vsloo

Looks great! I admire the hard work and hustle. Keep it up :)

I head up customer experience at Re:amaze and we work with merchants on Shopify, Bigcommerce, and WooCommerce. These alternatives all have something to offer that is unique to a particular merchant's business preference. Shopify is much easier to set up and offers more direct access to marketplaces. Bigcommerce is a bit more powerful for high volume, high GMV businesses looking for headless commerce. WooCommerce is, of course, low cost and works with WordPress and that's a huge plus for many merchants. These are very basic differences but merchants should look at every platform to see which one suits them best.

Give her 2 to play with. Will turn pro.

The article links to an NPR page about the re-inventor of the spinner we know of right now: http://www.npr.org/2017/05/04/526931943/fidget-spinner-emerg...

My brother in law bought one the moment he saw one. Returned it for a different color. Now he has 9. It's been 4 days. These things are definitely a phenomenon and the eCommerce world is going crazy.

There needs to be a right balance between bot and human. Personally, I think bots are a replacement for UI, not a replacement for real conversations. I want to use a bot when I activate a credit card for example. It's a glorified "activate" button in lieu of actual UI, but if I have fraud on my card, I want to talk to a human, because I want a conversation, not a substitute for a series of UI decisions. We're on track for developing an "assistant" bot of our own here at Reamaze. Our starting point for AI at Reamaze is a bot for assisting agents with responses, not customers.

A tech lead is not supposed to be a mediator. He/she is supposed to lead and that means understanding the business, the product, and the priorities enough to communicate as simply and as directly as possible. It's not about whether or not you need a "tech lead", it's about whether or not you have anybody, and I mean anybody, that can fulfill those tasks. It might very well be two people, or a team that can drive specific targets, doesn't matter. A "tech lead" is just a title that further complicates matters.

There's a disconnect between founders who want to build a startup and founders who want to build a business. They think the two are the same but they're really not and this study clearly shows that. There are situations where startups turn into businesses but I'd rather build a profitable business for myself from the start and our team than to build a startup purely focused on "growth".

The second job of a startup CEO is actually everything outside of building a product. Everything from hiring the right team, to making sure people are happy, to finding sales/distribution channels, marketing channels. It's not a question of what else the CEO should be doing but a question more of how long he/she should be doing those things.

A lot of this has to do with experience and whether or not you're trying to fulfill expectations (VCs, etc). You really don't know when a product will become loved no matter how much you iterate and it's also impossible to know for sure how long you need to "slog" it out. Some products become loved far earlier than others. The best thing to do as a founder is to drive at your vision hard as quickly as possible, acquire users to test multiple theories and gather feedback, and iterate when there are signs. Even then, not all iterations or pivots are created equal. There are many different ways to grow a business (many of which veer from traditional silicon valley values) and it's up to the founder to stick to his/her own values and to what makes sense at the time. I don't think there's a single founder out there who wants to build just a mediocre product. This is why product-market fit should be the primary focus for any growing business.

Our team at Reamaze is all trying Winds right now since seeing on Product Hunt yesterday. Love the machine learning in-progress. I find the content to be curated quite well for my preference. The main issue I'm having is actually adding RSS feeds from sources I read on a daily basis. Not sure what the issue is. Love the two display options since not everything is relevant all the time and it's just easier to go chronological.

Great story and many great lessons. Being "intentional about the people you work with" is a great piece of advice and one that we usually like to stress too when talking to aspiring entrepreneurs. We wrote about some of this too in a previous HN thread https://betterthansure.com/answer-hn-growing-a-side-project-....

I don't agree with this. Might've been true a few years ago but good engineers can be found all over the place. A good customer service person who can easily navigate between customers and internal teams is much harder to find and way more valuable in the long run. We've seen this first hand and constantly evaluate how we can bring on better customer-oriented people that are able to wear multiple hats.

The practice of influencing people can easily be misinterpreted with negativity. Pre-suasion or priming are both about understanding and reading people better, anticipating what they need/want before they want so you can plant a seed. We work with tons of customers and our customer service team is trained to influence them just so they can have a more positive experience. We wrote about it here too: http://bit.ly/2eykG3f

I've been through several startups as well as acquisitions. There's a huge difference between learning/acclimating to a set of values that aren't yours versus starting something with a group of people who all share preexisting values. Many great teams and products exist because of the latter. Even so, great teams from the latter camp can have values diluted every time new people come on board.

