toast76

Like anything, it is what you make of it.

I quit my desk job 4.5 years ago. Worked at home up until last month. In that time I've had two kids (eldest now 3) and every day of their lives so far they've had both parents at home with them. I work weird hours, sometimes starting early, some times finishing late....all just depends on what needs doing. The 3 hrs I'd ordinarily spend commuting, I spend with my kids.

Now things are a little different. We have a startup with actual employees and that means office time. It's much harder now, but it's really just the commute and the time away that is difficult.

Like any job, it's up to you to balance your life how you see fit. Being your own boss at the very least gives you flexibility you'll never see in a desk job. So I think startups are perfect for work/life balance.

For all the talk of folks crying out, "bring back adventure games". The simple fact is that many many times more people queue up to buy the latest Call of Duty than will ever buy any adventure game.

No different than the movie business. Publisher's want $100M hits, not $10M hits.

No surprise really; no publisher will support an adventure game. If it's not an FPS/Action/Sports game no one will touch it. It's the reason Schafer started doing "indie" games in the first place.

The reason why flash is (was) such a horrible horrible thing for the web is only partially because it was a shitty shitty plugin.

The real reason is things like this. Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD.

I tried Sunnytrail about 6mths ago. At that time it appeared to be focussed on funnel and cohort analysis (the latter being why I checked it as at the time neither MixPanel nor Kissmetrics had it).

So this looks like a bit of a pivot?

This seems to be a "feature" existing in other products such as intercom. Not sure I'd want _another_ user tracker just for this purpose.

..and they know you know. Yay for democracy!

No, actually. These days there are very few non-generic pieces. If we're talking bionicles, then yes. But 99% of pieces in any modern set (branded or otherwise) are generic. The exception is usually things like fighter windshields (if they're called that in space?).

e.g. The Star Destroyer engines are actually wheels presumably borrowed from some other set. The Death Star as far as I can tell has no "special" pieces, nor the AT-AT, AT-ST or X-wing. The millenium falcon has a few special bits, but even they look repurposed from some other set.

I don't get it.

You complain that a 5000 piece lego set is movie themed, when the only thing movie themed are the minifigs and the box it came in.

As kids every single lego set we had was built into the "model" precisely once, and then dumped in with the rest of the lego. We kept the instructions, but would never rebuild the original set. That's hardly the point of Lego.

As an adult I have a huge collection of Star Wars lego sets, including the Imperial Star Destroyer and Death Star. When my son is old enough (he's not yet 3), they'll get dismantled and put in a bucket all together. From that day on they WILL be generic lego pieces. The fact that they came in a Star Wars box is then irrelevant.

Unrelated to the article.

You want this: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=40.458148,93.393145

AJ has already plugged noosbox, but the other Startmate companies are

Chorus http://www.getchorus.com - in this batch at 500 Startups

Grabble http://grabbleapp.com - just sold to Walmart

IRL Gaming http://www.irlgaming.com/ - not sure what they're up to...

and us BugHerd http://bugherd.com - were in the last batch of 500 startups.

I'd also recommend getting on to Startmate directly, http://startmate.com.au and speak to Niki. There is a new batch coming up in January (applications close in a couple of weeks).

You pay too much attention to what your mother told you.

Bird game seems to be a little broken....

No I didn't :)

You can learn "accounting, cleaning, hiring, cleaning, customer service". You can't learn passion about coffee.

The coffeeshop fallacy is, in fact, a fallacy.

People don't open coffee shops to drink coffee all day any more than someone would open a bar because they want to drink all day.

My brother is a wine maker. He is insanely passionate about wine (Pinot to be precise). When he's not working he's talking about and sharing wine. But at the end of the day, he's just a farmer. He tends his vines, picks the fruit, puts in vats, waits a while and then pours it out into bottles. It's horrible, torturous, back-breaking labour for him. But he does it because he wants to put the best damned Pinot on your table.

That's why you open a coffee shop.

That's why game developers build games.

Anyone passionate about wine knows what it means to make wine, and anyone passionate about coffee knows what it takes to make coffee. The coffeeshop fallacy assumes our coffee drinker knows no shit-all about coffee.

This could be exactly what I need to finally get my wife off Facebook....

I know this wasn't the question, but why do you need money?

