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I am the author of the book, "How We Did It". For the book, I interviewed 100 entrepreneurs from all walks of life. From the tech world, people interviewed include the founders of companies like Freelancer, Udemy, Fiverr, Tagged.com, Unroll.me, PluralSight and Grooveshark. Other people interviewed include consultants, Yoga trainers (YogaFit),bakers, jewelry makers, etc.

Writing the book was a huge experience for me thanks to the inspiring stories that these entrepreneurs told me. You can find it on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/How-Did-entrepreneurs-struggles-experi...

I recently talked to nearly 100 entrepreneurs for my book titled "How We Did It". One thing that I asked most of them was how to validate the business idea before embarking on it. One common answer was to set up a landing page and advertise it using the right keywords on Adwords. Are people proceeding towards the purchase/download from here? In that case, there is a market and you could work on your idea.

Incidentally, the chapter about idea validation is available for free here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0evrb66hvg4ucoy/Preview-copy.pdf

This is the Amazon link for the book : http://www.amazon.com/How-Did-entrepreneurs-struggles-experi...

I agree. There possibly could be another book that addresses things the exact same way I have done. But the fact that I could not find it while trying to scratch my itch tells me this book has potential to reach people like me the other books have not addressed.

Secondly, although interviews with the founders of Freelancer and Udemy makes for a nice brand building exercise, their interviews are not the USP of the book. I think this book is useful because it tells the stories from people who are not media darlings - people who run baking shops, vegetable growers, yoga schools; people who make their own jewelry and sell on Etsy. The stories and struggles of these people are not chronicled. Even if they are, they must be available as a 99 cent ebook on Kindle that has not really reached many.

This book consolidates the experiences from the ultra-successful and those who have failed, people who face challenges from multiple aspects like money, gender, industry, etc. And reading all of this in one place is definitely a useful alternative to the umpteen books that one must read for the same purpose.

That sentence is indeed grammatically correct.

As an Indian, this is a topic of conversation even inside India. For example, the place I worked for in Bangalore had people who spoke to each other in Hindi, another bunch that spoke Tamil, Telugu, etc. When there was a common need, of course they spoke in English or Hindi (when everyone understands it). But to each other, people speak in their vernacular.

For someone to whom English is a second language, it doesn't come naturally to converse all the time in English - they probably think in their vernacular and translate it into English all the time they talk to you. Asking them to converse among themselves in English just so the lone English could understand their Shah Rukh Khan gossip is unrealistic.

Makes sense. In that case, would scanning the sea for hues of red work? The MH370 has a pretty prominent red strip along its body. If we can scan for this color, then it could be a more practical search.

Another thing - a script to do this could take at least 2-3 days to code. Things could change pretty drastically by then. Of course, we might be able to reuse the code for another unfortunate time.

Looks like a neat linkbait. Unlikely the owner never noticed this..

How did you get referrals from a mailing list you were a subscriber to? Could you elaborate?

Do we have an IFTTT recipe for this? I guess it's a pretty good idea to try this reverse search against all of our competitors to see if there is a pattern for our specific industry.

I have been doing a little cold calling recently. One thing I have understood from the various introduction statements is

1. Ask for the person's name or company's name first thing: this tells the person you are indeed looking for them

2. Do not sell in the first 20 seconds. Tell them you are looking for someone in their line of business and ask them if you can ask them a couple of questions

3. Ask them questions relating to their business

Only then do you explain how your business solves the problems. I have found that this recipe almost always makes it impossible for the target to say 'no' and cut the call. Once they answer your questions, they are interested to know how exactly you come into the picture. This process seems more successful than anything else for me.

I used to have a newsletter project where I signed people up through a single optin - it was kind of a daily deals newsletter. I grew to 1000 subscribers in no time. Yet, whenever I sent a mailer, there used to be a 2-3% bounce and a 3% open rate - remember, this is from a newsletter that people voluntarily signed up for. I didn't get them from a spam list.

Recently, I started a newsletter for entrepreneurs - this time, I was careful to have double optin. The growth is definitely slower. But with nearly 50% open rate for each of my newsletter, I think I am talking to the right people.

It costs money to send a newsletter out. I use MailChimp and it's not free. What's the point in paying for people who are half hearted subscribers who have bouncing emails? I would rather pay double for people who are genuinely interested in reading from me.

How did you market using Rubyweekly? Isn't it a curated email newsletter? Did you advertise or were you lucky to be picked up by them?

So is this limited just to commenters or to people submitting new products as well? I just noticed you do not have a submit product option either.