trussi

Quite interesting!

At first, I didn't understand why you only wanted a 200x200 image. I expected it to cut a big picture up into smaller squares and lay them out in a table.

But I was wrong! :)

It actually creates a 200 row by 200 column table and changes the background of each cell to match the image's color at that pixel.

I'd recommend improving the description of the service on the site. It took me a couple tries to get it to work (I used too big of a picture), but finally got it to work. Glad I did.

Thanks for sharing.

What are the roles of each person? Is the younger person the hacker and the older person the bizdev? Or vice versa?

If the older person is the bizdev and has a lot of domain expertise, then it's a HUGE advantage!

The problem I think you are trying to solve isn't much of a problem.

I've been developing with CMS applications for 12+ years and have never once ran into any of the issues you described above (failed upgrades, hackings, site-jackings, buggy plugins) to such a degree that I wanted/needed to completely switch the CMS platform.

I'd urge you to NOT build a product for developers. I know it's tempting because the ideas we (developers) come up with follow the 'scratch your itch' advice. I wrote a blog post about this: http://www.travisdoes.com/you-itch-sucks-scratch-somebody-el...

I'd highly recommend you focus your efforts on building a B2B SaaS product. There are millions of great opportunities to build boring, but profitable niche products.

If you need help finding some ideas, shoot me an email.

Next time... :)

Make sure all co-founders' equity is vested.

Don't do a 50-50 split. One person needs to have a majority stake. Otherwise, you spend too much effort being a democracy instead of a startup.

If you give 40% to a designer, how much are you going to give to your biz dev person (when you need one in three months when your beta is done)?

If you both use equity to give to the biz dev and the biz dev requires more than 20% to retain, you just lost majority of your business. :(

40% is way too high for a designer.

Also, make damn sure you vest any equity you give out.

Remember, you can only give it away once, so do so sparingly.

Car-as-a-service. Nice.

Build and install a scaled out application. Multiple AWS instances in a load balanced configuration. Use small instances to purposely bottleneck the available resource pool.

Use something like Blitz.io to beat the hell out of the application. This is your baseline

Use performance monitoring and optimization tools to improve the architecture and application. Go through each layer of the application to see where the biggest gains can be found. Also look/test for data consistency.

Rinse and repeat with blitz.io.

Also, test how well the architecture responds to various types of server failures.

And make sure you test a viable backup process as well.

Lastly, once you have a nice, performant architecture, increase system resources both up (more resources per server) and out (more servers) to see how well the system actually scales. :)

Agreed.

Based on lots of experience dealing with off-shore developers, the problem has always been communication.

Once a company figures out how to properly communicate the right level of detail, outsourcing becomes a significant force.

The opportunity gap of $15/hr versus $50/hr is too great to ignore.

Nice work.

Glad to see somebody implementing a solution to pretty up QR codes.

Only potential issue is the contrast between the foreground and background needs to be enough to properly scan.

Check out the specials listed on WebHostingTalk.com.

I use unmanaged dedicated servers.

Going price for a dedicated Quad Core i7, 12 GB of ECC RAM, 4x2TB is under $150/mo. That's a wicked cheap price for those specs.

Obviously if you are going from $10/mo hosting, you won't bite the bullet on a $150/mo server, but it's the only price point I know.

Are you interested in building cutting edge technology or building a business?

If you're interested in building a business, then there's a huge amount of opportunity the online communications space!

I could probably think of 5 cushy niches that will print $20k-60k per month with a very small team. Just look around you and identify occupations that involve communication and build a communication product around that occupation's process.

It's a relatively simple and straight-forward process to building a business that lots of technical folks overlook because it's not sexy. I'll take profitable over sexy any day.

Take a look at Tableau. It's super expensive and desktop-based. But it allows for some very powerful, customized data analysis.

Build a SaaS version of Tableau and you have a good starting point.

You still need to find the problem you are solving. Try to find one or two niches, like university labs or government research facilities.

Personally, I'd find the problem this solves well, then actually solve that problem (instead of helping others solve that problem). Take credit card interest rates; instead of building a tool tailored to credit card issuers or resellers, build a site that provides the data (using your tool) in a value-added way.

It's like you're creating your itch, so you can scratch it with your idea. A bit backwards, but crazy enough it might just work.

As a developer, I love writing code and solving problems. I spend my Friday nights writing code. I routinely pull all nighters writing code. Did I mention I love writing code?

I am going solo on my current project, so I'm having to do all the non-tech stuff (marketing, financing, sales, operations, customer support). I like doing it, but I'd rather not. My time is much better spent solving technical problems.

