exline

Site looks good. I love the demo's. Its great to be able to use/experiment with a tool before buying it.

The purchase process is a bit sluggish. It's been a long time since I've been bumped to paypal to make a purchase. I think it would be worth your money to pay the $30 a month for paypal pro and use the API to keep them on your site. Or use one of the many existing tools/apps/apis out there to make a cleaner checkout process.

It is far easier to deal with a refund than it is to deal with a charge back. Cheaper too. Since you have a demo, most that buy it are going to keep it. But those that for what ever reason end up wanting to return it, will be able to get their money back by going threw PayPal or their credit card. Plus its been proven that having a 30 day money back guarantee will improve your conversion rates.

Its perfectly ok. A lot of times others have already ran into the particular problem and already solved it. You need to understand the solution, just don't blindly accept some random solution found on the internet. If you do this, then your code will get ugly fast and you will not know what it is doing. But there is nothing wrong with finding a solution, studying it, understanding it, and then using it in your own code.

I've got to ask why sell? If it generates 2 million in profit a year, it should be generating plenty of cash to bank roll your next endeavor.

Since you are the only one maintaining you can simply hire 2-3 people to do the work you are currently working and keep the rest of the profit. Most people here would kill to have a business that is generating 2 million in profit.

It was at San Diego State University. The course was CS106 which was introduction to programming, a requirement for CS students and some EE majors and some math majors I believe. Technically I was a guest lecturer. I got my first job as a programmer through one of my professors. He was pretty well connected with several companies in San Diego.

SDSU was switching most of its courses to be taught in Java. They also had MSCE certification courses and were starting Java certification courses. I had just landed a new job at a local java shop. My old professor was looking for professionals to teach the new java courses. I was a pretty good developer and my name came up to teach the course (which paid pretty well.) But he decided that I need some teaching experience and got me to teach the intro to programming course to give me the experience. I know he had to pull a few strings to make it happen since I was not a grad student and not exactly a seasoned professional.

It turned out to be a great experience. I really enjoyed it. The pay was horrible. After preping for the lecture, grading, office hours and the lecture, I think it worked out to ~$12/hour. Quite a bit less than I was making as a regular developer. So I only taught the one semester.

I know of another guy I used to work with who was a horrible developer. I mean really bad. I believed he had a masters degree. But he taught extension courses at UCSD. I think the extension courses have a lot less restrictions on the requirements. From there he ended up teaching full time at another college, can't remember where. It was another small one in San Diego. This might be an option to allow you to teach if they offer extension classes.

I don't have any statistics to back up my answer, but I suspect that requiring a CC at signup will decrease your revenue. I know personally, I do not sign up for things that require my credit card. I blame gyms for this. It is the classic stereo type where you sign up and then forget to cancel. Time is very important, so I don't want to deal with having to cancel.

My webapp as a free trial (very little information required, username/pw) and a free demo (no information at all required.) My support costs are virtually 0 for trials and demos. In fact, any customer asking a support question ends up being a paying customer. They actually want to use the product. I want to maximize the number of prospects at the top of my sells funnel, so I reduce the barrier to trial to as little as possible.

If anyone has done an A/B test on this, I would like to know the results.

Works as advertised. I use both Skype and GTalk. Skype seems to do a better job at noise cancellation. But the new call feature, since it is free, has replaced my skype out calls.

I like the concept and the site looks good. The images change a bit to fast for me. I was trying to get a feel for the app, but it was hard with the images changing as fast as they are.

I'd like to see a few more screen shots before I would sign up. I've never been involved with game scheduling, but I can see where the pain does exist.

I'd pull more information into a benefits page. You have details in the blog, but I didn't feel like reading a lot to get a feel for what the app offers. You need a bit more details on the website to sell me.

I taught Introduction to Programming at a University after I graduated. It was an great experience and I believe I might return to teaching later in life.

The biggest issue for you will be unlearning what you already know. Since you will be dealing with someone starting at zero, you will have to teach things you take for granted. Simple things like for-loops trip up a lot of people. Keep that in mind when you are teaching her, that you might be using concepts or ideas that you didn't think about, but she doesn't understand yet. I would move as fast as possible to working on an IPhone, simple hello world aps, so she can get the visual feedback.

I also would not shy away from the right way to do things, even if it is more complicated. As an example, Java was the language we taught at my school. Not knowing any different (not unlearning what I knew) I had my students properly define every class in its own file. This is just the right way to do things. Turns out all the other teachers would use a single class with private classes nested inside. My students had a small leg up on all other students, even if my best students were not even CS majors.

I like it. I've used wufoo for surveys before and have had mixed results. I think being able to embed specific questions on the site is a great idea.

The site looks good. Pricing feels ok to me. I think the biggest competition (around here anyway) is people rolling their own. I still see a lot of use for this. The market is big enough you should do well.

