jtrtoo

Creating useful /comparable to the end user editions of old (packaged software) products and offering them in a new way entirely is developing a new product.

People aren't simply signing up to pay by the month (though that can be desirable to some folks in itself). They're actually getting something different.

At first read that was what I thought the headline was referring to. That or at the very least a more incremental pricing model.

This assumes calories are all equal and the best measuring stick. Do we know this to be a fact?

Yeah, the great irony of progress is that your old stuff always looks bad to your (later) self. It's all relative.

Check out the video of him discussing this and you'll actually hear his voice: https://vimeo.com/24715531 :-)

Here's the entire note from Ira Glass on that topic, in a video with him: https://vimeo.com/24715531

How were you handling sales, relationships building, market/MVP feedback, lead nurturing, and marketing in your business?

And what happened with your business? Were you left with no connections, relationships, and reputation of results to leverage to your next "thing" (I.e. new career path, consulting gigs, resume material)?

Even if your startup / bootstrapped / micro-enterprise failed, you got tired of it, or the market shifted, you don't get to a few hundred K in revenue in a solo/micro operation without having some results, reputation, and relationships to stand on when you walk away. At least not in any situation I can think of.

I don't know you, but I'm wondering if this is more about your perception being off about what's making this next step (i.e. interviews and selling yourself) challenging for you. If it is off, maybe you're overlooking something else that is really the root cause of it, preventing you from addressing it or even asking the right questions of yourself or the community.

This a thousand times.

If you're an introvert like me, it might require some creativity to find compatible ways to do this, but so this.

How does using open source actually avoid that?

Isn't all software opinion, regardless of origin?

Yes.

Awesome handle!

Wow, that reminds me of UUCP.

Even if it were possible to do cheaper in budgetary terms, it would be way riskier, and that's a serious factor. I think some technologists tend to overestimate the ability of a (non-technology) enterprise to roll their own (without significant risk and overhead) and underestimate the real costs even just from a budgetary perspective. It's apples to oranges.

Lest this be marketing for price is no object, this doesn't mean anything goes. That's where competition is important. And that includes from open source based solutions and smaller players. The key word is "solution." You can bundle up FreeNAS on your own well rested hardware, customized to the customers requirements and couple it with mucho support, hand holding, and SLAs. Oh, and proving financial endurance of thr organization helps too.Then you might at least be comparing something in the same universe.

Fortune 500 doesn't care about saving 20 dollars only to put the other 80 at risk. And rightfully so.

This a thousand times.

(Also a very constructive philosophy for technical folks, regardless of their preferred operating layer.)

How's that (the hiring) going? Are you subcontracting?

Ain't HN grand?

Not OP but self-employed going on a decade. Have high-deductible (intentionally) insurance covering myself and wife along with tax deferred Health Savings Accounts. In our mid-30s. Insurance runs $400/month and gets a tax deduction. Covered at 70% for just about any procedure/medicine. Not sure of what's typical. We have this done pre-Obamacare (grandfathered plan), but prior checks show within ballpark if not grandfathered (assuming HDP/HSA that is).

Yes. Unfortunately, as with driving, the vast majority of us think we're better than we are. It's good to have confidence, but near impossible to know when we're over estimating our own capabilities ... until it's too late.

In this case it's also more difficult because one doesn't always see the end results of their output, which may also be years down the road (no pun intended).

An alternative approach: break side projects down into short-term projects. Basically minimum viable products. This shortens the time to feedback and minimizes the opportunity cost from picking the wrong one.

It's generally easier to optimize this path, then to "pick the right idea." Because it's basically impossible to know ahead of time. And, besides, you'll learn a lot through each iteration. Good luck!

I wonder if this will bump up security bug bounty payout averages...

It might be more accurate to say R53 has partial v6 support. It'll return v6 records (AAAA) happily. The nameservers themselves do not respond on v6 (which is unfortunate and certainly means v6 support is lacking). Practically, however, it's pretty unlikely, that a v6 only host isn't going to also have access to a v6-to-v4 gateway. Not ideal, but generally transparent for most intents and purposes ...and generally used by just about anyone with a v6 address assignment today, everyday.

For DDoS attacks, I'm not sure what you mean by a "stated policy." They do a lot of countermeasures, some of which can be found via linked PDFs at https://aws.amazon.com/security/ Various R53 items are included in their DDoS document there. Officially you get charged. Unofficially, it depends on the circumstances. There's also a world of difference between a DDoS attack against a fully managed offering (like R53) versus, say, an EC2 instance.

Have you seen a better approach taken by other providers? I don't mean technical approach (which is near impossible to compare other than by track record), but from a policy perspective?

So shouldn't the only question ever be:

* Would we rather burn computing resources (i.e. on new threads) or calendar time+human resources (i.e. on code refactoring)?

Followed closely by:

* And does it even matter for our situation? (i.e. since for many situations getting every last drop of performance out of a system isn't the real obstacle; it's making it do something useful for the end-user or business)

Oh, good tip! Up until this moment I thought a remote mnemonic (e.g. "origin") could only refer to one. I didn't realize you could stack several behind a mnemonic.

Indeed! Saved to check out more closely later.

There's nothing wrong with working later / longer from time to time, particularly when you're hyper-focused on a problem.

But making a habit of it -- or doing it out of obligation -- could be a sign that something is off (e.g. with one's time management or organizational skills, with one's life balance / priorities, or one's employer).

> so while I couldn't offer the best salary, or the best benefits - I could offer a better work/life balance

That is a valuable recruiting reminder right there. For some reason, it is easy to forget that hiring is a marketing problem. It requires critical thinking about positioning and presentation. I want to poke my eyes out when I hear complaints from fellow business owners and managers saying they can't find qualified candidates. Usually they're recruiting practices suck. And it's not always about starting salary either.

An aside to your comment (but not a direct response to you since you're just relating a too common situation): Hard work is not the polar opposite of working efficiently.

Are you sure they wouldn't be? If you're a knowledge worker, your value is in your brain. If it makes you happier on the job, lowers turnover, and helps keep you refreshed ...side project away!

Your manager sounds like he is focused on the appropriate metrics and is earning his keep.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about all the items in the business overhead. I've been creating extensive lists of what actually falls into this area, so that I can make sure I'm outsourcing / delegating (e.g. to freelancers) things that really don't need to be on my plate and are non-strategic. Do you have any non-technical employees, contractors, or advisors involved in your business? And, if so, are they are assisting in some of those business overhead areas?