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Comment by egypturnash | Hacker News Reader

Man, I looked at Twitter, replied to someone, and went off to do something else like ONE MINUTE before the "hey you can buy the pi now" tweet. Twenty minutes later both the people ready to sell me one were totally swamped.

Guess I don't get one from the first batch. Woe is me. Somehow I will survive!

You know, as problems for a startup to have go, "demand for your product is so strong the servers selling it go down within twenty minutes" is a PRETTY GOOD PROBLEM.

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I was there right on the second. I didn't get one either. It was just server load lottery that determined the winners.

I think you would have to already have an account with one of the distributors to stand a chance. It's hard enough to get one page to load, but I would guess registering and placing an order would involve at least 5 clicks.

I've got one for RS. I was thrilled to see it listed. I thought I'd have an advantage. Nope.

Yes, dying from success is never the desired outcome, but at least they managed to send a first batch, which will be reviewed, will increase the hype, and hopefully give them a second chance to do things right and stock some more units

Or it could tarnish their reputation and kill the whole product. Lets hope the engineering of the actual product is a little better than the sales process. But I still think its kind of important not to give your potential customers a 404 as your first interaction or you run the very real risk of having zero conversions from all that homepage traffic.

  >  you run the very real risk of having zero conversions
  > from all that homepage traffic.

Dear God. Don't use web-y start-up lingo in situations where none of the platitudes apply. R-PI faces demand severely outstripping demand, which is the polar opposite of what conversion rate-optimizing Bla-ly companies experience.

I can see how their product being so wildly popular that it sells out in less than an hour could put a damper on its future commercial success.

Wait, that makes no sense, I can't see that at all, nevermind.

Hey I was also there at exactly 6:00 and the page just never loaded for me.

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