will_lam

Couldn't have been more timelier for myself (and company)! Thanks for the share.

I just read this before hitting HN, but isn't the title supposed to be "SEOs ARE Growth Hackers"? Some would argue that "SEOs are the original growth hackers", but that's just a very short sighted view as their domain of expertise is siloed in the domain of all things search engine related. I can see the overlap, as some more technically inclined SEOs have already made the jump, but there needs to be proficiency in understanding many different platforms (not just Google) and of course the ability to actually code to smartly exploit and scale marketing efforts. SEO is just one piece of the puzzle.

Interesting, do you mean you're working with the RescueTime on a consulting basis to craft their email drip strategy?

I'm not surprised, as he probably saw a flood of traffic from HN in Google Analytics and decided to backtrack.

I think we're all onto these guys and for him to think (or any other "internet marketer") they can take advantage of others through information asymmetry will be thwarted.

No, they're not, although they did work with PUAs. The Verge did an editorial on them a while back. http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/10/2984893/scamworld-get-rich...

While a bit slick/sleazy in their approach their work revolves around using social psychology principles (social proof, scarcity etc), conversion tricks, clever copy, giving away freebies in order to build up their email lists. These guys eventually upsell on their premium products for a ridiculous price whilst offering their digital product for a "limited time only" to convert users who've got a good amount of value from their give-away products.

There's hardly any regulation in this industry and the FTC has come down hard on these guys on more than one occasion.

I guess there's a void in the market somewhere after the Rypple acquisition by Salesforce?

Great post - I've been using RescueTime to be more mindful of how I spend my time and curb my social media use.. Great idea to have a 30 day challenge

It may sound foolish, but I'm not too worried about that.

You can keep the data private and there is no built in "social" with Daytum. It doesn't look like the founders will be working on it anytime soon since they were "acq-hired" by Facebook. I've been using it for the last 2 years to measure and visualize my personal data.

But to each their own, I suppose.

I've been keeping a journal since 2007, however, my entries were not as frequent as Steve. Lately, I've been obsessive with personal data collection a la Daytum.com, iDoneThis.com, Fitocracy, MemoLane.com, RescueTime.com, and Timehop.com that passively record things about my past, which is fascinating, empowering or downright depressing when I see what I've done in the past.

It's interesting to use these services or manually (Moleskine and pen) to be more cognizant and aware of where we're going in our lives, to be more appreciative of what we've done or how we've spent our time in the most "ideal" way we construct for ourselves.

Interesting. Very similar to another YC company, http://upverter.com though

I'm sure there's a good amount of overlap applicable to any creative process.

This would be an interesting opportunity for Zeo or Fitbit to chime in on this if they were to mine their data, anonymize it and publish something about their users sleep patterns.

Really timely. Thanks to cjoh for posting this as it chimes in with what I've been feeling recently.

I've relentlessly turned off all notifications from any app. Goes the same for email as well. I'll only check for updates when I feel I need to. Going so far as deleting Twitter and Facebook apps. Foodspotting, Yelp, Path etc etc, notifications are all off. I value my time ferociously and snuff out anything that comes between me and focusing on the important.

A novel first dip into the waters of sleep optimization for first timers, but I'm a bit wary of the blanket approach that's being taken. Much like others in this thread, It'd be cool if they linked to some studies.

From a high level view, I'm totally for this idea. However, I'm skeptical of the viability of this sort of pilot program. Having more info about the "fine print" would be a good start.

It would be interesting to see if other companies start similar programs to meet the short-fall of engineering talent as well.

same can be said for http://vizualize.me being "simpler, better, and far superior" as well

Hmm.. I believe http://Zuora.com might be able to help as they have a European office as well.

it arose from the ashes of Bootup Labs

from what I understand, yes. The cloud part is the "upsell" I think.

BOOM! Good stuff, guys!!

so glad I live downtown... I'm a zealot for convenience in all of its forms.. and proximity to the downtown core of a metropolitan area is definitely one of them.

I think that's quite the blanket statement. I don't believe that to be the case at all.

I still don't really get what Swagapolooza does...so you're a product launch platform in front of influencers?

I think this statement applies to great product managers as well.

Really? damn

You can program the home button to bring up the camera with two taps.

Danny Wong is a pure hustler. I've seen his Mixergy interviews and read many of his articles on high pagerank sites like Huffington Post, ReadWrite Web, Mashable etc.

I have no doubt that Danny Wong will be going places, even if it isn't with Blank Label.

Nice list of productivity lifehacks. I use a combination of Rescuetime Premium, LeechBlock for Firefox to prevent any slacking in case I'm tempted. In the meantime I use FocusBooster (Pomodoro technique) to keep the pressure on :)

If you're interested in taking the Ruby on Rails route, you can check out Chris Pine's book "Learn to Program" in Ruby.

Also there's HacketyHack, Rails for Zombies, CodeSchool.com.

Also there was an old HN thread that is very similar to your situation. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2280070