We launched this last week as a weekend hack project, and have managed to get 2000 users in a week. We're pretty pumped! Still working on a lot of features, but as an MVP we're pretty happy with it. Feedback/comments welcome!
1,413 karma · joined July 21, 2010
EDIT: we'll be adding the ability to up/down vote images and flag as inappropriate. Really keen to keep it clean!
Uses Slack button to add to your team. Use /gif [phrase] to get an _always_ suitable GIF!
But after watching the two "free" videos... I'm actually less inclined than I was before. Watched both and there's actually no "free" lesson at all. Just two infomercials about why I should learn all the beginner lessons that you're now doubt about to hook me in to. That leaves me feeling like you're being disingenuous and has me reconsider.
This is compounded by the unfortunate lack of content. I give you $9, watch the 12 videos...and then what? 1 or 2 new videos a week? This is netflix pricing for a few 5-10 minute videos each month. And when will that go up to $19? All of this adds up to make me super wary. Sorry if I sound very negative... I just went from very excited to very disappointed in a very short period of time :)
EDIT: btw... have bookmarked and will check it out again when there's more content.
It's not a coincidence that this zone maps up with the "chasm" between niche and mass-market appeal. If a company has been unable to already demonstrate that they can scale the product effectively, they're asking a VC to take a punt on whether they can or can't...and if it's taken 3 years, then evidence already suggests that perhaps they can't.
The other problem, is that after 3 years whilst it still may not be clear what you're company could be, it's already known what you're _not_. The possible outcomes have been narrowed. It's known you're not going to be a complete failure, but it's also known that you're not a "Unicorn".
These things are hurdles, but there are hurdles everywhere you go. You trade lack of VCs here for more competition for VCs there. You trade lack of startup community here with higher dev payrates there. It's all trade offs.
Things like timezone, distance etc are only an issue if you're selling in the US only. Smart Aussie companies sell into the Europe and Asia as well.
The Aussie dollar is shit at the moment, so I don't agree with that. It's a great time to be selling in USD.
Basically same, but giving weight left<>right based on the value of the number.
EDIT: Oooh... just discovered, 20 x 2 is a thing... go twentybot!
It's obviously only appropriate on the freeway of course. On my commute I will have it set at the second shortest distance because it's frankly a little disconcerting when the person in front of you stops in a hurry. It does, however, mean that people merge in front of you... but somehow, with adaptive cruise, I no longer care.
If you're after something even more generic than that, Lego have always had "creative" boxes available as well. They've actually just come out with a new series: http://shop.lego.com/en-AU/Classic-ByTheme
I certainly didn't use this equation, but our monthly expenditure is controlled quite heavily by our growth rate. So maybe there's something in that....I think I'll go work out whether this hold true for various growth rates using our method...
FWIW:
- I have a spreadsheet which maps out our revenue and expenses over the past 2 years.
- It estimates our future growth
- It combines that with our bank balance and our expenses to work out an "optimum burn rate".
- We use this number as a guide to how much we should be spending.
The "optimum burn rate" is the spend that will see us use as much of our cash as possible without us dropping below a certain threshold (which at the moment 3x our monthly burn).
Strangely I never considered my hobby as a possible career path.
It wasn't until 1997 that I realised I could make a living out of being a developer. At the time I was working in my uncles PC store repairing computers and doing some basic web development stuff (for free) for his customers.
One day my uncle introduced me to a guy in his late sixties. He was a farmer that had taught himself to code and had written a piece of software called FarmBase. He wanted my help to update the application for Windows (until then it ran only in DOS). After talking at length he offered to sell me the software for some nominal fee essentially as long as I promised to "do it justice". At that time he was making good coin off the app, but couldn't keep up the maintenance (he was earning 5-10x what he offered to sell it to me for, so I'd make back the investment in 2-3 months). Sadly, I didn't have the money and let the offer pass.
The upside is that until that moment I'd never considered "writing code" as something that could be a real career. Not only was I inspired to write code for a living, I was inspired to (eventually) run a software company.
You can read more here: https://medium.com/@Macropod/conceiving-building-and-launchi...
I think there's algorithm work being done on the matching for this as well. After christmas perhaps :)
But in any case, Trello can certainly be used by dev teams, but it's becoming increasingly clear that dev teams are not their target audience. They're selling to artists, film-makers, students and musicians! (This is from their own landing page btw).
We think there's a lot to like about Trello, we just want to deliver a better product to better suits the intended audience. See other comments for the sorts of features that we (and other devs) feel are important.
If you've used Pivotal, Asana, JIRA Agile or Sprintly you'll see there is a whole bunch of stuff that Trello needs that they don't provide (and aren't likely to provide). We plan on providing it. Integrations, reporting, estimations, quick keys etc etc etc
Keyboard shortcuts are a must, probably my favourite thing from using Asana. Also on the list :)
Currently planned: Integrations with source control (GitHub, BitBucket etc), the ability to pull in contextual data from third party apps (Sentry, HoneyBadger), the ability to escalate tickets from support to the dev team from Zendesk, Uservoice etc. Plus support for more dev focussed workflows, planning, reporting etc
I don't really care about the reason, I care about how they handled it. Whether they leave voluntarily or are forced out, there's always a telling tale there.
People rarely ever feel they've been fired "justly". Some people get on with their lives and some people set fire to the building on the way out the door. The only thing for certain is that everyone leaves eventually...
Workers from Africa/Asia are lured to the middle east for the promise of a good wage and the possibility of helping loved ones back home. When they get there, they have their passport taken, are given jobs which aren't remotely like those they were offered and are essentially forced to work as slaves in appalling conditions with no hope of ever leaving.
Google "qatar slavery world cup" and do some reading. Just one of many examples of this happening in the modern world, Dubai is another.
So, really what you're asking is "why should I care about slavery?"
I moved interstate for 3 months to take part in an accelerator, and had to drag my son and pregnant wife with me. That was hard (mostly on them!)
When I was pitching for investment in the US (we're Aussies) and missed my sons 2nd birthday, it nearly broke me in two.
When I went to the US to participate in 500 Startups, 6 weeks after my wife had given birth to our daughter. That was incredibly hard...for everybody.
12 months ago when I didn't take a paycheck for a month, knowing I was failing my family, that was the hardest.
Right now I'm in Sydney, away from my wife and kids, I will miss my Son's karate grading... and I feel like a terrible father for doing so.
But here's the thing. All these things are hard, and I do them because they have to be done. Not because "it might be fun" or "just to see what happens", but because these things will lead us to success.
The bar for what constitutes a worthwhile activity is raised so much higher when you have a family to support. You learn to be more critical on evaluating opportunities, and you only jump when you need to jump. It doesn't cripple you, it forces you to focus on things that move the dial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5cHbhOWavE
Interesting to see this is a product of two independent startups (one in Australia, one in the US) trying to solve the same problem the same way that ended up collaborating.
The reality is probably a little of both.
We originally went down the awesomebox path, but as soon as we started dealing with server side code it caused issues. We run on your production/staging environment meaning you get your app running in the wild.