wnm

https://archive.ph/2wYhT

Hi, I'm Wolfram, a full stack Ruby on Rails developer from Germany. I spent the last decade+ building web applications. Some for others, as an employee, and some alone, self-employed.

Location: Freiburg, Germany

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Ruby on Rails

Résumé/CV: https://wnm.github.io/

Email: low.water9139@fastmail.com (masked email, redirected to my personal fastmail account)

there is also a video version of the interview at https://about.fb.com/news/2019/11/a-conversation-with-mark-z...

I'v started PressKitHero https://presskithero.com as a side project in 2016, and grown it to ramen profibility since.

It's a very simple SAAS app for companies to manage their press kit. I have no plans of growing it into a "full" pr suite, like my competitors, I'm happy to stay in my niche and just build the best press kit builder there is.

Based on the app description and homepage I always thought Krita can't replace Photoshop for the few things I need to do for basic webdesign stuff. But reading the comments here made me reconsider. Has anyone used Krita for web stuff (icons, headers, banners, editing screenshots, etc?

Since the developers are reading this thread: I saw that you have a simple press page [0], if you want something more detailed, I can hook you up with a free PressKitHero[1] account.

[0] https://krita.org/en/about/press/ [1] https://presskithero.com

yes they handle it. when a customer requests a refund via email, I login to my paddle account, search the invoice, and simply click "refund".

I can second the recommendation for paddle. I use it for https://presskithero.com, which has customers around the world, and we are a german company, so we have to handle very complicated european vat rules...which paddle does for us!!

To get a taste of what this book is about, you can also check out his blog at http://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/

update: don't let the data discourage you, though. it's actually not bad. 400/600 clicked signed up? that's fantastic!

only 40 people went through with the sign up? I would say thats just user churn because of bad onboarding.

the first thing I would do is let people sign up with just email and password, and actually let them use your product, for a free trial period.

the second thing I would focus on is getting your users to the "magical moment" of your app. Thats a term I first read in context of someone from the growth team at facebook talking about user churn and growth. for facebook, the magic moment for example, was "seeing your friends".[0]

For your app, I think, the magical moment could be the first time a user sucessfully onboards a new client through your app, and sees how easy it is to collect all the requirements etc. If they go through that, and its really much easier with your app, they can't help but start their next client project with your app as well, and upgrade to a paid plan. But to get to that moment, you probably need at least a couple of days. I would not charge users before that moment.

[0] https://blog.kissmetrics.com/alex-schultz-growth/

I also clicked on signup, but then didn't. Here is why: I wanted to sign up to test the product, but after clicking on signup I get a Typeform modal. Typeform as a signup form makes me suspicious that the product doesn't really exists, and the startup is doing some sort of landing page -> signup validation.

You also ask that I enter my credit card and you want to charge me 10$ upfront, without having established any sort of trust, or having shown the product to me. I would never do that. I don't even do that for established trust worthy companies. I wan't to see and test the product before I buy.

Wire transfer

The hidden fees come in the form of bad exchange rates. In my experience it was always around 3% less, then what Google Currency Converter told me it should be.

Edit: to be fair, Stripe also doesn't give you excactly the same rate as Google Currency Converter would show you, but at least they are transparent about it:

As currency prices constantly vary, it’s not possible to know in advance the FX rate you’ll pay. The rate displayed online at various sites such as Open Exchange Rates or Google’s Currency Converter is the mid-market rate: the average between the prices at which people are buying and selling the currency. The actual exchange rate includes markups from financial institutions. When Stripe performs a currency conversion, funds are usually converted at 1% above the daily mid-market rate for users in the United States.

https://stripe.com/docs/currencies/conversions#calculating-f...

They do. The reason I went with Paddle is that Gumroad only pays out via Paypal (to customers in Germany). I had problems with Paypal in the past, and don't trust them. Also, they charge about 3% in hidden fees when you convert USD to EUR, which I'd have to do to get the money to my bank account.

thanks :)

Personal anecdote: When I was backpacking in Australia 10 years ago I felt I had a clear advantage over other backpackers because germans somehow have this image of being super productive and hard working. I more than once got a job just because I was from Germany.

Personally, I wouldn't move. I value the time and hassle saved, more then the money. For my business (https://presskithero.com) I use https://paddle.com, which is even more expensive then gumroad (5% + 0,5%). But they handle VAT (value added tax) for me, which otherwise would be a huge hassle and time sink.

I agree with #1, look for competition. It is astonishing to me how many customer service saas companies seem to pop up every now and then, but many of them seem to succeed, despite there being already hundreds.

