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qeorge

4,895 karma · joined March 17, 2009

1 of 2 founders of Illuminati Karate, a software company in Raleigh, NC. (http://illuminatikarate.com)

Our Startups:

Gold Plugins - Premium WordPress plugins - www.goldplugins.com

Hello Testimoinals - Collect Testimonials Automatically - www.hellotestimonials.com

Email: george@illuminatikarate.com. Drop me a line - I'd love to hear from you.

Current topcolor: #339933

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qeorge··on The Ronco Principle
That's a great book too - I like Seth's writing style. I believe he calls this "finding a edge".

TSATOP is different because teaches you to actually quantify the value delivered to the customers. i.e., how much, in real dollars, is 100% uptime going to save us over 99.99%?

It seems like a small difference, but its not: 100% uptime unlocks new business models that don't work with "only" 99.99% uptime (e.g., banking software or API companies). That's what TSATOP really explains - how to quantify the seemingly minute differences in your offering, and how to communicate that value to the customer so that you can charge accordingly.

To use an example actually from the book, how much money will a DNA testing kit that requires 10% less sample material be worth to a customer?

Well, first that depends on who the customer is - its a lot more valuable to a pharma company than a university, for example. But how much more? The book would do something like calculate the number of new drugs the pharma company can release each year based on having this better DNA testing kit, and calculate how that affects the customer's bottom line. Eventually this would result in something like: every time you use our product instead of our closest competitor, it puts $50 in your pocket.

Seth Godin's writing is awesome for motivation and to get your brain moving, but this book really drills down on the nuts and bolts of pricing, and provides templates and worksheets for performing your own Economic Value Estimation of your product. Both are really useful, but this one is more like a textbook, whereas Seth's is more like a (very) motivational speech.

qeorge··on Go Static or Go Home
Here's the thing: they don't want to run SiteSucker. That's only slightly more helpful than telling them to just run wget!

They want to write a check and get back to business, not become a web developer!

(I think that tool is awesome though, and I appreciate the tip!)

qeorge··on The Ronco Principle
I have the 4th edition (2005 update), which is only $8 used on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Tactics-Pricing-Growing-Profi...

But honestly any edition is great - its sold as a textbook[1], so they seem to make periodic, cursory updates, but the substance remains unchanged. I suspect the 1994 edition is fantastic as well, and perhaps available in your local library.

I hope you like it, and get as much out of it as I have! And thank you for taking my recommendation, that made my day. :)

[1] That its a textbook is perhaps my favorite meta-lesson of the book itself. How do you charge $100 for a book? Call it a text book!

qeorge··on The Ronco Principle
This reminds me of The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing[1], in a funny way (bear with me).

In pricing, if you have features in common with other vendors then those features are commodities and basically valueless. But the features you have that no one else has - those make you priceless.

For example, S3's uptime record makes it a different product than e.g., DreamObjects, even though they are API compatible.

Similarly, while VCs are all providing the ultimate commodity product (dumb money), its the features which no one else has that make investors like Ron Conway priceless. There's plenty of other VCs, but they are not substitute products for Ronco.

Finally, the way to find these unique, priceless features is to look for extremes:

    - Cloud hosting with not just 99.99% uptime, but 100% uptime
    - Email inboxes with not just a lot of storage, but *unlimited* storage
    - Photos developed not just faster, but *instantly*
    - A VC with not just a great track record of doing the right thing, but a *perfect* record
And as a consumer, these are the companies you want to do business with: the Rackspaces, the Ron Conways, and the Stripes of this world.

[1] If you read one business book this year, make it The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing. If you don't think a book on pricing can change your life, you haven't read this book. Protip: get an older edition and save a ton of dough.

qeorge··on With Snowden in the background, privacy takes a back seat to security
Another way to read this is that every generation gets braver, and more willing to stand up for their privacy. (The proportion of people in the 'protection over privacy' camp consistently goes down with age).

I hope its a generational thing, and that these young folks won't change over to the "protection over privacy" camp as they age.

qeorge··on Go Static or Go Home
Yes! It would be like the Wayback machine as a service, but with some key differences:

1) The intention is that you replace your dynamic site with the static copy, but your visitors are none the wiser. All URLs are the same, as well as the content returned. Might require some .htaccess trickery.

2) It would have to preserve all the images, css, and other assets, some possibly hotlinked. (The Wayback Machine is not awesome at this, understandably)

qeorge··on Go Static or Go Home
Startup idea, free for the taking: create a service that "ossifies" dynamic websites into static HTML.

