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Nice job! This is really slick. Have you considered other pricing models? One approach that comes to mind:

- Allow the user to use the full tool without ever having to sign-up. - Charge $3-5 for them to download it. Sign-up optional. - To prevent them from screenshotting it without paying, add a watermark that only gets removed once they've paid for the download.

I remember seeing a resume generator on HN many years ago that used this model (i.e. no sign up required/pay upon download), and I thought it was clever: 1) it breaks down the barrier to use that the sign up causes; 2) it gets people bought-in/proud of their beautiful cover and thus more likely to pay; 3) allows you to monetize one-time users. Meanwhile, you could also keep the monthly subscription for people who expect to use it a lot (designers, agencies, etc).

Thanks for sharing. Adding another podcast anecdote here — one that made me chuckle — from Scott Belsky in his interview on Tim Ferriss' podcast:

> I remember my father, as an orthopedic surgeon, when he was a resident, he was working in one of those crazy, New York City hospitals where people would come in with like overdoses and shooting wounds and stuff like that. And he was telling me that the most often kind of prescribed [medicine], especially on the psychiatric stuff that came in, was 100cc of Obecalp, which is, of course, "placebo" spelled backwards. And how as soon as someone would be like, "Obecalp, stat, 100cc," that would, suddenly, switch something in a lot of these patients’ minds, in terms of where they felt they were in their hope. And that always stuck with me.

I don't think it's fair to use that one small piece of Netflix lore as the counter example to the point of the article. I'd categorize Reed Hastings as having one of the more long-term views/strategies in tech and business in general, and he would be the first to say that Netflix became what it has become not because of the lightbulb moment, but because of the long slog they've endured to get where they are. Using that Netflix example comes across as clickbaity.

Not to mention, that particular Netflix myth has nothing to do with the importance of having a lightbulb moment. The point is to provide a north star for the company about the importance of always keeping the customer/user experience top of mind. By charging late fees that exceeded the value of a video, Blockbuster had lost sight of the customer experience, which contributed to Blockbuster's downfall. Meanwhile, maintaining its intense focus on the customer experience helped Netflix navigate what was an impressive shift from mailing DVDs to streaming video online.

No. If you read the comment you'll see that I'm not proposing that the slow drivers speed up -- but just that they get out of the passing lane. In fact, to your point about motorcycle safety, I'd encourage them to maintain their slow speed if that's where their comfortable, but just move to the right (when it's safe).

I've felt the same way about "slow as hell left lane campers" for years and thought that maybe — if states never did anything to fix it — there might be a commercial solution to fixing this.

The idea I came up with awhile ago was to build a network of motorcyclists willing to attach a sign to the back of their bike, that reads (something like), "You're causing traffic by being in this lane at your speed - please move to right as soon as it's safe to do so." The motorcyclists would make their way in front of the slow left-laner - so that the sign is visible to the slow poke - with the hopes of persuading them to move to the right lane.

Meanwhile, also on the sign would be instructions for the other drivers out there, who witness the value the motorcyclist provided, to send a little micropayment electronically to the motorcyclist as a thank you.

Maybe this takes the form of a grassroots DIY movement where the motorcyclists handle all this themselves, or maybe there's an opportunity for a company to exist that creates the signs and facilitates the micropayments - and in return takes a cut of each micropayment (a la Patreon).

Obviously this assumes that all this can be achieved safely and legally. Thorough testing would have to be done on that front.

Let me know if anyone wants to kick around this idea further - even if just for fun.

I love the GIF in the article and how it was copyrighted in 2000 about an event that would happen in 2017. I'm a reader/follower of N. N. Taleb and agree with him about how difficult it is to predict future events. And meanwhile, the conditions in space and the laws of physics allow for a model like this to be made with what seems to be a lot of precision. Can anyone speak to how accurate/precise that GIF model _could've been_ in 2000?

The video you linked to was interesting - thanks for sharing - but I didn't follow how that's related at all to self-driving cars driving around looking for parking. The video seems like more an example of what happens when individual households all own cars and don't carpool when taking their kids to school.

If the kids being dropped off at that school started using self-driving Uber Pools, then that video would be better described as "Welcome to your traffic jam of the past."

I read GP's last paragraph as distinguishing between the use of "disabled people" vs. "people with disabilities," rather than between the use of "disabled" (or words with the same root) vs. other words.

My company did some work for an organization that supported people with disabilities in the workforce. The client stressed the importance of the distinction between using "people with disabilities" as opposed to "disabled people," with the former being much preferred because - due to its structure - it puts the focus (i.e. the first word) on "people" rather than "disabled/disability".

One obvious exception is the very VC whose blog post you're commenting on. Fred seems to have the same qualities of "The Product VC," but has developed them despite not having exited a company before becoming a VC.

