jbr

We were looking for a way of saying "startup" without excluding non-tech small businesses that didn't consider themselves "startups." Changed to "small."

Changed it to "small teams" -- we were trying to say "not big companies"

Thanks for the reply! We're working on a screencast today, and /pages/tour is exactly where we plan to put it.

I'm not a designer, so I'm particularly interested in feedback about the colors. Are they too dark? We want to look professional without looking enterprise-ey; all of our competitors are mind-numbingly enterprise-oriented and look like Microsoft did their design. We were also hoping the macbook would polarize our audience (hackers and small companies).

Hi! I've been working on this full time for the past three months and nights and weekends for three months before that, so your comments and honest criticism are deeply appreciated.

We'll be giving away five premium accounts the people with the highest rated comments on this thread. Thanks for being an awesome community, HN!

I'm most interested in: "If you have artistic inclinations and fear that the search for wealth will coarsen such talents, you will never get rich. (Because your fear, in this instance, is well justified.)"

This stuck out as something I've never heard anyone else say, perhaps because it's difficult. I wonder how much truth there is in this statement, and whether it is a necessary truth or a truth of default. Is creativity truly stifled by financial success? It seems more likely that we get good at what we practice and few business people carve the time for creative pursuits.

Does this quote concern other HN readers?

There's a fine line here; how does one know whether their situation is special or if what worked for them is applicable to others? As you say, overzealous generalization yields bad advice, but it's easier for consumers of advice (us) to filter than to generate. I'd rather read 100 founder stories and conclude that 95 of those weren't applicable to me than to lose the five that were.

The greater worry, in my mind, is that people like to avoid the "I would have done X differently" or "I found that assumption Y was inapplicable/inaccurate," which are super-valuable advice types.

Another vote for no scribd on the landing page -- it looks foreign and distracts from the sign up button (your "call to action").

"How it works?" isn't really a question. Either "How does it work?" or "How it works:"

This might just be me, but WIGS is a strange thing to see on the header. I get that it's the name of the product, but it wasn't obvious from the main page that Sucuri made WIGS. Something more descriptive, like "about" or "about WIGS" or "about the product" would be better.

If you want me to check out the demo, don't make me type in the username and password. A form with some hidden fields and a button requires way less user effort.

Style looks good, says "security company." The (BETA) in the title doesn't really jive with that message, though.

Why is it free, by the way? I think any businessperson looking at a service like yours would be _less_ likely to use it for free than for pay if something of value is on the line.

Somewhat generic advice: Find a good local bookstore (way easier in cities, particularly those with universities) and start flipping through relevant books until you find one that speaks in language you understand -- there's really no substitute for this, since your background (maths/physics/compsci) and learning style are super-relevant.

I'm a really big fan of MIT press textbooks; they consistently are of excellent quality and authorship (and no, I didn't go to MIT). They're not cheap, but they're significantly cheaper than taking a course.

This is really quite cool. A few thoughts:

- When I click "claim your identity," it should take me to the create an account tab. At this stage, why not make that the default tab?

- I'm no designer, but the tan / pink / fleshtone color isn't working for me. If it's dear to you, ignore me. I just redid my site's color scheme because people told me it looked like a developer's hobby project, not a business tool. I used http://kuler.adobe.com/ and was pretty happy with results. On a similar note, anti-alias your logo and save as a png (with a background if you don't want to alienate the ie6 crowd).

- The killer use of this, IMHO, would be the ability to integrate your technology into an already existing block of text hosted elsewhere just by dropping a line of js into the page (like http://www.apture.com/). I know that's not a tiny feature, but I imagine a lot of bloggers would love to offer this sort of "live editing feedback" on their blogs (and might be a paying audience). Either that, or provide tools to "publish version to blog" and have integrations for popular blog software.

- More on screen help. This is really hard, particularly for an interface that requires users change their behavior. We're so used to looking at text and assuming it's static that we need some tooltips or something that says "here's how to use _this_ text." Maybe something that can be dismissed once a user has seen it (that's what we're doing), but don't rely on your document creator to add directions on how to use revizr in the document directions. They're already advocating for you by using your tool; don't make their job any harder by making them explain it to people they want to use it with.

- "Tag the new version" -- tags are cool and useful and keep things organized, but why do I get prompted to tag my version when I advance to a version? I'm trying to do one thing and the software is asking me to do another.

