nkabbara

Hey :)! That's my name: https://nashkabbara.com

I just succeeded in doing this https://nashkabbara.com/addictions.html

From what I’ve noticed from my friends we all tend to have different addictions. For some it’s YouTube for others Instagram, etc…

For me it's usually rebuilding a solution to a problem that I understand well that I've already solved with a familiar language.

Take for example Git. If you understand its internals well enough to build it yourself, then rebuild git in the new language. In the future, when you want to pick up yet another language, rebuild it again.

One of the reasons that I think it's extremely useful for a programmer to have at least one complex system that is well understood and implemented under their belt.

Yup, I DCA regularly, but thinking about whether this is a good opportunity to throw extra into an index fund like VTSAX or maybe solid individual stocks.

Extra would be coming from an account that I keep cash in for unforeseen opportunities.

Is this a good time to start buying as everyone is selling/panicking?

The mental frame that I often use to help me be ok with looking (and feeling) stupid is: stupid now, smart later.

You can train yourself to invoke it when the feeling comes up, if you didn’t have the chance to preload it before the interaction.

I think the only requirement for it to work though is that the intentions behind your questions are whole.

Tarsnap has been working really well for us, but one huge downside that we've noticed is how slow it is to restore data from say a 1TB archive.

Sometimes it takes more than 3 hours to restore a customer's 40MB directory.

If we were to have a full HD failure and had to restore the whole 1TB, that would probably take days. Days of downtime for us.

So depending on your situation, this might not be ideal.

I contacted Colin about this a few months ago and he mentioned that he is working on a faster version.

> * Filtering cards based on tags. Once you have a couple of dozen cards on a list it becomes increasingly difficult to get an overview of what you're doing, what you should do, etc. I use tags like DO THIS, DISCUSS THIS, INCOMING and would really like to filter lists so they only displayed, say, DO THIS cards. Right now I find myself fiddling around with the lists far too much, trying to figure out what I should do next. Not good if you're a procrastinator.

You can do this now in the "Search and Filter Cards" menu. Just click on the label and it'll only show you cards with that label. You can also rename labels to Incoming, etc...

Hi Guys,

This is a question I've been struggling with for a while now.

Would you host your company's super important bread and butter code on GitHub instead of your own server?

I get a funny feeling every time I think about this mostly because I've put tons of time (3 years) into our code base and I think of it as one of the most important aspects of our company.

Then again, GitHub hosts their code on GitHub which makes me feel a bit at ease in doing so.

I would really appreciate your insights.

Thanks!

I've worked with Carl in the past and I can say with confidence that he's one of the smartest people I've had the pleasure to work with.

He's extremely well organized and a quick learner.

Just my 2 cents.

-Nash

Great advice Jason. Thank you.

Drawing energy from people and specially your customers is a much underestimated ingredient for success.

After a couple of years of being a machine, you need an oil change and you need to replace the wear and tear components.

I found taking one week a day and cold-visiting our customers brings back the much needed spark that makes you feel like taking over the fucking world!

-Nash

I like the logo.

Video sounds really cool, but our niche doesn't seem to care for it much. It's mostly the high end dealers that like them. Maybe one day when we target them.

A very valid point and it has come up in my head many times, not just in regards to entrepreneurship, but other issues with a similar pattern.

Before giving out the advice, I had to ask myself whether things started getting better because of charging customers, or did charging customers coincide with an unknown event that caused some success?

Everything points to the former, in my case. But I do believe this particular advice applies to many other startups, not just mine.

Edit: I'd like to add, that after charging and studying usage more closely we removed some unused 'cool' feature that we thought were awesome. Charging customers also prunes your app. If you pay attention.

Wow! I feel embarrassed.

Thank you very much for this. Much appreciated.

Fixed.

Thanks!

You are 100% correct. I feel the same way. Read my response to inovica for an explanation/excuse. :)

This will be updated soon.

-Nash

Thanks!

Nope, no secrecy. I really don't believe in it for most situations.

It's mostly my tendency (weakness) to focus on developing new features than to update the marketing site. I'll be updating this with pricing very soon since I finally hired a great developer to help out in some of my coding responsibilities and to help shape ZZA's policies and future.

