268 karma · joined April 14, 2008
"A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model."
I would say Dropbox has found a repeatable and scalable business model.
Your application is much better though. I used prawn as opposed to wicked_pdf to generate the PDFs. Did you do any handling of content spilling over onto multiple pages?
The idea was inspired by a comment made by photon_off (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1683309).
I should mention that I have already submitted this once previously (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2999852), but at the time it had very few users and therefore offered less value than it does now.
That's a really good idea. I just put it together in a few hours and hadn't thought that far ahead :)
You wouldn't leave your job to build apps, but you might to build a business.
Of course apps are fun to build. But making something profitable involves doing a lot of things which are not fun, marketing for example. At this point, someone simply making an app is likely to walk away and just build another. After all, their goal was simply to have fun.
It's terrifying, and I'm broke, but I have learned I am infinitely happier when I'm calling my own shots.
My hope for 2011 is to have a business which is profitable enough for me to carry on working for myself, and not look for another job.
Good luck everyone in 2011.
It was a nice idea but in truth we would have all been better off if we'd been given a link to pg's essays and been told to go home.
...I never knew Steve Martin went into insurance.
http://99designs.com/contests/6774
It's #180.
This notion that contributing or creating something is seen as a waste of time really gets to me. Personally, I get far greater satisfaction spending my time this way than watching the mind-rotting junk that finds its way onto the television, yet this is seen as the normal way for us to spend our time. The worst part was I felt I had to watch it just so I could spend time with my friends. I really hope there is a shift in thought upon us.
(I am so sorry Adam, for the record I love that film. I don't care if it contradicts my comment, that film rocks.)
"Sorry, nobody is currently available to answer your question. If you leave your email address, we can alert you when it's possible to get an answer."
I'll stick to Google for the time being though.