Overall, it's a really neat app; a mix of google docs, wiki, and document publishing, with better change documentation and integration control tools.

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Hope that helps, and good luck!

This seems like it might have an accessibility audience; easy navigation for people without a mouse.

Simple question to frame the inquiry: What's the advantage of your technology over control/command F and control/command G? The answer to that probably has hints as to a possible audience.

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I've been hacking on a basic javascript-based regex highlighter (MIT license) that could be incorporated into a similar web technology, if you were so inclined. Check out http://www.jacobrothstein.com/highlightRegex/demonstration.h... for a demo and http://github.com/jbr/jQuery.highlightRegex for the code. Enjoy!

Another note if you're doing recurring billing: Check with your payment provider if you can get your customer payment data out ever. At my previous startup, we were locked into PayPal because they wouldn't release the consumer CC#s and it's never good for business to have to ask your customers to input their payment info a second time (attrition is inevitable). This time, we did a bit more research and our two top payment services (braintree and trustcommerce) both allowed full data portability (with a fee).

I do think it's $200/mo, but as far as we've been able to tell, it's perfectly legitimate to run our own $200 transaction and pay the processor fee (a few bucks a month on $200). We've only had our merchant account for ~1 month, though, so I'll be able to tell you more at the end of the month

> Slicehost can more easily upgrade your plan. Linode has to switch your box should you want to move plans. Often Slicehost can move plans while keeping you on the same box.

I'm on slicehost, and when I upgraded ("resized") a slice, it was not a "live" operation. I don't know whether it's physically the same machine, but the old slice had to be shutdown, file system copied, and a new slice booted.

From the "Resize your slice" page:

Step 3: Current slice is shut down and migrated You will experience a downtime varying in proportion to fullness of the filesystem.

SnapTwitter is archive.org for twitter -- historical snapshots with a high degree of time precision. Be able to roll forward and backwards through time to see (and search) all of twitter at any point. Maybe it even has a visual timeline at the top of the page that lets you navigate through time.

I'm up to my neck in my startup (see below), so I couldn't actually take on another project, but I thought I'd throw the idea out there.

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Want to try voting for snaptwitter.com proposals on my site focused on brainstorming? (yes, signup required, but it's quick and easy and spam-free)

http://www.stormweight.com/lists/snaptwitter-com-giveaway?p=...

It matters a whole lot what sort of payments you need to take. Is your payment model a sale (one-time transaction) or recurring billing?

If you're going to take credit cards and/or do recurring billing:

I've built two recurring billing payment systems (braintree and paypal express checkout) and maintained a third (paypal payflow pro gateway) and am most impressed with braintree's api thus far. http://braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ My braintree-based system hasn't gone live yet, so I can't say anything about long-term service, but their api was far more sane than the other two. That said, when we added express checkout to the payflow pro gateway, purchase rates increased substantially.

There are monthly minimums with braintree and a good bit of paperwork, but being able to directly take credit cards might add some degree of "seriousness" in the consumer's eyes.

If you're rolling on rails, you might want to check out http://railskits.com/saas/ (although I have no personal experience with them) and http://www.activemerchant.org/ (a payment library extracted from shopify).

If you're just doing one-time sales, you have a lot more options and the accounting is a heck of a lot easier.

Let my people go surfing -- Yvon Chouinard

http://amzn.com/1594200726

The seven day weekend -- Ricardo Semler

http://amzn.com/1591840260

Getting Real

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/

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Also, help flesh out the list of books for startups I just created for HN on my site:

http://www.stormweight.com/lists/books-for-startups?p=OyAXcZ

Project management is a fairly broad domain and includes a bunch of different tool types. If you're using sites, you might be interested in pbworks (was pbwiki) or 37signals basecamp. Pivotal tracker provides a very focused (and thus intentionally restrictive) workflow that expresses their agile development philosophy. Similarly, thoughtworks mingle is shaped for their flavor of development. Personally, I think that managing documents and tasks are two very different domains unless the documents are directly linked to a task.

--- There's also the issue of how tasks are prioritized and how new ideas are merged into the work queue. Stormweight is a product in private beta that allows your team to merge their preferences democratically for brainstorming and team decisionmaking. Email contact@stormweight.com if you're interested in the beta. [Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder and chief engineer at Stormweight]