dariusmonsef

Wait wait... two people seemed to disagree on the internet and then after a few traded messages they end up in agreement and a better understanding of each other... we might have just broken the internet. :)

For a fuller perspective on what my thoughts are on geek macho bullshit, you might care to read: http://bubs.co/if-you-ever-feel-alone-in-this (I agree that there is too much of it.)

And I should know better than to post any kind of general analogy as a way to illustrate a story here on HN with a bunch of smart people who'll punch holes in the technical impracticalities of such analogy... but yes, I took a negative word of "tired" and bent it to tell a story. Rest is important. Operating at 50% isn't good for the long haul.

I wasn't trying to suggest that being tired in a way that affects ongoing abilities to perform is a good thing. I just wanted to point out that if you just pop your head in to take a measurement of something, without the context of everything else going on, then that measurement might be off... ie, the investor seeing me as tired, without knowing it was because of the intensely productive and long week I had just come out of.

Oh, yeah. It took me a while to process what they said, because I did put myself in their shoes... Am I really tired looking? Does my team think that? Am I putting off a negative tired vibe, or an excited about the hard work vibe, etc.

At the end of the day, and having talked to my team and family, I decided they just took a thin slice of experience and used it to make it into a negative... perhaps instead of being adult enough to say the real reason they didn't believe in me, the business, etc.

Probably true... but they didn't end up full-closing.

Agreed. And I'm not literally running a marathon every day. A more accurate analogy might have been a triathlon or decathlon. I just wanted to paint the picture of somebody who's achieved success in something, but if you looked at them at the point end of having just done something exhausting... big surprise, they'd look exhausted.

I'd agree that "tired" ie, without energy or running on fumes isn't sustainable. But I'm more speaking about the ups & downs of "tired." If you don't have the energy to do what you're doing and are using something else to get you through each day, ie, way too much caffeine, drugs, etc. Then yeah, you gotta make some changes.

Thanks Kirill, but I am cheered up. :) When I was first told, it took me by surprise and I've since thought a lot about it. Once I spent some time really processing it, I had to write down what I realized.

Awesome. Apply for a key here: https://creativemarket.com/platform/api

Or you could integrate our API ;)

Are you talking about in the live demo on our site? Or in the installed extension. Because in the context of using the extension in the app, I think it'll make more sense for you.

As friends of the team, I'm obviously biased... But they're a solid consumer thinking team and if the bit-coin-ish market is really going to go mass, it'll need some smart people helping drive the consumer train.

Thanks Thomas. I appreciate it.

fixed. thanks.

Arm-chair patient: Maybe. I've only seen a therapist as a kid, but as far as I know, through the rest of my adult life I haven't had any bipolar tendencies. But honestly I'm not that informed on BPD. So if I am somewhere on that spectrum, I'm not living pretty happily there.

Sorry for the confusion. I wasn't trying to say "successful" was miserable, but that often people who are successful are so focused on the next level of success that they don't enjoy the one their at. And I agree with your point, money isn't everything. I guess I didn't phrase it well enough, but I grew up around wealth and that has provided me the perspective to know that it isn't everything. But money is powerful, and I hope lots of people who want to make the world better acquire that power.

Yup. I read it. Thanks for sharing. I'm not sure how well a big group would work. If its bit an intimate close group of people, it wouldn't be easy to open up and share. This is why I think it's important to have a small group of founder friends to confide in.

Still building the same company, so we weren't conning any investors. And we weren't doing poorly back then... Just going through some challenges. Site load bringing down servers, hiring, etc. rarely can an investor take the time to really know every possible deal and founder in the seed stage. They're looking at a volume of deals and need to be able to take thin slices of founders to make decisions.

And again, the point of my post is to say... Yes, we're not fully transparent with people because everybody else isn't. We're to blame first for the lack of transparency. I'm making an effort to change this.

I'm very happy you and your wife have a healthy baby addition to your family. Not to spark a home/hospital birth debate, but to simply provide a different experience... Mine: http://hellobubs.com/post/23494489962/homebirth-midwives-bec...

FYI

We acquired Forrst because we're community people and we saw a great opportunity to help Forrst grow as a place for creatives to get better at their craft / share information. With COLOURlovers we have have a thriving community for creative inspiration and we recently launched CreativeMarket.com as a place closer to the execution side of projects. Forrst played well as a opportunity to connect with users along the spectrum. What we noticed though was that with all our attention on the successful launch of Creative Market, we weren't finding the time to really devote to Forrst to make it great. And being respectful to quality communities, we thought the best thing to do for it would be to find a home for it that could dedicated those resources. We've known ZURB for several years and had partnered with them on a creative project before. We reached out, had a conversation and mutually saw an great opportunity for them to grow the Forrst community.

