1,513 karma · joined March 7, 2008
Yes, if we had Single Stage to Orbit fully reusable rockets and if all issues involved in living on another world were understood, Zubrin's plan(s) would be a shoo-in. However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial biosphere fully enclosed here on Earth!
Learn to walk before you try to run. Let's work on sustained outposts on a world no more than three days' travel away first.
I also started, bootstrapped, in a very competitive B2B space and it took years to get significant traction and comfortable profitability. However, the feedback I received from potential customers made it clear I was addressing an actual market and that, if I could build a product which suited the market I was targeting, I would receive more than enough profit to compensate for the effort I had expended to build the business. I was, I did and it has, but it wasn't easy.
So, my advice to you would be: Be realistic about your business. Examine your chosen market and identify if the customer base and the pricing you have planned would be sufficient to support you within the next six months. If it is, focus laser-sharp on that market and address it in the best way possible. If it isn't, put things on hold, start consulting for a bit or take on a job to build up your reservoir of cash. I can almost guarantee it's going to take a lot longer to build your business to profitability than you have planned, so just assume your savings are gone.
For myself, I had set aside an amount which I had thought more than sufficient to build a business and it took all of my savings (and a bit of debt) before things were positive. No matter how you look at it that's a hard game of 'chicken' to play, but it's what bootstrapping is all about.
Any other B2B or B2C businesses here seeing the same?
Remember: If you're reading Hacker News, you're not a "typical computer user". You're not the type of person that's lining Google's pockets -- you're probably a cost.
Most "typical computer users" don't hate Microsoft. They're happily using Word and IE, love FreeCell, and couldn't tell you what Emacs or The Gimp were to save their lives. People stopped reflexively typing 'yahoo' and 'altavista' pretty easily when their friends recommended 'google' and could do the same for 'bing'.
Keystrokes aren't a switching cost and Google isn't nearly as invincible as you might think.
Remember: Power-users who fiddle with Google Apps aren't the ones paying the bills -- it's the casual users who click those ads that bring in the cash.
It may sound foolish, but many of those casual users would prefer to see a serene image during their work-day rather than Google's stark whiteness. I'm already seeing many more converting paid clicks coming from Bing than Live.com ever delivered, so it seems to be working.
Go Bing! I'm thrilled to have another quality location I can advertise with!
If someone is going to open their wallet and bother to enter a credit card number on your site, $10 is the same as $25. If your product saves someone a few hours of effort, $25 is a trivial amount of money to buy that time -- you will have a sale.
Don't compete on price -- compete on provided value. Make your app the best way to resolve 'Task X' and people will buy it.
Ignore those people who say you're too expensive. If they're wincing about $25 you really do not want them as a customer. Back when I priced software to be competitive 'on price', I attracted people who were looking for the cheapest solution and those people are, by far, the biggest pain in the tail for support that you will ever run into.
""landing a job as an accountant" "I wish I had gone to prison" What's the difference?"
Didn't add anything to the discussion more than a brief joke which attacks those who have chosen a difficult, strongly certified profession different than your own 'hacker' lifestyle. It's typical of the insular cliquishness which plagues all communities, including this one, and was more nasty than funny.
Kyro's comment seemed justified and would be appropriate to say to your face if he overheard you in a social setting.
Would you have delivered your own joke face-to-face to an accountant?
Further, would you have used your reputation in that 'real world' community to try to shoot him down the day after, as you're doing now?
After reading the two-chair tale o' woe, the comment that they "sold the business in pieces" leads me to think his company collapsed after the dot.com bust.
Sure, their 1999-2000 balance sheet looked spiffy, but that was the peak of the boom. How did the next year go? Did these guys enjoy a profitable exit or endure a liquidation?
Edit: Poking about, it seems they sold the company in 2003. That's quite a time after the 1999-2000 numbers being splashed about in his feel-good writing. I'll bet the numbers in those later years would shine a bit more light on the business's true condition.
An 'unknown unknown' is something neither known nor anticipated. For example, if you succeeded in the quest, your real-world bank account would be dinged for $1000, all experience points and loot would be given to a different guild at random and one of the team would be permanently banned from WoW because they were wearing something yellow.
