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My theory so far is that the initial spike during launch is what gives the product the momentum. That is why I asked my question specifically around the launch.

Here is what I have tried so far after the launch with one of my products that has been sold for the code-base.

- Pre-launch page to collect emails (collected about 400, when emailed only about a dozen people signed up)

- Tried Google adwords with only 0.0005% conversion rate (which ended up being prohibitively expensive for my budget).

- Posted on HN :)

- Emailed about a dozen sites that could potentially have an article about my product.

- Contracted a 3rd party company to make cold calls.

- Sent out printed flyers to potential customers.

- Personally visited some potential customers and pitched the idea.

- PR web sites where I published a couple of press releases.

Above activities resulted in about a dozen free tier users. Are there any other avenues that you used to bring more traffic to your product after the launch?

That is a good idea. Since the product name is not yet 100% set in stone, do you think it makes sense to start a new blog just for this purpose or use the personal blog?

My previous attempts were geared towards small businesses which made user invites difficult.

Recently, I have started reading more about growth hacking. It may be very useful for the current product I am working on which is an app first service directly targeting end users.

Cryptonomicon is my favorite so far! Glad I am not the only one who enjoys his writing.

Having met Slava a couple years ago (which seems like a long time ago) in our office, he is one of wicked smart folks around. Congratulations! Looking forward to the evolution of RethinkDB.

This is an area where I have tried and failed with my SmartPointment (online appointment scheduling). Are there any words of advice you can share in reaching out to SMB market?

Persistence ignorance introduced by mainstream ORMs about 5-7 years ago have turned the new generation of programmers blind to the fact database IS part of your application. Records you save don't get sucked into a magic black box that just responds to your queries as your app needs grow.

DBAs are not going to go anywhere. Sure, you can scale the DB in the cloud quite a bit in and perform well but it's not free :) In the cloud, you would be literally paying for your bad design decisions in terms of hard dollars rather than performance issues.

Most start-ups or in house apps are fine while the salary(dba) => cost of cloud. However, that magic condition starts returning false pretty quickly if you are doing any non-trivial data management.

I like the idea a lot! I was trying to sign up but when I noticed the password as clear text that could be read by people around me in big fonts[1], it deterred me from going forward. Others may think similarly. Otherwise, the site is pretty cool, best of luck.

[1] http://tinypic.com/r/29mow12/5

I thought I was the only person who attempted at creating startups with asp.net/azure before I switched to RoR. It looks like I was not alone! Kudos to the OP for open sourcing it.

Is it easy to get an apartment? Also, can you get around without speaking Portuguese?

This is exactly what I do. I believe that developers (or site owners) need to think about the state of mind of the user. If they are trying to unsubscribe, they must think that they should not be contacted by you or want not much to do with your site. If you ask them to log in to your site to complete their "do not bother me" action, they will take more drastic measures such as marking it as spam. UX is important, even when users leave your service.

What makes you say that? Having built systems in this space with very large number of users using the .net platform, I wonder why you stated this.

I am a supporter of open and non-MS software but I don't think we can blame it on the technology this time.

In my experience so far a well engineered system, will perform regardless of the technology stack picked. Picking technology X or Y will not compensate for bad architecture and engineering practices.

I just made the switch myself. The only thing is; it cost me the iPhone. Only Android phones have the WiFi calling on them. As a result, I had to give up my iPhone and switch to an S4. I have to say though it has been useful as I made crystal clear calls in the middle of nowhere (through hotel wifi) where att nor tmobile get good reception.

In the process with the cost of the new device included in the monthly payments I ended up saving about $80/month for a family plan of 3 phones.

I wish iPhone supported the WiFi calling! Maybe a google voice solution is under way.

If you travel internationally the fact that you can use your data connection (albeit on 2g) internationally without any roaming fees is superb. I would say make sure to get the right phone based on your needs but switch soon!

I agree. When it comes to your or your family's health you will not go with "cheap" even if it is the same level or better service/outcome. This is why the entire system needs to first create a nice feedback loop. Right now there are no metrics on how well certain hospitals are doing that can drive patient selection.

Usually, the patient just ends up going to the specialist their primary care provider referred them to or the closest one home. Until the quality/outcome data is made public there is no hope in steering people to better hospitals/providers.

