Generally excellent, but you have to believe in what you're doing too; doesn't matter what industry you're in, you have to believe in what you're doing.
Boats provide some of the cheapest rent and best views in the Bay Area. Paid less than one year's worth of rent to buy a 42' motor boat and parked it over by Oakland where my monthly liveaboard slip fee is just over $500/month. If you need to be in or around SF and are trying to save on rent, I can't encourage people enough to try it out.
Another option may be to become a 501(c)3 and get local/regional foundation support... I'd think as a for-profit the odds are stacked against you and you're dividing an already too small pie. Going non-profit flips peoples' attitudes quite a bit and you can still make money in the form of salary, etc...
I have a working mvp (Rails 2.3.8) with paying users in a large industry. I need help with developing a few requested features, like integrating streaming video, improved reporting, categories/tags.
Ultimately, I'm looking for a first hire, but I don't expect that to happen for another 6-9 months.
SEEKING FREELANCER (and Teacher)- San Francisco Bay Area
Ruby/Rails/Javascript
Looking for someone interested in coaching/teaching me to implement features on an existing production code base. I've been learning for about a year and can do most basic things, but need help with others.
Would like to meet once a week for an hour or two to review problems, discuss options/pros/cons, and then focus on implementation.
You could think of it this way: Execution helps a bad idea exist and grow by hacking on it until all you're left with is a good idea... Ideas, whether good or bad, create the drive or motivation to start.
A quote from Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" that may speak to your frustration(?).
"The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of "style" to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it's not just depressingly dull, it's also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized homes. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It's the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don't know where to start because no one has ever told them there's such a thing as Quality in this world and it's real, not style. Quality isn't something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start."
Suggestion: Someone should develop a site where people who want to share their insights can register their type of business, evaluate/interview prospects who want the information, and then open their data to acceptable non-competitors. Charge the people who want access and share the revenue with the companies/people who provide the information.
Appropriate pricing strategies are key here. We were able to get 10 'charter members' who paid $500 for a lifetime membership when our idea was just notes on 2 pieces of paper. Currently we're offering a beta, which is 2 years for the price of one and shortly we'll reach critical mass and change it again.
Good point. Spypig likely has the problem of skewed open rates due to image blocking and we chose not to use due to that issue.
Tracking opens for 'cold emails' or even referral-based emails is important but can be replaced with persistence. As long as persistence is constrained with a measure of decency.
I get referrals from the businesses who join our site and use email to initiate outreach to them. I just want to know who's opening versus who's not as it affects what script we use for a follow up phone call.
Would love to ask you a few questions about that in private but there's no contact info on your profile. Mind a few questions? If not, please email me: [email protected]
Given that privacy policies and TOS change on most websites, is there any merit to a 'bait and switch' argument or anything like that?
I remember a recent commenter suggesting there was but didn't see any follow up.
Conceptually, there is no contract between FB and its users. It's use at your own will; essentially a one-way deal and therefore cannot be a contract. That said, knowing they monetize our content, can argument be made that our content is 'consideration' and therefore a contract is implied?