The truth is. Some customers require 10x the support that others do and you only get paid the same amount. When you're a growing startup, those 10x'ers can suck up all your time and distract you from building a better product. Unfortunately it sounds like you were going to be a 10x'er for them and they were a bit blunt about suggesting you don't use the service.

The marketplace is open to the public for buyers, we're gating sellers right now just to have a bit more control during launch and make sure all bugs are flushed out on the payments side of things... and then yes, it will be totally open.

Yeah, thanks for the inspiration to write the answer, I think I'll put this in a blog post on CM soon. We want to tell the story of CM AND CL, but are trying not to confuse our story by saying too much at once.

What we're trying to do with our SimpleLicense is to not create one license that covers all usage scenarios, but cover most of them in one license... and then we will be adding others for things like resale & distribution. So yes, give us some time. :)

We're trying to simplify licensing. That means having to make some calls as to what can fit in a single license and what falls outside. We will add an additional license that allows for resale soon. But if somebody is buying a template from any marketplace and reselling it to clients, they should have purchased an extended license that allows for resale. It is more expensive than the base license.

So our simple license is not meant to be the all encompassing, but as a start and base license, the most open license. ie, you can actually use it commercially.

As for the rights and infringement stuff, we take this seriously and are gating sellers right now while we work on this stuff before letting anybody open a shop. It will always be a moving target, but we'll keep working on our aim.

I have a guilty pleasure for playing with words. I think it's clever and makes me smile. Sorry it doesn't for you.

First, we've been in the design space for several years. COLOURlovers.com is our property and we've been building apps & services for creatives for a while. In the process of being designers, hackers and builders of web things... We've been customers of other design good marketplaces. So what we're doing is trying to address problems with those marketplaces & do something big and new.

But first, the genesis for the idea to do CreativeMarket.com actually came out of COLOURlovers. It's been a passionate thriving company, and the one we took through YC. In the process of trying to understand the busines of CL we'd explored a few ideas (Real Time Color Forecasting, Selling Design Software, etc.), but those were all bolt-on business models and they didn't feel like they really meshed with our users and mission. "To make design simple and accessible to everyone." Then we realized there was an opportunity to help our users sell the beautiful vector patterns and shapes they were designing with our tools. To be able to help COLOURlovers make a living and participating in our community was very compelling.

But as we built the marketplace into CL we realized two things. 1. That a marketplace inside of CL was going to be confusing. CL is already a beast of a community with lots of stuff going on. We didn't feel like putting the marketplace in CL would do the best job for it to tell it's story. 2. We realized that there were more kinds of content that we could help people sell.

So, with the bigger vision for CreativeMarket we wanted to address problems with the existing marketplaces and do something more, bigger and really game changing.

As far as existing problems... Our royalty split better than almost all other marketplaces. +70% cut to sellers regardless of sales volume. +No exclusivity clauses. +Anybody can be a seller. (we let the market decide what is good) +Our content license is super simple. +Our pricing is 1/1 with a dollar. No hiding real prices behind credits. +It's beautiful. :)

The biggest thing I think we're doing differently is we're not a media company trying to do a tech thing. Tech is in our DNA and we're bringing that to the way we build and iterate on CM, continually working to make it better for sellers & buyers.

What we launched to day is the foundation. It's the basic platform for a marketplace, what's being built on top of it right now behind closed doors is going to change the way people buy/sell content.

Ugh, there is startup founder fanfiction now?

Two issues.

1. The definition of "rich". I've responded here that I mean a level of comfort that is better than 99% of the rest of the world. Not necessarily millions of dollars.

2. Yes, a large percentage of millionaires are self-made... But were they self-made thousand-aires? Or did they earn the seed capital they started their businesses with? There are no doubt, those that had not a penny to their name but went and started collecting cans for the refund and used that to invest into a food cart or something... But I think most of those self-made people were able to create their businesses because they had a certain level of comfort that could be defined as rich to most in the world. (ie, if you even have access to get a loan for $100k to start a business, you're rich compared to a huge part of the world population.)

"What kind of argument is that?"

Not a very strong one. I wasn't trying to argue, but rather suggest a new perspective. That out of the very few who strike it rich founding startups, there are many more who have earned a good salary and saved away a good amount of money while working their way up the corporate ladder.

"Rich" is a moving target for most people. As I noted, mine is different than most in the startup / bay area. I've been enough 3rd world countries to know what I need for comfort and happiness in my own life.

To have a few hundred $k in your bank account liquid is meaningful wealth. If you think in only sports cars and large houses, then yes... that goes quickly. If you think about it as the ability to travel, have leisure time, afford quality foods, etc. Then it is a quality of life that most in the world can't enjoy.

I agree with your last point to never do any kind of work just to get rich. Work on what you love, as a founder or employee.