Hacker News Reader

mijustinon Ask HN: Expenses breakdown of your startup?

For my solo-business it looks like this:

  My salary: 65%
  Travel Expense	6.23%
  Taxes – Corporate Tax	6.22%
  Computer – Software	3.35%
  Meals and Entertainment	3.28%
  Education & Training	2.81%
  Wireless + Internet	2.36%
  Office rent: coworking	1.85%
  Computer – Hosting	1.59%
  Accounting Fees	1.55%
  Bank Service Charges	1.41%
  Office Supplies	0.98%
  Computer – Hardware	0.65%
  Domain Names	0.55%
  Photo & Video Equipment	0.43%
  Media Purchased for Clients	0.38%
  Depreciation Expense	0.35%
  Interest Expense	0.19%
  Marketing Expense	0.08%
  Repairs & Maintenance	0.04%
  Product Samples	0.03%
  Business Registration Fees	0.02%
  Production & Supplies	0.02%
  Merchant Account Fees	0.01%
  Unrealized Loss on Foreign Exchange	0.01%

mijustinon Can you bootstrap a startup on the side?

DHH later responded to this post on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1074688850054733824

He said:

> "Is it possible to build a startup on the side?” The answer is clearly YES. If you ask, is it possible for swans to be black, you just need one black swan to answer affirmative. And there are tons of built-on-the-side startup swans. The same with “is it possible to grow a startup on a sane 40h workweek”, the answer is again overwhelmingly YES. That’s completely irrefutably true by lots of examples. The only question is do I want to bootstrap as a side business? Do I want to have healthy work habits?"

Jason Cohen did a podcast interview after this article came out: https://www.productpeople.tv/97 https://www.productpeople.tv/98

mijustinon C# Is Dangerous

He's just saying that C# can be dangerous for beginners if they don't have a proper foundation in programming.

However, the C# tooling does reduce the workload for experienced programmers.

It's all about how the tooling is used.

mijustinon C# Is Dangerous

This part really struck a chord with me:

> Cobol is relevant in 2018. A few people make a lot of money maintaining Cobol systems. However, (at least where I live) I don’t see a lot of ads for Cobol developers. I see a bunch of C# ads and a ton for Javascript developers. You need to seek the balance between valuable skills and available work.

mijustinon 2018 Mac Mini Review

What would you recommend for a Mac-compatible eGPU these days?

mijustinon Show HN: My website looks like it went through a photocopier

A little background: I wanted to switch my site off of WordPress, and my friend Jack offered to redesign it.

But... I wanted to keep the brutalist aesthetic.

So we worked on making the site look like an old punk rock zine. (Complete with photocopied images, tweets, etc...)

I know it won't be for everyone, but I really dig it.

I switched to the https://statamic.com CMS from WordPress, and I'm hosting it on Digital Ocean (using Laravel Forge).

mijustinon Books vs. Cigarettes (1946)

So odd to get this window into a different time.

“The economics of content” were very much a topic back then!

Aside:

“Eight pounds a year covers the cost of two daily papers, one evening paper, two Sunday papers, one weekly review and one or two monthly magazines.”

Folks read a lot of newspapers back then!

mijustinon Show HN: Mod&Dot, a web design and devtools extension

OMG. This line:

> "Design right on top of the live site."

This is exactly what someone like me (a person who hacks around in dev tools) needs.

How will the Chrome extension work?

mijustinon Google salary negotiation – How to negotiate a Google job offer

I've never seen this insight before (actual examples of what a Google job offer looks like). Thanks for writing this up!

mijustinon Improving Our Laravel Nova CRM

Just discovering these tutorials now! I definitely want to try "build a blog in Nova."

I might even livestream it on https://twitch.tv/megajustin ;)

mijustinon What to say when recruiters ask you to name the first number

I've gone through this exact scenario, where the founder used this trick on me.

I've found these articles helpful for circumventing that exploit:

"How to answer the dreaded salary question" – https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/the-dreaded-salary-que...

"Can you trust your recruiter?" – https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/recruiter-business-mod...

mijustinon Ask HN: What is your process for validating startup ideas?

Think about validation like an iterative series of steps.

The first step (even before you have an idea preferably) is to identify who you want to serve. What target market are you going after?

I think it's wisest not to go after beginners. More about that here: https://justinjackson.ca/beginners

Next, you need to observe your target market. What do they struggle with, that they'd be willing to pay for? What evidence do you have of this?

mijustinon Ask HN: What have you built with Rails lately?

My friend and I are building Transistor.fm, running Rails 5.2 in production. Here's an example of the app:

https://saas.transistor.fm

mijustinon Why founders need hobbies

I agree with Josh completely.