There are some attempts lately in freeing up this information but I guess only time will tell how effective they will become.

On the bright side, it will only take one good health insurance company (I am thinking more like the type of disruption that a "Virgin" like company may bring to the table) to start using this data and driving some meaningful change.

This is my favorite:

"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable." - Seneca

When I first read the title, I thought there was a magic way to farm out work automatically and live on a 4-hour work-week schedule by using the method. Oh well, I guess I should go back to writing code :)

On a more serious note, I really like this setup. There are a couple of pieces missing such as timesheet integration but it's a good initial setup.

You guys are great. Since we are building a SaaS product using a service is a good option to get us going but eventually we want to have this function in-house. I will check out all the pointers here (both service + custom solution). Thanks a lot!

Yes, I am language agnostic. I was leaning towards Python/Ruby solutions. I will check out mailman. Thank you.

Looks pretty good, I will check this out in more detail! It looks like a common enough problem that I thought there would be mature frameworks around. I keep finding myself looking for a solution like this for most of my side projects..

Can anyone here point me to a library/framework that would allow for monitoring incoming emails (similar to this scenario) and take actions based on email address it was sent to?

I got that that after the low traction we had in the past weeks. At this point, I am absolutely on the same page that we need to focus on a single market to make the comparisons.

Lesson learned, the long and expensive way :)

Hi!

We are also trying the same concept for products. It is called Kritk. We had a soft launch to family and friends at http://alpha.kritk.com

So far getting comments/reviews from people have been a challenge.

Although my primary email is Gmail, I recently had the need to get an email for a domain name I own. Since Google stopped offering free custom domain emails, I gave Outlook.com a try.

I was pleasantly surprised. Things seem to make a lot of sense and I like their metro/flat design on the web, easy on the eye.

If you are bored of the new UI changes to Gmail, I'd suggest you check out Outlook.com as an alternative.

The author's point is valid for selectors, but he is not considering the plethora of plug-ins that are built on top of jQuery and just work.

Until browsers can support all of that, I think we are a LONG way from saying goodbye to jQuery.

For all I know jQuery is saving me a ton of time when working on my prototype for the new side project. Last thing I want to do is to re-invent the wheel at my own expense :)

I have developed with C# since it was in beta. I absolutely love the language. Prior to that I had done extensive C++ and some Java.

Last year I gave Ruby a try (for an ambitious project) and I have to say that it felt like going back in time to my C++ days. The syntax is very, very different and the environment support (command line + sublime) is clearly not something that I have done in the past 10 years.

I like the flexibility of it but coming from statically typed languages I find myself trying to replicate the same way of thinking in Ruby. Which in turn is making me less productive. Given the mental blockage and fear of productivity loss I am not certain I can push through to get to the point of productivity with RoR.

I am giving Python a try next! I would also appreciate any pointers to get me up to speed w/ Python frameworks for web development.

PS: The rails part is just fine, I have developed an Active Record based framework to do web development on C# in 2003. So I am more specifically talking about Ruby the language.

Yes, he mentioned the costs as well. Clearly there are advantages to go the Delaware route but for cost reasons, we may end up going with an LLC in NY.

Thanks! Clearly I need to talk to a couple more lawyers :)

Since both founders are living in NY we would have to file in both states and it would be much more expensive. Also, we would have to periodically show some transactions being made in DE to justify our existence there.

Did you have to do something similar while you were filing as NY Headquartered S corp established as an LLC in DE?

Does this mean that all these start-ups can show some sort of transactions in Delaware? We just had a talk with a business lawyer (we are from NY) and we were strongly advised to incorporate in NY to avoid issues in the long run using an LLC structure. I am pretty skeptical that this is the way to go but would like to hear some opinions here from already established startups.

For one developer projects (aka side projects) Dropbox is great. I now can switch across many machines I have and don't have to lug around a specific laptop and when I boot up, the latest version of the project is there for me to spend an hour or two on and forget about for another week.

Having said that, DB is not a version control tool. Being how intelligent the HN community is I don't quite understand the point of the post: use the tool for what it's meant to be and save yourself the headache (and a blog post).

BitBucket is perfect for private repositories if you have more than 1 developer and want version control and it's free.