(By ossify, I mean to take something dynamic and make it static).

For example, that WordPress site you commissioned for a movie 3 years ago? Its a huge liability, but you don't have to take it offline - just ossify it. No one is updating that blog anymore!

Under the hood, it would basically be a crawler, and the deliverable would be a zip file containing a 1-to-1, static copy of their website with all URLs still working. I suspect most folks here could whip up a shitty proof of concept in 48 hours.

If someone does this, email me! I have a couple of potential clients for you (I'm a former consultant, with lots of WordPress sites in my history).

qeorge··on Google Domains Launches to All in U.S
$12/yr - not bad at all. I might recommend this next time a friend asks how to buy a domain.

Namecheap takes great care of me at $10/year though, so I'm not very compelled to switch.

qeorge··on Ask HN: What would you gladly pay $30/month for?
+1 - I would be extremely interested in this as well. great idea!
qeorge··on Ask HN: What would you gladly pay $30/month for?
That is a great service! Thank you for the link!

However, its not quite what I want - its really focused on tiny jobs, They won't do anything if it takes over 30 minutes, and I don't think they'll create anything (e.g., a banner ad), only modify something you already have.

I'm fine with a job taking 2-3 hours and billed accordingly, its the latency and overhead of finding/scheduling these small tasks that sucks.

qeorge··on Ask HN: What would you gladly pay $30/month for?
A VA service, like TimeSvr.com or myriad others, but for graphic design.

I need little graphics made all the time (banners, logos, etc) and right now I have to interact with Fiverr/Elance more than I want to. Not looking for Picasso, just decent quality.

So, I want to have an account with a service who will "just bill me" for little graphics. Please, someone make this.

qeorge··on Final Root Cause Analysis of Nov 18 Azure Service Interruption
I agree, and am reminded of the quote from Thomas Watson (IBM) on this:

“Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”

qeorge··on Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy
Another upside is forcing the company to learn to run without its founders or other key employees for a meaningful period of time.

This forces good processes to be put in place, and is an excellent fire drill in general.

qeorge··on Segment is giving away free Watsi gift cards
+1 - I ran into the same issue. FWIW, I am logged in and you have my payment issue on file, but I was also not able to increase the donation amount.

No big deal, and obviously I was able to just make another donation, but I wanted to mention it in case its an easy fix.

Thanks to all of you. You make me believe in people.

qeorge··on I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver
That's an excellent breakdown, thank you for doing that.

I think Uber's current pricing advantage over standard cabs relies on their driver's not being aware of these costs (especially Taxi insurance). That said, I think they could just raise prices to cover it and still have a great business.

Also, $10/hour is more than I ever made as a shift worker. It sucks, but plenty of people are willing to work for that rate. Thus the OP may be making a moot point.

qeorge··on Mobile showers for San Francisco's homeless
If you're looking for a good place to donate, try Greensboro Housing Coalition: http://greensborohousingcoalition.com

GHC is a non-profit in Greensboro, NC that my stepmother founded 25 years ago. They dedicate their lives to the idea that everyone deserves safe housing, regardless of their income level.

They are able to commit over 85% of their their funding to their mission, which is absolutely amazing and only possible because of the tremendous and often thankless efforts put forth by the entire staff. You will not be wasting your money.

qeorge··on Ask HN: From zero to IT career, what is the fastest path?
Android is a great place to jump in. There's a lot of work for mobile developers and Java is a very marketable skill even outside Android.

The tooling (Android Studio) is also relatively accessible, and you don't need to know 4 different languages to finish a project (only Java, as compared to web programming where you'll need a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JS as well).

You can also ship something to real people relatively quickly, and without a gatekeeper. Shipping an app of any kind, even a free Android app, will force issues like QA, version control, and customer support which are skills outside of just coding that developers should have.

Finally, Android development has a vibrant community that's learning together, and the landscape is rapidly changing. Your friends could jump in now, and wouldn't be starting from too far behind.

qeorge··on Unicode Text Converter
I was once bilked into buying some scraped content as original work by this method. It passed copyscape, and my test of Googling a a random sentence in quotes didn't bring anything up. I let it go because I had already accepted the work, and the lesson was worth more than the article anyway.

Don't be fool as I was! Had I manually transcribed a sentence into Google instead of copying + pasting the Unicode chars, I would have found hundreds of copies of the same article.

qeorge··on Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
You may be right, but its still clear that Emil Michael is toxic and not suited for a leadership position of anything larger than a shoebox. He should be fired.
qeorge··on Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists
Chik-fil-a lost at least one customer for life - me. I have not eaten their food since the story broke, and I never will again.