It's unsustainable to focus 100% on your business. Our brains aren't optimized this way. We need hobbies, recreation, and diversions to be healthy.

mijustinon Subscription Hell

> Many founders choose SaaS simply because they want the recurring revenue. Just because you like the model as a founder, doesn’t mean it’s the right model for your customers!

(from https://justinjackson.ca/saas/)

mijustinon Show HN: We made a podcast host then we made a podcast about SaaS

This year, I’m building a podcasting startup with my friend Jon called Transistor.fm.

Lots has changed since Basecamp launched in 2004. When they started, there were only 1-2 competitors in a vertical. Now, each category has hundreds of competitors. Some things have gotten easier, but many things (especially marketing, acquisition, and profit margins) have gotten harder.

So we decided to use our platform and record a show about what it takes to build a SaaS in 2018. We have 5 episodes, and so far, people are finding it helpful!

Any topics you'd like to see us cover in future shows?

mijustinon Why I’m selling WeddingLovely, my 8yr old company (with $62,000 revenue in 2017)

"Having someone passionate at the helm has transformed the business and a huge sign to me that I needed to find a buyer for the business to replace my role as CEO."

"Passion" has been getting a bad rep (maybe because of "follow your passion" trope), but when you're running a business, it really helps to be passion about the topic, or the customers.

Lack of passion is a great reason to sell a business: if there's someone else out there that loves the wedding industry, it's clear this would be a good fit for them. Being excited about the product especially helps when you're promoting and marketing it.

mijustinon Ask HN: What old desktop software are you still using?

Somebody had to say it!

mijustinon Protowire – Adds prototyping to Sketch

This looks awesome for prototyping.

You should re-post this as a "Show HN." I think lots of folks would be interested in it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/show

mijustinon Hidden work when launching a SaaS

Stripe just does the processing. But for SaaS, you really need something like https://bullettrain.co/. It does pricing pages, subscription and user management (which is what takes most of the time to implement).

mijustinon Hidden work when launching a SaaS

This part is so true:

"I’ve built and sold software for the Mac and iOS. Those products all had simple billing systems. But with a SaaS, you need to handle all of that yourself. You need to handle payments, and invoices and everything inbetween."

Edit - both Spark (Laravel) and Bullet Train (Rails) will help with a bunch of this stuff:

https://spark.laravel.com/

https://bullettrain.co/

mijustinon Show HN: Curated daily digest of jobs, products and articles for Product Designers

Such a great idea!

mijustinon Ask HN: Sell my startup for $14M because I can't raise $2M?

My recommendation is to get a broker. FE International is particularly good: https://feinternational.com/

A good broker should be able to tell you if an offer is fair, and also protect you from the risk of them just doing due diligence to steal your secrets.

mijustinon Show HN: 15 Dollar Bootstrappers Marketing Stack

I'd never heard of Mautic! Looks like a great alternative to Mixpanel.

mijustinon How to negotiate your salary like a pro

Do you have advice on finding companies that are more likely to give a generous salary offer?

I have friends who continually seem to get lowball offers. What other factors might play into that?

mijustinon Why I bought your software

I was trying to honestly describe the emotional battle I had inside of me as I made the purchase.

Not all my thoughts were rational; but I think that's the point! Customers aren't as rational as we think they are.

If we're trying to optimize for people buying we need to assuage their emotional needs as well as their functional requirements.

mijustinon Segment raises $64M led by Y Combinator

I've been a Segment user, and advocate, from the beginning. It was highly recommended in the book Marketing for Developers.

One thing I'd like to see is a better free tier for developers starting new projects. Currently, you're limited to 1000 visitors per month.

Even indie projects can quickly run up monthly costs of $100+.

As a comparison, Mixpanel's free tier gives devs 20 million data points per month.

mijustinon How to choose a target market for your SaaS

There's a few strategies I recommend in the book (Marketing for Developers) for this:

1. Start with people like you – Mike from Freshbooks was a designer. So when he started his company, he focused on designers.

2. Choose a market that is easy to reach – you can test this out by writing blog posts for different markets, and see how easy it is to get traction. Another tactic: try buying Facebook ads for different segments. Which segments do you get the most engagement for? How cheap were those clicks?

3. Start small – starting with a tiny product allows you test our a market, before you invest too much time in it.

mijustinon Ask HN: What are some alternatives to Indiehackers forum?

There's a few alternatives:

https://barnacl.es

http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/

https://productpeople.club/

https://www.foundercafe.com/

https://nugget.one/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/

mijustinon Ask HN: What was your product's biggest marketing win?

OP here. These answers are great! Feels like content marketing is a big winner so far.

If you'd rather not comment on this thread, I've also created a quick survey here:

https://tinymarketingwins.com/2017survey/