------------- Here's our current pricing:

10 cars or less $55. 70 cars or less $125. 200 cars or less $225.

No contract. No limit on features. No setup fee. --------------

Here's what we did/considered to reach these prices

0. We wanted to serve the startup dealerships. We know how hard it is to start one up (we did it, after all), so we wanted to provide a cheaper entry point.

1. We looked at what competitors were charging and what features they were providing.

2. We talked to more than 10 dealers to get their input.

3. We definitely don't want to convey that we are competing on prices. We're not! We're competing on understanding of domain, features and quality.

4. I read some blogs regarding this subject. Like Joel's and some others.

5. Had tons of discussions with people who's judgment I trust.

6. Estimated at what volume of vehicles would a given price make the most sense.

After doing these things, I simply wrote down 10 @ 55, 70 @ 125, 200 @ 225. It felt right.

As you can see, it's very non-scientific and many would disagree with this way of doing it. But it's what we did.

Maybe when it's time to rethink our prices, we'll have more time for surveys and research.

Hope this helps.

The sites that don't have an API, we simply provide an iframe and provide the user the tools to easily cut & paste into the iframe (Worst part in the app). 90% do have APIs though, which we use extensively.

Right now, my niche is only dealers with 200 cars or less. It's what I know. Later, when I feel like we've dominated this niche, we'll expand into other areas for sure.

Thanks for the ideas.

In the last few months, my focus has been 90% on the software.

What I did with the dealership is Im more or less, followed the advice in E-Myth (http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...) and created position contracts for all our employees (7 of them now.) This has cut my involvement in the dealership tremendously. Now, I only put out fires, make sure management is going smoothly and handle some of the accounting.

At the head of the dealership is my brother, whom I trust. He makes sure that all manuals are updated and are followed. I make sure his position contract is followed.

This way of doing things will be much harder if you don't have a partner that you can trust to handle his part. Specially when things start growing.

It's definitely how most people do things today. The way I did it, like everything else, has its pros and cons.

Some of the pros:

1. My buddies in the dealership domain are my customers. They call me up and ask me for a feature directly.

From my experience, this yields better quality features than talking to the domain expert that's probably trying to translate his conversation with the customer.

2. There's the advantage of you being in a domain where most people are your friends then your potential users. A lot of psychological walls are broken this way (what is he trying to sell me?). We trust each other by our reputation in the industry and this tends to extend to they quality of software they expect from us. Them knowing that we're developing it ourselves helps a lot.

Imagine cold walking into a business like a salesman would and offering your product. Now imagine walking into the business where you know the owner very well and you intend of having coffee with him first, then telling him about how you might be able to help him out. Big difference.

There are more, but these come to mind now.

So it's not only quality of software, but also how much easier it is to get your first paid user base that will enable you to create a good product that would hopefully scale beyond your paid-users-as-friends.

My way of doing it was to actually start a business in the domain. Grasshopper invited me to write a little about my story. I hope you find it somewhat helpful: http://bit.ly/bM4mp4

Let me know if you need help with anything.

As an entrepreneur, I found this to be very motivating. It highlights the essence of why some of us do what we do.

They guys at Grasshopper seem to be dedicated to motivate anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit to go for it.

I completely disagree with the “Period.” I think it’s a very small part of why it’s hard. Actually, if I were to ask the question differently and say: What exactly makes Entrepreneurship so attractive? Many would say it’s the lack of a boss.

Entrepreneurship is very personal and if you don’t have the discipline muscle already trained and ready, the first year or two will be very hard. But after that, you simply pick up a sheet of paper in the morning, look over at your yearly plan, and write down the couple of things that you must do that day to get a little closer.

At the end of the day, cross all the items off the list. If you’re lucky, that is.

Of course, it’s much harder than that. Specially when your plan is evolving as you go.

From my experience, I believe what makes entrepreneurship so hard is having to fly multiple plans in the sky simultaneously.

It’s telling which planes are carrying the cargo and which are carrying the people. The ones that can absolutely not crash no matter what from the ones that can not crash.

How is this different than Dan Webb's lowpro?