My handicap is the astute inability to write a single line of code to save my life. I am building a prototype, where a friend is helping out, but am also agressively seeking a tech cofounder, preferably in the Valley. Do check out the teaser at http://www.design-business.net/hicommand Drop a line if it interests you.

@DeusExMachina: Where I come from (India), poor parents go through considerable adversity to send their kids to good schools. Young adults of disadvantaged opportunity (and this is an emerging nation of immense socio-economic disparity) are enhancing their skills - one course at a time - while at work. This is the story of a few billion here, and I can safely say it also holds true for much of South Asia, China(?), Africa and South America. Ours is currently a great world beyond just social security and health insurance - ours is a great world beset with great inequity and suffering - where the only recourse for the underdog is to obtain meritocracy and education. Our world is a story of billions of underdogs. In my lay opinion, your product sounds great, and we are looking at billions of potential users - who will inherit our world and will run it. Every minute. Do not worry about a market. The market is already here.

@avalore: What, if I may ask, is stopping you from getting the hell out of there? I have faced similar experiences,albeit far back in history, and in a non-technocratic context, and managed to overcome them. In fact, I once again feel the urge to move on, and am faced with questions similar to yours. Nothing beats being in a thriving, vibrant intellectual live environment - not even being wired in to the Nobel Corps -and yet being top-dog of nowhere. Pardon the bluntness - it is not intended to discourage or discredit. However, calling a spade a spade has always been a good starting point for me. Cheers!