jpastika

Revenue can be a very misleading measurement of success. I agree that $4 billion in revenue is very impressive, especially considering the rate of Groupon's revenue growth, but overall losses and no profit plans any time soon, leaves me disappointed. What impresses me more is a company generating $10 million in revenue with $7 million in profit. Will Groupon eventually make money...maybe, but I'm not sure it will happen any time soon nor with their current business model. Groupon has two very valuable assets that I believe will eventually be used as the reasoning for an acquisition by Amazon or Google: 1) a large and growing list of consumers and 2) their buying habits.

You had me at slide #2.

Seriously though, how many "social"...excuse me "elastic" networks do people need to be a part of? I'm one of those weird people who doesn't care that my "friend", whom I've never actually met or spoken a single word to, is getting ready to brush her teeth (yes, I know she is probably a he). With Color in particular, I don't understand how sharing photos with people who are within eye sight is interesting considering you are seeing the same thing!?!?

The presentation of Color is slick, but from a usability aspect, the video looked very confusing. Admittedly I haven't tried using the app since no one I've talked to about it has installed it and the app store description clearly states "Warning: Don't use Color alone". I personally hold nothing against the Color team for taking the money, but VCs COME ON! Even if VCs are investing in apps like this in hopes of a Facebook or Google acquisition, $41,000,000 seems ridiculous. Then again, I'm just a developer hoping someday I'll create something that someone thinks is worth a buck.

First, congratulations on making something people want. If people are requesting more exercises it probably means you have a user base that: a)cares about your product and b)wants to see it continue. Yes, going after schools is hard, but going after teachers may be easier. There was a HN post a couple of months ago about a student grading application someone here had created and in trying to sell it, he ran into similar difficulties with targeting schools. But what he was finding was that teachers valued his application enough to purchase it themselves, then they would tell other teachers at the school, and pretty soon the whole school signed on. I think you should focus on keeping your product at a price point that would allow teachers to purchase it themselves. Maybe even try to build in some social features that would encourage teachers to spread the word. Then, with the revenue, outsource content creation. Finally, once traction and revenue reach a point where it makes sense for you to leave your full-time job or hire an additional developer, add functionality that would appeal to entire schools or school districts. Also, congratulations on the little hacker on the way!

Chime, I admire and thank you for letting the HN community take a look at your creations. As a developer, I know I am sometimes reluctant to let my peers see what I'm working on. I really like the simplicity of TEXT and can't wait to try out Email to Voice. I'm about to launch a public application that I have been working on for about a year and will set up a filter to have Email to Voice call me when someone signs up! Here's to hoping my phone rings a lot, and to your continued hacking and success.

Darn. I was thinking along the same lines as your response, but hoping there was an easy answer. I'll definitely do more research into FL's tax laws, but I appreciate your willingness to lend your opinion. [Startup idea: state and federal laws translated into understandable language...a Wikipedia of laws. Probably not the best idea since I'm sure that would result in quite a few law suits do to someone following incorrect or incomplete information]

I'm in FL and have been trying to figure out how sales tax applies for my startup as well (http://www.spokesystems.com). We are building a web based, subscription paid, application similar in scope to Basecamp, but for construction project management. I would love to get an opinion on the sales tax implications for FL. Thank you in advance to the fantastic HN community.

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Very well stated Jason. I think your opinion on "Pretending your faults don't exist" is especially spot on. Programmers, myself included, can sometimes become so attached to a feature or coding approach that any criticism, warranted or not, becomes a personal attack. I also think it has become way to acceptable to say "no" to customers. Rather than the constructive reasoning behind saying no, often times arrogance or even self consciousness leads to pretending faults do not exist. For this reason it is always helpful to have a trusted source for non-programmer feedback.