kyle_t

Thank you Helen. Some great feedback there. You're point "Your landing page should make people say 'hell yes' in 1 big headline, 3 bullet points and 2 small screenshots. A real hit between the eyes." resonated poignantly with me. I think you hit the nail on the head. It wasn't obvious at first what we were selling.

I've done some redesigning on our 'marketing' pages to better illustrate what we are selling.

Thank you for taking the time to give your thoughts!

"People don't like to spend $50 per year on an email, much less per month."

I completely agree from the consumer side of things. I'm hoping that for businesses who have many people touching the same email addresses it is a drop in the hat. I'm just afraid that these businesses are already tied to big name players offering less niche products.

"Let me ask you this: what kind of person would need to securely share access to your email? Probably someone in charge. Work from there."

This is a good point. The other types of people on my radar: those that frequently work with contractors/personal assistants and single customer service emails managed by multiple employees (which is probably managed by someone in charge like you said).

" It seems a little bit to me like you're trying to reinvent email"

That's actually what I was hoping to avoid. My goal was more to add an extra layer, that people would be willing to pay a premium for.

Great advice and food for thought!

Thanks Scott I really appreciate the feedback.

"If I actually had a running business that was doing its customer support over email, the amount you're asking would be no problem"

Its primarily for this reason why I've been trying to target businesses. I've been having trouble finding a market though. If I start attacking the help desk arena I'm a new player with a lot of well entrenched competitors. If I start going after smaller players like consumers, price will have to drastically drop, revenue per customer will drop and total signups will have to significantly increase to make up for it.

My current strategy is to attempt to market to businesses, continually evaluate the results and decide if a shift in customer base is required. I would much prefer 300 customers paying $50/month, then 3000 paying $5/month ;)

Thank you for the links. I was trying to find a 'source' but came up empty handed.

Thinking about how reliant I am on Google's services and how difficult it would be to find comparable alternatives makes me very nervous. Gmail, maps, drive, translate, search, youtube are all daily activities for me.

Sure I could replace drive with Dropbox but it is twice as expensive. I could replace GMail with Outlook or Yahoo but so many of my colleagues, contacts and friends get in touch with me through google talk. Plus none really compare to GMail in terms of ease of use (although I've really started to dislike the new compose feature).

The point is the individual pieces are probably replaceable, but no one even comes close to having such a cohesive, integrated set of products. At this point the best I can do is make sure I have an offline copy of as much as possible and hope for the best.

I know this article is focused on the business level, but I'm finding this to be true on a personal level as well. Contributing to open source not only leads to personal improvement but it essentially creates a public portfolio of your work. This can lead to more exposure which in turn can lead to more opportunities (and better paid ones too).

Open Source might not yield immediate benefits (i.e a paycheck) like say freelancing, but it is an investment in your future.

Although I don't have any qualms with the subject matter, the manner in which articles like these are presented make me wanted to gag. They are obviously titled and worded to attract link-bait attention.

Don't tell me what mistakes I will make. You don't know me or my business, nor can you read the future. Why not, "Potential pitfalls to avoid as an entrepreneur in 2013".

Really beautifully designed. I had one of those instant (and rare) "man this is a beautiful design" moments. And then I saw the name. I understand why you chose the name but I struggle to pronounce it, yet alone spell it.

Beautiful and I like the concept, just not a fan of the name.

Like most comments here I would have to say I completely disagree. In fact I learnt very little of the skills needed to work in a corporation. Testing, build automation, source control, working on large projects, working with poorly documented legacy code. All skills necessary to survive in corporate software development that were never touched or only very lightly grazed.

If you want to go to college to learn to be an entrepreneur, get a degree in entrepreneurship. Colleges should teach the core competencies of your degree that can then be applied in any number of ways.

[Edited for spelling]

GoSquared has some excellent icon packs. You can view them all here: https://www.gosquared.com/resources/

I completely agree. The issue is that in order to get a decent paying job you either need a lot of experience or a college degree (most of the time you need both). From my experience its just the way it is.