"Uncaught Error: Page does not have permission to access location information using Google Gears"

Hmm. Doesn't seem to be working with Chrome at the moment. I tried the 'I want' and 'I have' with no luck. Possible user error, but there's not a lot to screw up with the user interface. When searching, I never see a map.

1 complete failure. We lasted a year spending all our savings and had to fold up shop. It sucked quite frankly but turned out to be a great learning experience. It also helped me branch into consulting and the startup that I'm currently at.

The worst part was not pulling the plug soon enough. What kills me is I think the idea is still a good idea (vertical search engine for tv/movie content with alerts for shows you want to watch, close caption searching, recommendations, community site.) I see parts of it being built by others but still not as good as what we had 3 years ago. I would use the app today if it still lived.

The major learning points from the failure are 1) Bootstrap the company. Don't require VC funding to get started. We spent to much time chasing after money and not enough getting users 2) Get customers to pay you money is a lot easier than getting ad revenue. You need a lot of users to make advertising pay off. You only need a few paying customers. 3) Listen to your gut. We followed the bad advice of an adviser that caused us pivot in the wrong direction and kept us working when we should have pulled the plug. 4) Release early, release often. We waited to long to release and start getting users.

So the business itself was a failure but I learned a lot of good things and I'm in a better position 3 years later than I would have been if I didn't do the startup.

It comes down to trust, because legally, I don't think your bases would be covered. I'm in a similar situation, working as a consultant. But I've known the CEO for several years and trust him. We are in the final phases of adjusting the LLC and giving me shares. I've been willing to defer this for a while since there is a decent amount of costs involved setting this up correctly so I don't get taxed on the shares.

Come to think of that, this could be a serious issue for you. Lets say that everything goes smoothly and you do get funding. At this point you get shares, you will have a taxable event based on the value of those shares. This is true even if you are never able to sale the shares. You still owe taxes on them. If you get your shares now, the valuation of the company will be much less than later and therefore the tax you owe will be much less.

If you don't trust this guy a lot, I'd push to get it set up correctly. Or at the minimum have a lawyer draft up an agreement and talk with an accountant to figure out the tax implications of this.

I'm married (9 years) and have 2 kids (throw in house mortgage as well.) I've been working on start ups for the last 3 years. I left a very good, high paying, stable job to work with startups. The first key thing is getting your wife on board. There is a lot more risk and stress with startups. Make sure both of you understand this issue. Money is already a big stress on marriages and you are about to make that situation worse in the short term. The other big issue (at least in the states) is health insurance. It costs a lot more that I would like.

The startup I work at is a great fit. We are boot strapped and profitable. We are not trying to be the next google/twitter/facebook, so slow growth fits our lifestyle fine. There have been lean times over the last year which adds financial stress, but I have fall back plan of getting a real job at any time which provides a nice safety net. It pays to have a good network to leverage when you need it. I work from home, so that allows me to work mostly normal hours and still get to see my wife and kids a lot. I carve out a few evenings to put in extra hours. I also carve out date nights with my wife.

So I don't see any issue with being a startup and being married. There is never the perfect time to start a startup. The best time is now.

To me, attitude/personality is a huge factor when start ups are hiring. I've been on both sides. When I was first hired, I had about 2 years part time work experience. When I was hiring, we often looked for recent graduates that would be our next rock stars.

If you can show that you learn fast and have the right attitude that should be enough. You mention you have worked on several personal projects. This is a huge plus to me, as it shows that you like to learn, that you like to code and that you have initiative. I'd make sure to point this out and allow them to see/review your projects.

All that said, it sounds like you are in the process of creating your own startup right now. If you left your current 8-5 job for a start up, you most likely would have to put your own project on hold. The description of your market is the exact type of market to go after. Perhaps you should give yourself a bit more time on your own project before looking for a job at a start up.

If its in stealth mode and there is nothing for them to so, then I would hesitate. Are you planning on continuing with the startup after getting hired? That is the risk that they will see.

If the startup will be over by then, I would put it on the resume, but if you plan on continuing to work on it, then I would not put it on. If you plan to continue with it, you will need to be very careful with the IP ownership. If you have to sign an employee agreement, there is normally a place to list prior inventions/IP that are yours and that they can lay no claim on.

The site looks very nice. Clean and well presented.

Search is a must for a site like this. I know you said it is coming soon, which is good. One other issue is that you are using a fixed width layout. For code examples, sometimes you will need a larger area to display the code without wrapping. If you had a fluid layout that let the main portion grow, that would solve the problem.

You may want to add a wish list area where people could request examples they would like to see. I also like Detrus idea of chaining items together to form a larger tutorial.

If you increase the number of shares in the company (in order to give to the outside investment) all ownership (yours and the LLC) would be diluted.

But if you do invest your own money 1) Investors know that you have faith in what you are doing. (and be more likely to invest) 2) It will help raise the valuation of the company.

That being said, it doesn't make much since to invest through another company. That seems like it just complicates matters more. Investors are going to want a % of the company based on the valuation and the amount they are invested. It doesn't matter to them if you invested personally or threw a separate company.