Conversely, success in "Real Life" requires interacting with and navigating through an unpredictable and capricious environment where success is neither guaranteed nor defined. There is no "Level X" to strive for out here, the beginning steps "A", "B" and "C" are anyone's guess to make, and hanging around for 50 years "grinding" by flipping burgers isn't going to deliver squat.
In "Real Life", you have to design your own quest and choose your own goals.
If you would like the DF music to play in the background, just fire up the game's mp3 (under /data/sound) on your player and you're off.
The gent's previous blog posts were more coherent, so this appears to have been an experiment.
With a free graphics front-end for the game at: http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php
It's donation-ware, still under development, and the learning curve is a right-angle, but the game is really fun and addictive.
A wiki has been put together in lieu of proper documentation with this page: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Your_first_fortre...
providing everything you need to start.
If you enjoy the game, please donate. This is a startup which really deserves to succeed.
He might have been "very helpful", but he's not risking everything to build a business. He may have put in a few extra hours on the side here and there (and pay him for those if you'd like), but it really doesn't compare to the time and money you yourself have invested in the enterprise.
It's your company. You built it.
This fellow's blog (and particularly this post) may be helpful for your situation:
Six years ago I started on the RCAF's old 5BX program (a quick Google search will lead you to the booklet that describes it -- dead simple) and, in exchange for 11 minutes of exercise a day on an open floor, had the body I've always wanted within a year.
I've since moved on to weights and other gym-like stuff and have not had back pain in years.
It's so stupidly obvious I'm kicking myself for it now: If you have decent muscle to support all those bones and tendons up your back, they won't be straining themselves to the point of pain while supporting your body.
How many jobs and how much wealth have _you_ created today?
Just a few weeks ago, the 'hacker community' was raising torches and pitchforks to defend a logo creator accused of "stealing his own work". We later learned he was likely guilty as charged: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552160
Have any of you spoken with Zillow? Before picking up your e-torches and e-pitchforks and twittering yourselves into apoplexy again, you might want to pause and ask "why would a company who depends upon developers do something so obviously hostile to third-party developers?"
Something doesn't smell right here, and public airing blind conclusions in a "too smart to be wrong yet again" echo chamber doesn't help matters for either party.
Can anyone spot if he hit his objectives despite The World Changing around him?
If you're working without at least common-sense anti-virus protection, you're going to deserve what you'll eventually get.
The trick for both is using it.
Ten years ago, the same dreck would claim 2010 would see us away on extended vacation while WebVan and Pets.com delivered goodies to our internet-automated homes. Of course, everything would be paid for by effortless automated day-trading, with the Dow at 50,000 and markets headed higher due to Western nations celebrating some multi-decade milestone for time without conflict.
If someone claims to have the future figured out, it's pretty safe to assume you can ignore 'em.
If there's plenty of bandwidth to go around and existing providers impose caps, then new entrants will lease that bandwidth and provide residential customers with unlimited bandwidth plans.
Telecom regulations should prevent new entrants from being blocked from doing just that. If they are blocked (and the Canadian system isn't laissez-faire, so they shouldn't be), then you'll have an issue to gripe about.
I used to pay for $30 per month for 20 hours of dial-up access, with an extra $1 per hour charged after that. Market forces reduced that cost significantly as new entrants with new technologies emerged to tap into a growing customer base, and that will happen again if bandwidth caps are imposed by existing service providers.
The last thing I want is for legislators to decide how much my service providers can charge and for what services they'll do so. As with any give-and-take, existing providers will ask for some protectionist advantage in exchange, and that will block new entrants and slow the adoption of new communication technologies.
Ten years from now, this argument is going to sound as stupid as if I had demanded my MP legislate a whopping 100 hours of dial-up access for my $30.
That's not smart.
Paper letters are the currency of elected representatives, and a stack of 10k letters descending on numerous offices would do infinitely more than a lonely web page with 50k e-mail addresses.
That repeated stereotype among techies reflects the closed-mindedness of cliques rather than some supposed 'liberated' viewpoint of hackers.