If you drop out of college for a startup you will have some experience but not necessarily the kind employers are looking for or enough of it.

Solid advice. If it doesn't work out and you quit your job to pursue the startup you might have a smaller bank account but you will have another solid item for your resume and it shouldn't be too hard to find a new job. If on the other hand it doesn't work out and you dropped out of college, you are in a much worse spot. Failed startup wont do much for getting back into school and now you still have to fund the schooling. You could get a job but it wont pay much without a college degree.

The problem with this is some companies want to remain small. They don't want to be the next instagram or pinterest. They are perfectly happy pulling in $1-2MM and supporting a healthy lifestyle for the few employees it employs.

I'm not necessarily saying I disagree with the premise of this article, but the owners need to make a choice about what kind of company they are running and take the necessary steps to achieve that.

In defining goals similar to this I've often found that its easier to stick to the goal when I've clearly defined and understood the reason for the goal. Why do you want to write an average of 100 words per day? Improve your writing skills? get more traffic to your blog? Simply prove to yourself that you can do it?

If the ads were for the paid version of your application, as the end user I wouldn't be bothered in the least bit. In fact as a developer and business owner I would actually expect them there.

Ads for non-related products would only seem to me to be detracting from your future business for a small payout now. My guess is it is a poor long term plan.

Just out of curiosity are you only interested in Oil/Gas or are you open to other fields as well? If yes how come? (purely out of curiosity, not judging either way)

Just want to second the culture part. From what I've seen and experiences related to me from friends the culture at these guys is very rigid and 'corporate'. For example I've heard that at Valero in San Antonio men can't have facial hair of any sort.

I have seen and experienced many people faking passion for their bosses and for their coworkers. In fact I would wager it is a pretty normal thing in the corporate world.

Its pretty easy to fake passion at work when you are worried about feeding your wife and three kids at home.

His point for working in silicon valley which essentially boils down to "surround yourself with successful people, or people likely to be successful" also applies to the corporate world as well.

Surround yourself (and be friendly with) with people likely to succeed, chances are when they move up the ladder, they will bring you with them. In fact I would argue that it is just as important (from an employee's perspective) to surround yourself with successful people in the corporate world as it does in the startup world in terms of personal advancement.

Trying to do both.

"How many of us think less of PG because HN uses tables?"

I understand your point, but I think that is more of a implementation of features, rather than which features make it in for first release.

Its a valid point that if the first few users are the majority then you are in trouble. I would hope that the first few users/adopters however would become my biggest cheerleaders thus contributing to a snowball effect of new users.

The attitude of needing to completely delete your facebook (or permanantly remove oneself from any frequently visited site) has always astounded me. It seems to come down to a problem of self-control and lack of other passionate things to fill one's day with.

Personally I find myself constantly loading facebook/reddit/HN when I'm bored and not interested in my current work. Simply deleting your presence seems to be treating the symptoms, not the cause.

When I graduated in 2010 from a school down in Texas with a BS in Comp Sci, I was constantly being solicited for interviews with the big guys...Valero, Chevron etc.. These companies also had a very large recruiting presence at all the career fairs.

So at least at that time I know there was a need for development positions in this field. Just like most large companies there are plenty of internal tools that need maintenance and development.

This is a big one, and one I'm in the middle of fighting with right now. As a developer its hard to release a product with your name attached when you know its not as good as it can be.

Releasing early means getting more exposure and possibly force you to realize your a writing something no-one earlier. What if though you are turning potential customer's away who are unimpressed with your first couple releases? Are those just considered write-offs and the cost of bootstrapping?

Once you've found potential customer's what is the best way form the message (whether by phone or email) for the initial direct contact? I've found it can be difficult to sound genuine and not spammy.

You make a good point. For those just getting their feet wet with Open Source projects it makes sense to start first with a smaller yet active project.

Thrilling idea, but I have a hard time giving my email address to a service who can't even take the time to properly setup their root domain's page: http://startupparadise.com/