You have "some ideas" for "some simple game projects"? That doesn't sound like a startup...that doesn't even sound like a project. Unless you have a very clear vision of exactly what it is you're wanting to do, you're going to have a hard time getting anyone to part with their money. If Tim Schafer has "some ideas", I'd give him money for sure....but unless you're proven, your ideas count for zip. It's the execution that counts.

A startup is a business searching for a business model that scales. A startup isn't a couple of guys with a few ideas that may or may not work.

If you have some awesome ideas, the best way to get money is to work on your idea until it is at a point where someone can see potential in it. It costs literally nothing to start working (providing you have the tools, which I'll assume you do). But it sounds like you're asking for people to put money in to...well...nothing.

Finally, if your idea of a project you and a few guys can work on, I'd suggest something a little less epic than "3D Sandbox mmorpg with really huge world designed and lot of monsters, characters and even own language for in game characters."

It really depends on your investment strategy. That's the real problem with actually moving the company to the US. At the time this post was written we didn't have any investment, so it probably wouldn't have killed us to set up a Delaware C corp. But when you're pre-revenue (which we were), that's a big challenge in itself.

I'm from Melbourne :P

...and they also surrounded you with us beer swilling Aussies (whether you liked it or not).

If something's going to go wrong in big uncontrollable way, it's most likely going to be in (or coming out of) a corner. These races should see fast turns being made way outside of the viewing area. Quite simply, an aircraft should never be in a situation where it is flying towards a crowd.

Just change that one line "He was right. I got the job, they paid, things went well, nobody got sued." to "He was wrong. I got the job, they didn't pay, things went horribly wrong, everybody go sued".

I think exceptional customer support is one of the most critical and yet most overlooked aspects of running a startup. It's how you turn customers into fans, and fans is often the difference between winning and losing.

Through our previous app (http://fivesecondtest.com) and our current (http://bugherd.com) I've always tried to go above and beyond. Every time we have an unhappy customer I go so far above and beyond to help them that I more often than not turn a hater into a fan. Turning a negative support request into a positive Tweet shout out is a major win for me.

I can't count the number of times we've resolved a customer complaint and had them the very next day start paying us money. Yesterday we found a customer complaint in the "spam" folder from 3 weeks ago, we responded, apologised and let the customer know that we're changing to Zendesk as a result. Today they signed up to our top tier plan. THAT is a customer support win.

Today someone responded to our "how are you finding Bugherd?" email saying they hadn't had time to try out the app, so we extended their trial without them even asking. We do this all the time. It costs us nothing, and may win a paying customer.

We'll offer refunds to users who we can't help, we'll give discounts when our plans don't suit, we'll give away free months when a customer is waiting for a feature we haven't built yet. Anything to ensure that customer becomes a fan. Even if it turns out they leave us, we want to ensure they leave happily.

Fortunately, like a good interface, it is immediately and clearly obvious what the function of the article is.

I think it's safe to say that any mechanical engineers that may have read this article were smart enough to realise that the target audience wasn't them.

So a multi-billion dollar behemoth that uses your image without your permission in an advertisement for a product that you don't support is a "minor, and ultimately inconsequential, annoyance", but a tiny little startup has a typo on an ERROR page and that's a deal breaker?

Wow. High fives to you for supporting the little guy.

The thing I like about Zerply is finding people to work with. Which is kinda the point of a professional network when you think about it.

It's only fairly new, but I think the value will come from endorsements more than connections.

If you're looking to hire a developer, does it really matter if you know me or know someone that I know. What's the point of linking to people you already know anyway?? If you're looking to hire someone, it's far more important to understand their reputation than it is to understand how you're connected to them.

Shameless 500startups plug:

500startups is having their demo day today including BugHerd. http://livestream.com/500startups

FTA "Nonetheless, I submit that in absence of any compelling alternative and with the obviousness of the reality of our self-awareness so manifestly apparent -- it is the rational conclusion to draw."

So because we have no proof of either option (consciousness being a function of the brain vs us having a soul), it must be the one that we choose to define as being impossible to prove.

This is really cool, and exactly what I need.

Consider me signed up.

BugHerd is about logging bugs/issues on your own website/webapp. It's quite different from notemoz. Unless I'm missing something?

Quick link - http://bugherd.com