Side note: Two weeks ago, a friend told me that dogs turn their bodies to poop in a north-south axis. I couldn't believe it and couldn't believe that I hadn't noticed before. So this was a timely read.

The article begged the question for me: Does the biocompass come into play for humans? Does anyone know of any examples of cultural/tribal traditions/oral histories that suggest that humans can improve their wellbeing by being aware of Earth's magnetic fields for various tasks?

Building out both sides of a two-sided market is extremely hard. While this decentralized system might be appealing to drivers, Uber and Lyft have created such a great experience for riders, that I don't see a compelling reason for riders to move to this system -- even if moving to this system is as easy as downloading Arcade City. And without the riders, the drivers won't give it very long. That said, chicken-and-egg scenarios exist in every industry, and get hurdled all the time, so I'll be interested to watch how it goes for this one.

This stood out to me, too. On the one hand, hearing him say it is a little unnerving. On the other, it's oddly comforting to know that he truly believes we're in a race against the clock to save civilization, and that someone like him is doing everything they can to prevent the end of it (at least on the environmental front; he's probably nervous about other dangers, too, that he'd have less control over, e.g. geopolitics).

Seeing that reaction from him helps explain in my mind how he's been able to accomplish as much as he has. It really feels like he's a man on a mission and that he's going to run through walls to accomplish it.

Other comments have compared him to a politician. I think that's laughable. He has a consistent track record of 'doing.' Politicians have not earned that reputation.

The book Drive, by Daniel Pink, does a good job of explaining the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. I recommend the book regardless, but especially if this topic is intriguing to you.

> I doubt Google wants to be reliant on a third-party company with reputation problems to introduce these cars to the world.

This is a great point that may not be getting enough play in this conversation. You could easily imagine Larry being nervous that Uber won't not be evil (pardon the double negative). I know people can probably point to examples where Google has lost their way on the 'Don't Be Evil' front, but I'm sure it's still a big part of their decision-making process. I use Uber and love the experience, but you have to think there's some truth to the horrible reputation they're earning themselves; Uber doesn't scream 'Don't Be Evil' to me.

There's something funny (ironic?) in the fact that you consistently misspell the name of one of your Golden Goose countries (Colombia). I don't meant to sound like I'm sitting on a high-horse —- in fact I enjoyed reading your stories and always thought about trying passive income myself -- but it kind of epitomizes the situation: you made a lot of money marketing to a population from far away and far enough away that you're fuzzy on the name of the country to which you're marketing.

Again, I do appreciate you sharing the stories, and I hate to call out a spelling mistake like that. Just thought it had symbolism in this case.

To add to the anxiety that some men are probably feeling about this app, Lulu obnoxiously uses a homepage photo in which the women look like they're acting at best mischievous and at worst downright evil. Personally, the app does not cause me any anxiety, but I can tell from the comments that for some it does, and the homepage photo choice is a blatantly unapologetic statement about how Lulu hopes the app is used. The photo choice on the homepage does not mesh well with the text in the About page.

I was surprised to go through these comments (including with a command-F) and not find mention of the recent news of the Uber driver charged with raping a customer. While that story was pretty damaging to Uber, it was equally--if not more—-damaging to the arguments made by the protesting drivers. The rape incident is exactly the type of thing that Uber is trying to prevent by being so strict with its drivers (though, admittedly, a rape could still have occurred with a highly-rated driver). For PR reasons, Uber understandably does not want to point out that bad event, but it would be pretty compelling if they said something like, "Drivers, even if it was just one driver who ruined it for all of you, your bad behavior has forced our hand. We have to do everything we can to protect our customers."

I agree. Ideas are a dime-a-dozen, especially ideas that are the type to languish on a shelf indefinitely.

Startups are all about execution. It's with this in mind that I find the OP's proposition interesting. In my opinion, the more important part of the proposition is not the money or the marketing work, but the kick-in-the-ass that he's providing to someone who would normally fear taking the leap to execute.

Having someone to whom you are accountable (i.e. a cofounder) is huge for executing. Being accountable only to yourself makes things incredibly hard to continue to execute through all the difficulties of starting a company.

I agree. I like the section in The Lean Startup on the related idea of the 'concierge MVP', whereby you're serving your initial customers very manually to really understand their needs before investing heavily in automated systems.

The example from the book that comes to mind (and I forget the name of the startup) was a grocery delivery app. They started out by manually going up to people at the grocery store and offering to give them suggestions on groceries to buy based on meal ideas. Eventually, they got someone to agree to participate and provided enough value to the person that they could - and did - get paid by the customer. This helped validate their idea to started building out the app that would do the same thing using software.