The non-tech stuff is equally hard and equally important. I might not be the best BizDev guy, but I'm definitely not going to trust it to just anybody.

Based on my experience, you have to be the best BizDev person I've ever met. That's actually not that high of a bar; most "BizDev" folks have no idea what hustle looks like.

Here's how I'd define that...

1) How well defined is your product? How have you evaluated the product/market fit? If you aren't regularly engaging with customers, you haven't even started yet. I want to see significant customer-facing interaction on a regular basis.

2) How well have you thought out the marketing plan? What distribution channels have you identified? Have you created marketing collateral for those channels yet? If not, get busy.

3) Where's your business plan? Don't laugh; I'm serious. Anybody that scoffs at a business plan is a fool (and they've probably never done one before, which is a very bad sign). It's a litmus test that shows you have gone through the business planning process. And it's actually quite informative for me to better understand how thoroughly you have thought through your idea.

4) Show me your financial projections. These had better be rock solid. If my accountant laughs when reading your financials, not good.

5) Tell me where you personally want to be in 3 years. What are your life goals, your financial goals, etc?

6) Show me your mock-ups, prototypes, wireframes, etc. You should already have these (sourced via crowdsourcing/outsourcing) and are actively iterating them as part of your conversation with customers.

7) You should have spent at least $5k of your own money on this project. I don't care what you spent it on (conference fees, outsourcing, travel, etc). I want to see you with some skin in the game.

I think that's a reasonable first draft list of things I'm looking for in a BizDev person. I'll add more as I think of them.

Does that help?

+1 for ASCII art

You get even more bang for your buck if you combine two existing products.

Combine HootSuite and SocialOomph and you have a rockstar Twitter manager.

Synergy is a wonderful thing.

Single best post I have ever read on HN. Thanks for sharing!

Doing a .Net startup myself, I'd like to think I'm not the only one. I'd surmise that there's actually quite a few people using a Microsoft stack in the startup community. They just don't talk about it much.

Obviously, if you choose the .Net path, getting a developer job at a WAMP/RoR/Python/etc startup won't really be feasible.

But if you are a good developer, I would advise you NOT to join a startup that's already established. Why invest your heart and soul in somebody else's vision/company for a paltry equity percentage? It just doesn't add up in my mind.

Instead, start your own. Go find a hustler to partner with or just build your own product. If you get into a startup pre-development phase and you're the hacker on the team, then the technology you use is irrelevant. The only relevant thing is that you can deliver.

If you have clear technical requirements defined, use oDesk.

Put out a $25-50 test job. Make sure to invite as many contractors as you can (the oDesk UI is absolute garbage, so this is a slow, painful process). Pick the 10 best for the test job.

Look for ability to communicate, quickness of turnaround, level of hand-holding and the quality of their work.

Pick the best 2-3 and get busy. I personally prefer to use hourly workers because my requirements tend to change all the time.

There's a big difference between investors and a support network.

Very few (any?!) investors are really going to help you with the grunt work of making the business successful.

Never assume that a good investor is a good operations person or a good marketer or a good visionary.

I love working solo. Less distractions. Less wasted time. The only person I have to argue with is myself.

That is not to say I don't have help; I just use strategic help for specific purposes.

I found a bad-ass marketing guy that helps me develop my marketing strategy. I use him when I need him. No equity or long-term commitment.

Same for infrastructure issues and sales strategies.

I have people that hold me accountable to keep me laser-focused.

To answer your specific question about professional investors helping your chances of success, it depends on your definition of success.

If you're trying to build a lifestyle business (highly recommend), then investors will explicitly block your success.

If you're trying to build a high-growth, 3-5 year exit business, then investors might be able to help.

I would still stay away from early-stage investment though. Use professional investment for the growth stage; this is the place where their experience will be directly relevant to your objective (fast, hard growth).

Good point. My brain is hardwired to think product == SaaS product. So I'm only referring to using this strategy for a SaaS product.

I think it works with a SaaS product, assuming you keep all business related stuff (Domain registration, servers, business incorporation, bank accounts, etc) in another country (i.e. Sweden).

I just don't know which countries would be best...

Friends & Family (F&F) is the quickest and easiest. Spread it out over several people and spread it out in 3 month payments. Make sure you set very specific milestones and a very concrete go-no-go milestone, so you fail as quick as possible.

