advertising

Thanks! Will check this out. I love all of Beat Takeshi's movies.

100% haha

Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein is a good read for those interested in this scene.

Ran a team of three people that grew to six. It's easier when smaller. Even just with a couple more people, the team of six created communication issues. In the end running the team created as much work as having more people to do the work saved.

Six is still small time, just the experience I can speak from.

I would have communicated more. And most people need a boss, or a leader.

^^^ this

Have seen numerous shipping container housing projects over the years and none of them really took off. To make containers truly livable long term (combining multiple containers, decent finishes, buildout etc) it seems to cross a price threshold where a person who can afford to do it would likely build a traditional dwelling.

This is more about creative subdividing to me. Whether it's a tent or a shipping container.

Or if you know a good resource. Much appreciated!

Seems superfluous. The instagram upload of the cookies was a̶n̶ ̶e̶y̶e̶ ̶r̶o̶l̶l̶e̶r̶ well placed,

^^^

It's more the mentality to keep right

The moment you have your idea, ten other people had the exact same idea at the same time and it's s race from there.

That's awesome

Really hard to start something you have to educate people about in the first place, before selling them.

Case in point: it was not quite clear to me what they wanted to do (for a layman like myself in this space) after reading the post-mortem. I felt like I was filling in the blanks in my head and making assumptions.

An example of this I was recently explained:

There's a leg connecting Tokyo and Mexico City. The Tokyo flight goes direct to Mexico City however the Mexico City flight stops in Hermasillo on the way to Tokyo.

Due to the higher altitude of Mexico City, it takes more fuel to get off the ground and requires a pit stop in hermasillo to get all the way to Tokyo.

Disclaimer I'm only partially sure that I'm remembering the whole story correctly.

When's part 2 slated for? That was annoying to just get into the meat of the story and then...

Cool and I would like to try it. But doubt I would sit down at a coffee shop and put my bionic hands on in front of everyone.

I would have to be better than typing on a keyboard.

Video was weak. Right when they show the product it cuts out.

Would be good if you were able to touch your finger to the surface and it becomes a trackpad as well.

Your member would probably get just as tired as your arm holding it up to type out a url :p

Neat idea but this looks like it will suffer the same annoyances as the leap. It works great when you make very specific controlled movements, but that ends up taking away from what touch-less is supposed to promise in my mind. I just want to flip my hands about casually but the leap would rarely catch it properly. Instead I was usually just left frustrated and tired of holding my arm up in the air.

The part of the video where they traced a word out on the keyboard just looked painful trying to keep your hand up in the air and steady.

Haven't used my leap after the first month of getting it. I fear the nod will be the same.

Do like the button/slider feature however. That seems like a good addition. But that gets me thinking is a wii controller much different?

If you're making slightly better versions of games that are already popular, it's got to be hard to beat their inertia.

You know you can make games, I would work on coming up with something more original/different than what you did.

Being at an agency at least will help keep you in a creative mindset until something comes along.

This is great. Simple and seamless. Got online with a couple of guys at the office right away to test it and worked pretty flawlessly. Couple lags here and there but no biggie (likely network on our side).

Didn't get to test desktop share but if it works as well as the video chat did we will definitely be using this for client presentations.

We would previously use Skype and/or join.me for client calls, but like gchat a login or installs were necessary (even if only for the host). This is a much simpler and elegant alternative. Particularly with the background option.

Love it so far!

I learned this one the hard way. Started as two founders, one techincal, one biz dev (I'm the biz dev).

We brought on a third (largely my doing), as more of the operations / finance side. Didn't set roles, and my biggest gaff of all was to not make him vest.

After a year, the third founder turned into a maniacal control freak and almost sank us. Finally departed, but took his equity with him.

My biggest lesson so far is be very careful who you partner with and ALWAYS vest. Or another way to put it, you don't need to worry about the good times, it's the bad times you need to consider and pre-negotiating the divorce is critical.

A mistake I made early on was trying to provide a product as cheap as possible. Constantly worried that no one would pay what we asked for.

Basically being afraid to ask for the value it was really worth.

I think there was a comma/period swap, but if I'm reading correctly it looked like the product was positioned at $30 / mo?

Assuming that's correct - it's really not a meaningful amount to any company that has enough employees and management to actually be a user of the product.

I think a $30 / mo with a free 30 day trial period (once product launches and they can actually try it ;) ) that requires a credit card for the trail could have worked.

Would still need a product to actually try, but that's not much different than saying get a free trial and just taking in email addresses.

If anyone remembers the Minimalytics / Small HQ folks - I thought they did a good job with their signups. The only thing for me was I disappointed by how minimal their product was in beta. It was so basic I didn't have any use for it, and running our own startup, didn't have time to wait. We ended up building it internally.

I probably would have converted to a paying user if it was more developed at beta. Not their fault though, they did a good job I thought(if you're reading Small HQ).

This reminds me of a lesson I learned working in sales for a big fortune 500 company.

You were given a quota to hit each week. One week I closed a big account and hit my quota for the week by Monday.

When it came time to review your weekly sales numbers, I got grilled by the sales manager for not closing double the quota, since I had closed the week's quota on Monday and had the rest of the week to continue selling.

I was taken aback by this and simply asked, where does that end then? If I closed a full year's quota in a single day, does that mean I should produce the same every day? With a capped commission why would I do that when another rep is producing a 10th of the amount but making the same pay?

It's not about hours worked, it's about production.

Extremely inspiring while in the weeds of my own "10 year (hopefully) overnight success". I also really like the presentation format. Thanks for sharing.

I guess the story doesn't "need to be told"

Literally read this post and clicked to see what other posts were in his/her blog and it's no longer up.

Ding! next

Some of the things I can relate to:

Definitely identify with gaining weight. It's brutal how quickly you can fall out of shape.

After playing basketball 6 times a week since college I barely get out once every three months. I'm 30 now and feel 40.

Aside from the up and down roller coaster ride, the hardest part for me has been balancing a relationship that began at roughly the same time that my co-founder and I went into business together. I have no idea how you could possibly balance anything else (like a real job) outside of a startup and a new relationship for extended period of time.

There are times my relationship has been a distraction to our business. But well worth the juggling act :)

$4 for a work space all day ain't bad ;)

The Ace Hotel has a great lobby to work in. I work there for a couple hours almost every trip I make to NY.

Convenient outlets at most seats, free wifi, and a Stumptown adjoined!

Lot's of creative types working there, illustrators, writers and such. Can get pretty busy after 5pm.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1768472/ace-hotels-communal-works...

20 West 29th Street New York, NY 10001