I have another rule for indie devs to make money online: Don't build apps for consumers marketplaces (iStore, Play Store). Build/sell apps on marketplaces for businesses eg. Shopify (https://apps.shopify.com/), Salesforce (https://appexchange.salesforce.com/), Weebly (https://www.weebly.com/de/app-center), Github (https://github.com/marketplace), Slack (https://slack.com/apps), Cloudflare (https://www.cloudflare.com/apps)

I would say, don't build anything custom until you know you can sell how much you think you can sell. Gumroad is perfect for testing your product market fit, since you don't waste a lot of time seting up a billing system. you sign up, create a product, and get a link (or some js to embed). easy.

gumroad is 3,5% + 0,3$ vs. stripe 2,9% + 0,3$

that is not enough of a price increase to justify wasting a lot of time on setting up a custom checkout form, imo.

what I don't like about that setup is that views are rendered in the client, instead of on the server.

I wish there was a js framework, which would let me keep renderering my views with rails on the server, but then take over and help me handle ui interactions etc..

https://unsplash.com/

Hi eugenv,

Very nice! Here is my first impression:

- the landing page is well done: it is very clear what this app does and who it is for!

- I liked the onboarding flow

- one thing I didn't like: Your app is very well designed, and I can tell that you spend a lot of effort into every last detail of the design... but for reading, and especially skimming over article headlines, the tile design isn't ideal in my opinion. It looks good, definitely! But I think for readability, a simple text-only list, like on HN would be more suitable.

Another nice feature: related news are grouped together.

one reason I signed up, was to check out how you would do that. maybe I didn't select enough feeds to see it... but do you only group articles by category tags (e.g. Startup, Europe, Games, etc.), or do you group articles within the same category, if they write about the same topic. E.g. within the Startup category, there are two articles about the latest Uber scandal. Are they grouped together? If so, do you do that manually, or do you have some smart ML implemented?

Also, for your press kit: you might be interested in my app PressKitHero (https://presskithero.com), to present a bit more information about you and your company.

The Press Kit, basically a .zip file of all of the content for the reporter to use

Don't do that. As a reporter, would you want a .zip file dropped into your inbox everytime someone pitches their company?

Build a simple website, use dropbox, or one of the many saas that make it simple to build a professional press kit, e.g. my own https://presskithero.com

I build this because I want a place on the internet that celebrates lesser-known, but interesting, thought-provoking movies. Big budget blockbusters are fine (I watch them too), but thats not really why I fell in love with movies.

Also since imdb shut down its discussion boards, maybe there is a need for a new place to discuss movies?

nice! I'm using cloudflare for https://presskithero.com, where I offer custom domain names for my customers, and upgrading them to ssl would be great!

But from the article:

> I’m interested in learning more. How can I get started using SSL for SaaS?

> If you’re not already a Cloudflare customer, give us your name and contact info and someone on our team will reach out to you; be sure to mention SSL for SaaS in the request. If you’re an existing Cloudflare customer, ask your Customer Success Manager.

I'm on the free plan, and have no idea who my Customer Success Manager is, or if I have one. So, maybe it's a reserved feature for paying customers?

yes, I agree! thats exactly why I wrote it: I hate that they try to lock users in. That résumé data is mine, and I should be able to export in any format I want. Instead every service tries to lock their users in, and for every other website I use, I need to reenter the same stuff...

Nice work!!

Some thoughts:

- For my taste the sections/fields are not flexible enough. There are a few big ones missing, that I have on my résumé or have seen on others. E.g. Projects, Open Source, Involvement, Writing, Speaking Engagements, References... (there are a few more, for a complete list, have a look at the schema I'm using for ProgrammerCV at http://programmercv.com/resume-schema, which is open source btw)

- Getting the output as latex is a really nice idea. I'm working on a tool to extract résumé data from linkedin, xing etc. (http://programmercv.com/resume-exporter) and I want to offer export to multiple formats like .docs, .pdf, .html etc... and I'm already seeing that its quite difficult to offer flexibility and at the same time, garantuee some output quality. I guess latex could help... I will add it to my todo :)

- As someone else commented on, for my taste the template feels to cramped. stretching infos over 2-3 pages is preferable over to much on one page, imo. But luckily there are quite a few high quality latex résumé templates out there

Yes, their API is useless, imo. At least at getting stuff out. They want their users locked in.

I'm building a tool thats parsing .html files (your public profile), and extracting relevant information. Build on nokogiri, and open source. More info here: https://programmercv.com/resume-exporter

I'm working on https://programmercv.com, a résumé builder with superpowers:

- import from linkedin, xing or stackoverflow - multiple résumé versions - track your job applications - export to any format you need (doc, pdf, html, xml, json) - publish on Github Pages - No lock in: build on open source tools

(most features are still work in progress)

clickable: http://demo.programmercv.com/

Also, when finished, it's going to be a free, jekyll based template, more infos and how to set it up on your github pages account here: http://programmercv.com/resume-template

Not the same, but similar: I wish Apple would release a wireless docking station for Macbooks, similar to what HP[0], Dell[1], and Lenovo[2] are doing for Windows laptops.

I'm dreaming about the day where I can sit on my couch with just my Macbook, then return to my work station and it wirelessly connects to my monitor, keyboard, mouse, sound system, etc...

[0] http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-advanced-wireless-docking-s... [1] https://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=e... [2] https://support.lenovo.com/ch/en/accessories/acc100265?LinkT...