Sorry we handled that poorly. At the time Firehost was having some significant issues with their firewall policies. We do constantly walk that line between enforcing security at the edge and annoying customers that may run into WAF blocks. It's a delicate balance.
The problems you had have since been resolved and pagely is running under a new firewall (and new blades) which are much more reliable.
In addressing your frustration my comment of 'we're on the same team' was to demonstrate that we were all working towards a solution for you. As professionals dealing with other professionals we aim to acknowledge and address the problem while steering the conversation to a positive outcome. If our customer views us as an adversary it makes the process more challenging for all involved. By re-framing the conversation as we are all in this together, all working towards a solution, we feel it is more likely the positive solution will be found and implemented sooner. My comment was a gentle reminder to that effect: acknowledging the issue, and we are working with you, and with our partners to remedy it.
Thank you for your past business, and we hope one day to earn it again.
- joshua strebel, founder pagely.
We are based in Arizona and bootstrapped. I have made this analogy in the past: "Arizona company's have to be hearty like a cactus with a 'real business' built on a sound model to cope with scarcity of resources. SV based funded companies are as plentiful as spring flowers are here in the desert but rarely make it through the summer heat"
Silly okay.. but I think it speaks to the culture. No one I know here in Arizona includes "after our series A" in their plans. A higher valuation seems to be the end goal for most startups in the Valley, and dramatically alters the way they do things.
Personally I would dread trying to outrun the burn rate funded companies operate under as 99% of them have no revenue or not enough to turn a profit.
We are forced to build a 'boring' business that can sustain itself from nearly day 1, which leads to a different culture entirely. We solve the revenue equation first, which makes things easier and less stressful in the long run. My 2 cents and YMMV
Entirely bootstraped. We had some personal savings that allowed us to run real lean and build up revenue slowly without trying to out run burn. We hit a tipping point about 8 months in where the momentum started to carry us.
We are an orignial anchor of Gangplank, but never utilized any funding but am thankful for the community support. Gangplank is a great collaborative workspace, in the early days though there was not the formal mentoring or incubation to speak of that has become available over the last few months.
Think you are missing the point. I am asking 'is' it necessary, really? The trend is going in the direction that to be considered 'legit' a startup is compelled to participate.
The 500 check in hand investors at the latest demo-day speaks to the tail wagging the dog cycle that is beginning.
With page.ly, our first 100 customers came through my network on twitter. I think I had about 1300 followers at the time but probably 250 or so people I had some sort of relationship with beyond just twitter.
A tweeted a bit leading up to launch sharing screenshots and such of what we were working on, announced we were live on twitter and got a handful of customers within minutes.
The first 100 are the hardest, but leveraging your existing network is an easy way to go about it.
Come on now. I am the founder of page.ly (if that was not clear) and what could be wrong with a little celebratory call out back to this community, which does not seem to be all that welcoming all of sudden.
A 1000 new visits over an hour or so from hackernews was kind of novel for us.
Lean becomes a lifestyle after a while. Best decision (really had no other options) we made was to bootstrap. Owning 100% of profits has it's perks as well.
Sorry we handled that poorly. At the time Firehost was having some significant issues with their firewall policies. We do constantly walk that line between enforcing security at the edge and annoying customers that may run into WAF blocks. It's a delicate balance.
The problems you had have since been resolved and pagely is running under a new firewall (and new blades) which are much more reliable.
In addressing your frustration my comment of 'we're on the same team' was to demonstrate that we were all working towards a solution for you. As professionals dealing with other professionals we aim to acknowledge and address the problem while steering the conversation to a positive outcome. If our customer views us as an adversary it makes the process more challenging for all involved. By re-framing the conversation as we are all in this together, all working towards a solution, we feel it is more likely the positive solution will be found and implemented sooner. My comment was a gentle reminder to that effect: acknowledging the issue, and we are working with you, and with our partners to remedy it.
Thank you for your past business, and we hope one day to earn it again. - joshua strebel, founder pagely.