The first startup, I was employee #12. The second startup, I was employee #30. The third startup I joined mid-way through an acquisition. Each of these companies had great aspirations for good values but all failed to trickle them down to individuals. Too much bullshit and too many bodies. As a co-founder of the current startup (https://www.reamaze.com), we've purposely kept our team small, tight, and well curated. Instead of constantly hiring more bodies, we think outside the box and adapt to how our business is growing. All this to keep our values and chemistry intact. Just keeping the chemistry alive allows us to build products we and customers love.

You simply can't build successful teams, products, or businesses when so few of your employees buy into the real reasons you're doing what you're doing. Sure, you can buy them off with great salaries, benefits, and office amenities, and you may be able to carry that momentum to an exit but there will be miserable people. And if you can't carry the momentum, good luck with the mass exodus. This is why many will say "the day job will always be a chore". A lot of our customers actually come to us for advice on team building, customer service, and culture and we always encourage them to not hire. We don't even encourage them to hire if it's urgently desperate. Instead, hire only when you've met the right match at the right time. Happy to chat to anyone who wants to discuss team building and growing an extremely viable business by intentionally staying small and nimble.

We had a few customers complain to us that they couldn't forward customer support messages from Yahoo to Reamaze. Now we know why. Frankly, a very un-customer move by Yahoo.

Totally agree with this. We started Reamaze back in 2012 and have never needed an injection of money nor wanted it. We focus on our core customers and deliver a curated experience we all love as a community. We have good growth and our team is extremely happy all the time since we're building what we know to be important long term, not what others think is profitable in the short term.

There must be some hosts on linode that's drawing the attacks or linode pissed off some rich dude and he paid a botnet to ddos :)

China is working on reducing consumption of endangered animal parts. It's a really tough battle especially since it's a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon. There are orgs like WildAid doing a lot of good work in educating the public. China is also getting ready to establish its first national park system to protect more indigenous wildlife http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-26/china-looking-us-it-bu....

It looks like they've got some great developer tools so I assume the small guys will either find that super helpful or not helpful at all. It'll depend on if they have a solid ticket management foundation, I guess.

I agree. Targeting on fb ads seems to be improving. Real ROI comes from expert ad buying teams that know exactly what they're doing.

A customs dog once sniffed out my gf's orange zest scented shampoo. Got cornered by some officers and had to empty my suitcase. Security isn't always this strict though so it's pretty inconsistent at best.

It's around 2:49.

Thanks to Mailgun again for participating in our interviews! We'll be sure to talk about these points in the book when it comes out.

Probably spot on.

"As a person who just stopped being a genius, I totally agree with the above point. From day 1 I approached this job with the attitude "I will explore every angle to fix this under warranty until I am out of options" and this made the job EXTREMELY satisfying for me. Apple does give you an extraordinary about of latitude in making those decisions, so as long as you are "really doing it for the good of the customer", it's usually ok. The biggest issue for Genii (and the thing that causes many genii to lose their jobs and/or leave) is the administrative side (ie.... dealing with a system called GCRM ) and inventory issues (like accidentally replacing a 16 gb iphone with an 8gb ....don;t laugh it happens more often than you think, and its a BIG deal since our system is not designed correct inventory snafus easily). Their as also time issues, since Genius Bar appointments are only 20 minutes,so going over that (which happens quite frequently) is a big deal, and very job threatening."

It's expected for users to be fickle. One day they'll like something and the next day they'll leave. Gmail simply provides a platform for facilitating this phenomenon without divulging too much of their resources. I'd say it's a win-win?

So many contradictions. So many sorrows. So much progress. So many regrets. So much ignorance. So many hopes. So many disappointments. So much glamour. So much denial. So many inconsistencies. So China...

I agree. The previous startup I used to work at had a horrible candidate selection process. Amar's case is too one-off for it to be a hack but at least it was possible.

Can't imagine how frustrating something like this can be. Have many friends with similar visa issues. Hope you'll enjoy Vidyard.

Found it interesting how they chose to portray the person doing the hating as well.