Out of curiosity, where does all the used shrink wrap go when winter is over? I'm picturing a whole house's worth of plastic wrap ending up in a landfill or floating its way out to trash island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and it makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth.

Anyway, thanks for sharing the story -- a good case study to learn from -- but I hope for the sake of humanity that this business of shrink-wrapping boats and houses is a thing of the past.

For anyone else wondering what "mofo" is (see the article's screenshot of the daily push notification), its full name, Mofongo, shows up here: https://www.munchery.com/menus/mofo-with-shrimp-marinara-sau...

It sounds pretty good, too. The abbreviation caught me off guard though.

Edit: Mofo is actually a spin on Mofongo, not necessarily the same.

This comment reminded me to ask something I had been wondering: does anyone know if there have been any conversations (friendly or otherwise) between the guys at the Chicago-based company CodeAcademy and the New York-based Codecademy (of whom this article is about) regarding trademarks and their respective names? Most people in this forum know that the commenter was referring to Codecademy, but it must be frustrating for the CodeAcademy guys to be getting reviews that mistake them for Codecademy. Was just curious if anyone knows the dynamic between the companies.

I've seen a lot of these articles about the effectiveness of facebook ads in the months leading up to - and now in the days following - the ipo. The recent ones sometimes come across as articles by people who are short the stock, trying to encourage a sell-off. Most of the time, they come across as people simply justifying to themselves why they will not or do not own shares in the company. And it's perfectly fine to write about why you won't buy facebook stock.

It's just interesting the amount of noise that goes along with the public markets. You have to take articles/news with an even bigger grain of salt when a public company is involved in the noise. You just don't know peoples' motives. I'm not saying that I think this guy is short FB, I'm just saying its possible, and that I didn't see as many of these articles one or two years ago, even though millions of SMEs were trying their hand at facebook ads back then.

This situation presents an interesting contrast with that of Instagram. Here you have a site generating revenue - and more importantly profit - that is on sale for 0.00048 the sale price of Instagram... and then gets absolutely skewered in the comments for suggesting such an amount. Obviously, the purchase of Instagram comes with much more than simply a maintenance-free website and some paying customers. I'm not saying that Instagram is or is not worth $1B or that Sortfolio is or is not worth $480k, I'm just saying there's probably an interesting nugget hidden in this contrast that says something about what we value these days.

Prior to July: Buenos Aires, Argentina (REMOTE is possible during this period). After July: Large city in the U.S.

Lead Developer

We are Bungolow, a startup putting the "RAVE" back in "Travel" (that's not actually our tagline, we promise -- just wanted to get your attention). Bungolow is a members-only site featuring curated hotel bookings for the wide-open Latin American market. Check us out at www.bungolow.com.

The reason for the interesting location tag up top is that we are currently participating in a TechStars Network accelerator in Buenos Aires. After the program, we aim to locate in a large U.S. city. This means: a) if you are a U.S. citizen, you have the opportunity to come hang out in an awesome South American city for 3 months then return with us to the U.S. of A; or b) if you are from outside the U.S., we will do everything in our power to get a visa for you to work in the U.S. In both instances, having you with us in BA is preferred but not required.

We're looking for a lead developer to drive the technological direction of the company. This is an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a high-potential start-up. The right candidate will be considered part of the founding team.

We're not as concerned about your education background or prior work experience (or for that matter, even the technologies you code in) as we are of seeing evidence of stuff you have shipped. Please send us some links to things you have created online, and make note of your involvement in each.

Send to careers at bungolow dot com.

Lead Developer and/or Designer FULLTIME, ON-LOCATION / REMOTE Bungolow (www.bungolow.com)

Bungolow is hiring. We're the first mover in the Spanish Latin American market in our space and we're looking for developers and designers to help us be number 1.

Check out our latest job posting at www.bungolow.com/work-with-us and join a less stressful work environment! We’re fun, easy-going and we won’t refer to you as a programmer, ninja, hacker, or any other overused cliche buzzwords (unless you want us to). We’ve got the business side locked down, so sales, marketing, management, you don’t have to worry about that. You get to do what you do best and code.

Email careers@bungolow.com introducing yourself and include links to things you've built online.

Lead Developer and/or Designer - Remote Bungolow (www.bungolow.com)

Bungolow is hiring. We're the first mover in the Spanish Latin American market in our space and we're looking for developers and designers to help us be number 1.

Check out our latest job posting at www.bungolow.com/work-with-us and join a less stressful work environment! We’re fun, easy-going and we won’t refer to you as a programmer, ninja, hacker, or any other overused cliche buzzwords. We’ve got the business side locked down, so sales, marketing, management, you don’t have to worry about that. You get to do what you do best and code.