madetech

Some of the responsibility for the failure of this should fall on the marketing managers and their lack of knowledge on what decent online advertising looks like.

I worked in AdLand for a while and remember the agencies impressing clients with bullshit results and pure vanity metrics.

Nothing about actual business results, just another thing marketing managers were seen to need to do.

Self plug: https://www.madetech.com/blog/

I don't think you provide enough information on the landing page to convince users to signup.

If designers could use an interface design tool instead of some photo editing software, then most of the problems go away.

Spending time upfront perfecting a piece of art isn't a sensible way to approach design as its all make belief until you've written some code

It was originally a content marketing experiment. We thought we'd rather have 100 people receive a free printed copy of the book and love us for this, than a 1000 people receive ebooks and end up in their trash.

The ROI from the 100 trial worked well, so we decided to try and scale it out to more people. TBD whether we'll see a good ROI from 1000 people, but we hope people enjoy it and like us for sending them a free book!

We're based in the UK and have shipped plenty overseas so far. I'm sure we'll be able to get something to you, if you're not in too remote a location.

Great, will do + you can get me on rory_at_madetech_com

Shameless Plug: I've recently been involved in writing a book on Continuous Deployment, which covers many of the points Instagram are writing about here (but in greater detail).

I've got ~1,000 printed copies to give away. So if anyone wants one, go here: http://madete.ch/1S3OGvl and follow the link on the left hand side and we'll mail a copy to you.

This is fantastic news well done Let's Encrypt.

The app looks great, though have a few comments:

* It doesn't feel like HackersNews. I think you should follow some of the elements from the web app (Orange colour, HN logo etc)

* I wasn't comfortable providing login credentials. How are you handling login / storing my details?

* I'd like to see more posts per page. Feels harder to scan read the posts than on the current HN site

* Filter in top right looks like a location / near me icon. Didn't expect it to display filter options

* How do I see my profile? I'm logged in, but no indication that I am

* Having to click on comments to see 'no comments' feels odd

* The number of upvotes / comments per post is important, feels very buried (couldn't find upvotes)

IMO - the 'best and brightest' people should focus on making things, fixing real problems and generally doing good. If they make lots of money whilst doing this, then good on them.

There have been some interesting startups emerge in Finance Services, which look to be doing real good, but for the most part, it currently seems to be full of people skimming of the top to make a quick buck.

I've followed their business for a few years and the rate of growth has been incredible.

I think a big part of it is down to the quality of their products. Booking.com is fantastic to use, I book every hotel trip through their site and the experience keeps improving. Their SEO & PPC approach works well, they seem to rank #1 for every destination. Their conversion process from landing on site through to booking is great.

Would love to know more about them, wish they published details on their approach, growth engines, engineering etc.