I see it both ways. If you run out of savings and have to get a job, then that might kill the business. The good thing about side jobs (or contracting) is that you still have a lot of freedom to pursue the business. The key thing is to keep the business as the number 1 priority.

With a side job of teaching piano, might be ideal because it would not become your top priority very easily. If you were contracting, it is very easy to shift from part time contracting to full time contracting because of the cash flow.

So I don't see an issue with it. Being able to stretch your savings out longer, I think will give your business a better chance of being successful.

Unless you are a politician, it shouldn't make a difference. I don't care to much what they do/think outside of work. As many people have said, having a diversity is a good thing in the work place. Unless the person was very out spoken about his/her beliefs that was disrupting work, it shouldn't matter. But you wouldn't know this before hiring them, but if they had that type of personality, they probably show up in other ways in the interview processes.

Site looks nice. I had start up in this space before. There is a lot more competition now then there was 3 years ago. We were going a bit further with full caption searching, episode finders, reminders, etc. We were trying to raise capital to cover expenses (mostly for hardware do process close captions and for the tv schedule.)

We had a cool product that worked but ran out of cash. We were just starting to gain traction when we had to shut it down. I'm assuming you are going for advertising as the business model?

You can license data from IMDB at a decent cost if you want/need to pull in more data into your own system. You can also link out to them as a poor man's version to make more content available to your users.

Looks good. I like diagram on the front page explaining things, but change the font for the text. It looks a bit sloppy. Also increase the font size a bit to optimize the size for the boxes.

One thing I don't see is a price list. How do you plan on making a business out of this? Monthly subscription on top of dropbox?

for real meetings, if it is on existing contract I'm working on, I bill accordingly. If it is a meeting to get new work, then it is not billed and an overhead cost of doing (getting) business.

For phone calls, it depends. I have a few clients that I'm working on their project when they call, so the time is already being billed to them.

If it is just a quick question, then I just answer it and not charge.

less than one year. I had a job the last 3 years of college and was able to cover all the bills. I had a couple of small grants plus some student loans. I took the loans for an emergency cash fun, just in case. I invested it in the market, and cashed out when I graduated and payed back the loan.

I haven't seen 3.15 before. That seems pretty high to me. 2x is closer to what I have experienced before, some times less if the overhead is low. If a company needs 3.15x, then they have some pretty serious overhead issues. Perhaps this is true for large consulting shops, I've only dealt with smaller ones.

March of Dimes, both my wife's pregnancies almost ended with premature births ( months of bed rest, hospitalization, etc.) We toured the NICU and saw babies born months early. We say the doctors and nurses who work in this area while staying in the hospital for 30 days.

Having kids has been a great change in my life. My kids are 4 and 6 now and I'm loving being a dad. I can still work long hours, but I split the hours to spend time with them. I don't have the time I'd like to have to dig into new technologies, new tools, etc, but I feel I'm a good dad. Starting to do some science experiments with my kids which is very cool.

What has worked for me is to get an early start in the morning so I can cut off work at a decent hour. Then I often will put in hours after the kids go to bed. Doing this I can still put in fairly long hours. Important thing is to review your goals and milestones and make adjustments to the time required to hit them. If the schedule was created assuming 60-70 hours a week, you will need to rethink the deadlines.

On the family front, one thing that has worked out really we for my wife and me is that we each have one night a week free, where the other is responsible for the kids. This one afternoon/evening is a nice relief. I use it to go grab some drinks with friends, play golf, hack on a project, watch a movie, etc. We both find that we are better parents (and spouses) when we get some down time.

Part of the issue is you don't want 100 features but only one person uses one feature, like word or Excel. If you do have a lot of features that are rarely used, you should hide as many as possibly behind an 'Advanced' area.

If the feature is useful to a large set of your users, then I would agree and add the feature. If it is only 1 user asking for it, then I would not add it. I tend to be like you and think, its only 1 line of code to make it work like they want, they are a paying customer, why not make them happy. But I've been burned by this. I had a customer who really wanted a few modifications. I made 1 that would help everyone using the service. I was going to start the second one against my better judgement, but right before I did, the person using the software quit her job (where she was using it), and her replacement didn't want to use it.

I agree. Since you are getting equity then you want to just take enough to pay your bills. Stretch the initial investment as far as it will last. This is actually a lower risk than most startups where it is your own money you are spending. You would be amazed how much you can cut back to stretch the dollar.

I'm not big fan of using Facebook login. I would think that it raises a barrier of entry for users, either because they don't have a facebook account or because they don't know what side affects your app will have. You don't explain what the advantages of using Facebook, or what integration there is with facebook. How will it affect the users's facebook account. You said in your post that it does not post to your wall, but you don't say that on the site that I can see.

Also the footer links are not links. You can't click on them. If I just say this page, I would not sign up because it doesn't look real yet with just a single page.