I'm assuming you're a smart person who can make $100k+ in a real job. If so, add a guarantee that you'll pay back the full borrowed amount within one-two years if you don't make the go-no-go milestone. This option opens up more funding sources. For example, an older relative with savings in the bank near retirement will need that money, but not for a few years. If it were a typical investment scenario where the money was borrowed and if the company failed, the money was not repaid, that person could not invest because they need the money.

The other option is to get a loan from a local business development department. I don't know what ON looks like, but most cities in the US have these types of BD programs that have a goal of creating jobs in the community. Relatively easy to get, just have to jump through a few hurdles. The requirement in my town is the "get rejected by a traditional funding source." Haha...that's a pretty easy thing to do!

I would be very hesitant to receive any money from a professional investor at this point in your startup. You'll have to give away too much of the company and you'll have a boss that has your balls in a vice for the rest of your time at the startup.

Wait for professional investment until your profitable and then it makes way more sense.

Keep us posted!

Where your IP 'lives' matters entirely!

If a Swedish company owns the IP and the IP is on servers there, US courts can't touch it.

How can a US court have any jurisdiction on a corporation or a data center in another country? I think it would pretty difficult for a US court to exercise authority over another country's legal system.

The only option the plaintiff would have is to take legal action in whatever country the IP was located in (i.e. they'd have to sue in Sweden).

If you pick a country that doesn't respect US trademarks or patents, then the plaintiff wouldn't have a case.

Even if they might have a case, picking a small, remote country would substantially increase their legal costs, which would deter them from pursuing legal action.

With all the patent BS going on now, this seems to me like it's a viable option to reduce risk.

I just want to hear from somebody who understands this ownership/operational structure and has (or has not) decided to implement it.

There are a bunch of triggers you want to include in the agreement, like what if one of the founders become incapacitated or gets divorced? Will the survivor/ex-wife now be your boss? You'll need to either dig up a well-written agreement or get some good legal advice.

If you're attorney costs less than their attorney, you're most likely going to leave an opening for you to get screwed in the future. Even if your other founders aren't dicks, a future investor might be (i.e. screw over bob and kick him out or you don't get my money).

Remember, this is like a pre-nuptial agreement. You have to write the agreement as if you are going to get a divorce.

You want to make sure you cover owner equity distribution in the agreement. If the other founders are pulling money out of the company, you should get an equal share.

And you might want to consider a buy-out clause. This gives the other founders an option to buy your shares. They will really like this. And you might give up some upside, but still walk away with a nice pile of cash. Make sure to structure it as best you can, so it's your option to take or not take. This gets tricky, but is doable.

If you really think there is some potential for the company to make some serious profit, you need to go find a $350-500/hr attorney to help you get into the right agreement.

This is based on a love of b2b saas products that focus on increasing productivity...

First, ditch consumer. They don't pay and are very fickle. Lots of lookie-loos. And it's really hard to actually solve a problem for them because they don't even know it's a problem.

B2B is way more lucrative. Getting a SMB to pay $100-500/mo for a product that adds value is easy. Try getting that amount from a consumer!

On the site UI: design, colors are good. Make the tabs animated so it scrolls through the features.

On the content: you are stuck where I (and most other techies) get stuck. You are focusing on features. You have to focus on the benefits. Answer the question: what's in it for me.

I see there's a bunch of features. Strip all of it down to 2-3 things. That's it. You have to focus everything into 2-3 key things. And you have to present them as benefits to the customer. For example, 'distribute to social media' is a definitely a feature. 'Share your pictures with all your friends in one click' is a benefit (I think).

Think of it like this: a feature requires the customer to connect the dots to answer the question of 'what's in it for me'. a benefit connects the dots for them. It's like the "because..." of a sentence.

On the product: my goal with all my b2b work is to try to simplify the process until it takes zero clicks to perform it (i.e. fully automated). if something takes 3 clicks, figure out how to get it to 2 clicks. If it takes 2, get it to 1. And if you can get 1 click down to zero clicks, you have reached productivity nirvana! :)

Second, you have to pick a really specific niche in SMB to go after. DO NOT BUILD A ONE-SIZE FITS ALL PRODUCT! You will fail.

Pick Info Management for dog groomers or Info Mgmt for funeral homes. Go very specific and build a product that is custom-tailored to that niche. This reduces competition, decreases customer acquisition cost and will get you delighted customers.

Once you pick your niche, you have to fully understand that customer and their processes. This is impossible for you to do unless you were a dog groomer in a previous life, so you'll have to find some subject matter experts (SMEs) and pick their brains.