Uber just came to Raleigh, NC where I live, and I was pretty stoked to try them out. Not gonna happen now - I'll stick with Taxi Taxi.[1]

[1] http://www.taxitaxiofraleigh.com/

qeorge··on What women in technology really think (150 of them at least)
Here's something easy you can do at your company, that will help everyone, but especially women: let everyone choose any username they want, and make it easy to change if needed.

Personal example: I'm recently married, and you wouldn't believe the time my wife has had getting her username changed to reflect her new last name (an issue because her employer bases usernames/emails on their first + last names). This means she gets to explain every single time she gives out her email (internally) why its not the expected pattern, but rather a seemingly arbitrary string.

Its not the end of the world of course, or even that big of a deal when you consider it individually. But its one more thing that's not accessibly designed, and its hard to get a male dominated culture to care.

FWIW, I changed my last name too, but I own my company, and we use first names for our emails anyway, so I was lucky.

If you own your company, make sure you're getting this right. If you let people choose their usernames, and change them easily, you can cover this case and many others. [1]

[1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

qeorge··on Ask HN: What makes an API good?
RE:documentation, Stripe does an awesome thing where they inject your API key and secret into the examples, so you can just copy and paste their example and go.

Its brilliant, and should be copied everywhere!

I'm also a big believer that really excellent, thoroughly commented examples are worth a thousand pages of documentation.

qeorge··on T-Mobile quietly hardens part of its U.S. cellular network against snooping
Same story here. Have had T-Mo for ~3 years, wouldn't ever switch to one of the other big carriers (I would move to Republic Wireless if I was going to change). My wife moved from Verizon -> T-Mobile last year after finally getting tired of the ridiculous prices from Verizon, and is also very happy.

Coverage is fine. Sometimes on road trips to the beach here in North Carolina we will lose service for say 5-10 miles when we are really in the middle of nowhere (the sprawling metropolis of Elizabeth City, NC in particular gives me trouble). This is acceptable in return for nearly 50% savings and not having to do business with AT&T/Verizon.

qeorge··on Use a Fake Location for Cheap Airfare
Airlines literally have no option but to compete on price. Airlines that try to compete another way will inevitably fail.

How do you explain JetBlue? They're not usually the cheapest, but I always choose them over e.g., USAirways or Delta because its a nicer experience.

qeorge··on Poll: How long could you survive without income?
Mr Money Mustache has a great take on this:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

Simple rule of thumb: 25x your yearly expenses is enough to live off your savings.

qeorge··on Square Raises $150M at a $6B Valuation
But wouldn't you and your friend have to exchange bank account numbers?

An advantage of Square Cash is it uses email as a proxy, and you probably already know your friend's email.

qeorge··on Show HN: Soothe – Uber for Massages
I think "AAA for X" makes more sense than "Uber for X"

"AAA for Massage" is very meaningful - I just book "a massage", I don't care from whom as long as they are qualified, and this company makes sure someone good shows up.

Its a new idea because these services are not usually commoditized, in the way a tow-truck or an oil change is. This company is betting that for enough buyers, massages are actually a commodity service versus a personal service requiring a lot of trust.

Services with existing brands will not like it, but new businesses without a customer base will probably love it. I think it has legs.

qeorge··on Ask HN: Startup stole our software, and raised $2MM with it. What should we do?
That's very cool of you, Daniel. While of course I believe my version of events, it is after all just a Hacker News post.

Whether or not I can share the eventual outcome of this matter, I do plan to write an article on concrete steps that developers can take to protect themselves in situations like this.

qeorge··on Judge Sentenced to 28 Years for Selling Kids to the Prison System (2013)
Off the top of my head:

    - prisons create high paying jobs in rural areas
    - private prison companies like Vanguard are quite lucrative (and Vanguard just happens to have former Vice Pres. Cheney as a major investor)
    - prison labor is drastically cheaper than minimum wage
There's more. Here's a decent article on the topic from Vice: http://www.vice.com/read/whos-getting-rich-off-the-prison-in...
qeorge··on Whole organ 'grown' in world first
Good for you! My Dad did the same (donated kidney to a stranger) about 5 years ago, and still feels very happy with the decision.

It was hard for me, because there's a non-zero chance that I'm going to lose a couple of years with my Dad because of this. I'm glad he did it though, because someone else's Dad might get to live because of it.

I assume you're undergoing counseling before the operation. If you decide you don't want to go through with it that's totally fine - the fact that you're considering it at all is amazing.

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