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Terpaholicon Ask HN: Keeping track of sales pipeline for sole dev/founder?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7805842

Here's a small collection of resources you might find useful - I had the same question about a year ago.

The end result one year later? Google docs + Yesware.

Terpaholicon What are the best collegiate startups?

http://www.getcampusmaps.com started as a collegiate startup

Several YC startups qualify as well - Watchsend & Zinc from memory

Terpaholicon Reddit Acquires Alien Blue, the Most Popular Unofficial Reddit App

You can upgrade to Alien Blue Pro for free this week:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/alien-blue-reddit-official/i...

Terpaholicon Ask HN: One man bootstrapped SAAS business, do you disclose that to clients?

As a one man bootstrapped SAAS business, I generally omit that information unless asked. If the question is asked, I answer truthfully. The hardest part about being a one man startup in my experience actually is getting press coverage. When they ask you about your "Team" and you say it's you and a freelancer, the conversation seems to end pretty quickly.

I'd love to hear others opinions on how to approach the press as a one-man bootstrapped SAAS startup?

Terpaholicon Ask HN: What are you building?

http://www.campusjobs.org - it allows businesses to hire students from any school, and aims to become a one-stop job center/career center for higher education in the long run.

Terpaholicon Ask HN: What is 1 growth hack you've learned and improvised from HN?

It wasn't from HN, but from Patio11 - Instead of having 2 buttons on a landing page, have one button and present the other one as text below it. I've seen increases of +30% conversion rate from that.

Terpaholicon Show HN: Bootstrapped Hosting company

Can you talk a little bit about your metrics or future plans? Looks interesting, would love to know more about how you're competing in this pretty competitive space.

Terpaholicon Show HN: Made a cocos2d game

Hey, congratulations on launching! Could you talk a little about how Cocos2D was to build with? Is it a high investment to learn?

Also: be careful of your app name, you might be contacted by King regarding trademark infringement for the term "Candy".

Terpaholicon Ask HN: What are alternatives to Bootstrap?

Foundation is extremely useful, and feels professional. It does less of the styling for you (think less default css themes), but overall stands toe to toe with Bootstrap. If you've ever found yourself fighting with Bootstrap (like the resizing height responsive menus), Foundation is a great alternative.

Would definitely recommend Foundation in a heartbeat.

Terpaholicon Show HN: Find longtail keywords with low SEO competition

This is absolutely amazing. Thank you for this! Could you talk a little bit more about what goes into the competition score?

Terpaholicon Show HN: Stacker – Kickstart development of hybrid iOS apps

Congratulations on shipping!

You might enjoy App.js, http://code.kik.com/app/2/index.html

Misc: I'd embed the "getting started video" above the fold with a big white arrow over it. Maybe shorten the highlight video to 30 seconds and say "Check it out in 30 seconds".

Good luck!

Terpaholicon Ask HN: Advertise Outside of Google/Bing/Yahoo?

I believe Duck Duck Go has had success with Reddit Ads

Terpaholicon Ask HN: Which CRM do you use?

You may find this list of lead management/CRM tools valuable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7805842

Terpaholicon Ask HN: How Do You Manage Leads Properly?

This looks pretty great.

For future visitors to this thread: I've discovered that toutapp and yesware have integrated email receipt + click tracking along with a pseudo pipeline which actually fits my purpose of tracking email leads pretty well.

My only hesitation with toutapp/yesware/boomerang is data gravity - I don't think the information from any of those can be exported, effectively locking you in.

Alphabetical Summary of Results:

* BoomerangGmail - boomeranggmail.com

* ContactMonkey - contactmonkey.com

* MyPhoner - myphoner.com

* PipeDrive - pipedrive.com

* Radius - radius.com

* SalesForce - salesforce.com

* Streak - streak.com

* ToutApp - toutapp.com

* Yesware - yesware.com

Terpaholicon Ask HN: How Do You Manage Leads Properly?

Wow! This looks exactly like what I'm looking for. Thanks! Will give it a try and see if it fits.

Terpaholicon Ask HN: How Do You Manage Leads Properly?

I looked at salesforce and my understanding was "it has everything, at scale, and costly". The IBM or Oracle of sales was the impression I got. It seemed a bit too much for one person to use for themselves.

Terpaholicon Ask HN: Which paid apps and services do you use?

Spotify, TimeDoctor, Google Ads, Reddit Ads, AWS, Guitar Tuner App

Terpaholicon Ask HN: why are my 'show HN' posts ignored every single time?

A lot of show HN's seem to slide quickly without getting the critical momentum to draw more attention. Have you checked out how to time yours optimally in order to have a better shot? (~9AM on weekdays from what I remember)

Terpaholicon Ask HN: I Want To Buy a $1k-5k/yr SAAS Business. Where Do I Start?