Then, pick the part of their process that is the most painful for them, that technology can help fix and that they will pay money for. Solve that problem and you make money.

You might get lucky and your existing product will cover some of what's needed to solve that problem, but it might not. You'll probably want to identify SMB niches that you think might have a problem related to info management as your starting point.

The biggest thing you want to be aware of is that when you are talking to SMEs, keep a wide open mind and ask all sorts of questions. Don't try to force your product or your presumption of what their problems are. You will most certainly be wrong.

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress!

Definitely #2.

Here's what you're advantage is: access to good, cheap developers.

Everybody and their mother is trying to find good, cheap developers.

You are the bridge.

Don't go the traditional consulting route though.

Here's your strategy: provide a one-stop shop for a biz dev founder 'looking for a co-founder'. You can't fart without finding 10 of them.

Only pick ideas that can be quickly monetized (no social, mobile BS...stick with B2B SaaS applications).

If you can float the cost of development (i.e. no out of pocket expenses for the biz dev founder), you take a nice chunk of equity.

You get IP rights (unlike a traditional consulting gig) and you hold the keys to the kingdom (i.e. you keep all source code on your servers under lock and key; biz dev person doesn't get access to source code unless he/she writes you a big check).

Think of it like a technical incubator, where all you're looking for are ideas.

This is a really powerful business model I think you could really knock out of the park!!

Let me know if you need any help on execution! And keeps us posted on your progress.

I signed up for SerpIQ. Clean UI, but the UX needs work. You present good data, if the user knew what to do with it. Close the loop and tell me. Don't make me become an SEM expert. You're the expert. Just tell me what I should do with the results. Then you have a killer product.

I bounced from SaaSaholics once I saw it was a generic message board. That won't cut it these days. Gotta have a more social UI.

How long do you vest that equity for?

A $150k developer can handle setting up and managing the infrastructure, build scalable products, manage a team of $65k developers and be able to build a product from scratch (incredibly hard to do).

A $65k developer can follow directions.

There's no such thing as a successful CRUD product anymore. Everything has been commoditized.

I realize that you had to preface your question with context. However, all the context points to a lot of risk without much reward.

To answer your specific question: you have a lifestyle business. At $100k, you are in the friends and family range, not angel range. F&F can fund a lifestyle business. Angels won't fund a lifestyle business.

To give you some critical feedback...

$100k will not give you a 2 year runway. That's a 10-14 month runway. I don't care if you live with mom and dad, eat top ramen for every meal and don't shower to save on your electric bill...you can't make $100k last 2 years. And if there is ANY chance of a lawsuit, forget it.

You described your competition as 'a solidly established market leader'. Have you ever built a business that took market share from the single incumbent? If not, you have no chance in hell of success. If you have done it before, then you might have a chance. Of course they are a 'horrendous' company with a crappy UX, crappy customer service, etc. However, you're assumption that 'offering better service' is enough to take market share is simply unrealistic.

If it takes you 2+ years to get to ramen-profitability, this is absolutely a waste of your time. The risk-versus-reward is simply absurd.

There are SO MANY opportunities for a hacker out there, that you really shouldn't waste your time on this opportunity. I realize this is the best idea you have right now, but don't bite on it.

Keep looking for a better opportunity. You really don't have to look that hard to find a much more reasonable (i.e. lower risk, higher chance of success and bigger upside) than this.

It's a really tough to sell a one-size-fits-all one-trick pony.

I would highly recommend segmenting your market and really narrowing it down. Pick one niche of SMB and custom-tailor your product to them. The more you can narrow this down, the better (by geography, # of employees, revenue, industry, years in business, age of owners, etc).

The reason for narrowing down the market is so that you can really understand your customer. You need to know their business inside and out. It's those minor nuances between similar market segments where the juicy opportunities are.

For instance, realtors in a primarily tourist areas are quite different from realtors in primarily middle class, white suburban areas. The home buyers are very different, which require different approaches on the realtors' part.

Once you pick your niche (say < 40 room mom-and-pop hotels in summer vacation destinations in the southwest), then figure out what other functionality you can add into your existing functionality that creates some synergy.

For instance, if they use (i.e. pay money for) an email manager (like constant contact), then figure out how to tie your social media manager into an email manager.

This is a much easier sell: 'You already pay $10/mo for Constant Contact. It doesn't allow Social Media management. Our product costs the same, has all the functionality you use in Constant Contact. Plus it manages your social media for you'.

The hook is an existing product they pay money for. Then replace that product with your product by adding some new sizzle.