Sure, sounds like a solid idea. Heck I have some iPhone apps that I might want to sell :)

Terpaholicon Ask HN: I Want To Buy a $1k-5k/yr SAAS Business. Where Do I Start?

Definitely, it seems like there's also more spammish/sketchy sites without solid revenue (people pump and dump).

I'm definitely not looking for ad-supported type stuff - I really want to work on a SAAS funnel :D

Finding a niche and establishing traffic and then getting conversions is quite time consuming and prone to failure - I'd rather pay a premium for removing that from the equation and then work on expanding the funnel ^.^

Terpaholicon Watchsend (YC S13) records mobile screen interactions for user testing

Congrats on the launch! Sharp team and great product :)

Terpaholicon Don't build an app, build a business

Point well taken.

I've been hesitant on monetizing because of that very same growth I'm seeing. In about 6 weeks I expect to peak in the top 10 US Navigation app for about 3 days (new school year).

I've been debating ads + freemium "ads free mode", but I feel that at this point I'm getting more value out of establishing a user base. My real issue is that I don't have a GOOD scalable monetization option in mind.

Negotiating local deals takes way too long with too much turnover. I'd be interested in offering school apparel deals though. That seems scalable with the right vendor.

e: I am currently split testing one campus @ 99 cents in a separate app to test how that's received.

Terpaholicon Don't build an app, build a business

The core concept of this article is solid - build something useful. That's how I'm getting triple digit year on year growth & traction with my app, http://www.getcampusmaps.com . Students find the app easier to use than going to the visitors center and getting a paper map, and so it provides real value to them.

I disagree that the app store gold rush is completely over however - I entered a crowded space with established competitors (including each school's own app, Google Maps, Apple Maps, GuideBook, Blackboard, and many more, and am still able to carve out a solid niche for myself.

The trick is in not only providing value with the app, but having a scalable marketing strategy. Treat it like any other product you want to sell, don't ride the Appstore-luck wave.

Terpaholicon Poll: How do you learn new technologies?

I use Stack Overflow first, searching for "Stack Overflow learn ____" and seeing what they recommend.

I believe the best way is to BUILD something, so in the past lynda.com has been useful to get code into the IDE because you can write it with video, tweak and experiment (where the real learning occurs), and then go back to the lessons.

Terpaholicon Ask HN: Industry standards for locking down a SAAS product to prevent abuse?

Unfortunately I'm using PHP, but thank you! I think I'll be going with Stripe for the payment management, now just working on account management (hashing/salting passwords etc) and associating that with the accounts. I've never done this before so it's really like building two projects at once: the software, and the account/payment management system.

Terpaholicon Ask HN: Industry standards for locking down a SAAS product to prevent abuse?

Hey thanks! Especially for the MVP, I think you're absolutely right about the abuse part. As for the login/recovery, have you had any experience with signup rates using Facebook/Twitter authentication? Reinventing the login flow seems like a bad idea to me at this point. For billing, I'm examining Recurly and Paypal Subscriptions (although I'm wary of Paypal).

Terpaholicon Show HN: Battletapp - Two icons enter...

This is really cleanly done!

Likes:

-> Excellent UI

-> Fantastic Transitions

-> Great fade in/effects on the way out

-> Well done subtle UX elements like moving the icons on mouse over

-> Well done [i] buttons made me curious enough to click on it

Improvements:

-> Maybe touch up the Roger that, let's rumble part to be in white text by default, then like orange or something striking on mouse over

-> Potentially include an about/privacy/disclaimer of referral links (if you use them) to increase user trust - site looked too good to be true.

-> Potentially increase size of "download in the app store"

-> Would love to see top rankings to know what my ratings are going towards; I feel unmotivated to click more than like 6 or 7 once the novelty wears off

-> Would love way to share a comparison I have been shown with friends (Will also increase virality of app), as well as my history

-> Potentially an undo method somehow if the user misclicks, I know I did once

Overall: great job and two thumbs up!

Terpaholicon A Lesson Learned as a Technical Founder: Sell First, Build Later

It also helps to be your own customer (or in that demographic). I'd suggest that you should have some kind of validation metric for knowing when to continue with the project as well, otherwise a project can drag on for much longer than it should.

Terpaholicon Show HN: Mosaic – Use multiple iPhones as one big screen

Indeed - I saw it myself

Terpaholicon Help HN: The Exhaustive List of App Monetization Methods (w/Links!!)

Thanks! Great to know your experience with them. I can't edit the original post any longer (Didn't know that you could only edit for X amount of time) but I will try to recompile it all periodically and republish it or put it on a website where I can edit it in-place.

You mention the fill rate was around 1% - this meant that 1% of the time there were ads to display? Isn't that quite low? What should we expect and aim for?