In hindsight, I realize that I took the relationships in my life for granted when i was younger because I always had an abundance of them in high school and college.
Back then I was very involved in church, went on ski trips, camping trips, kayaking, and participated in weekly extracurricular activities. Friends were just around all the time.
Also looking back, all of my good memories are people an experiences, not money, projects, or things - all of which education and the real world focus you on.
Now that I'm 28 and have a family, it is difficult to spend time with friends - even the ones with families as well. Everyone has jobs and lots of other commitments.
By now most of my college friends have moved away and even the ones that haven't I rarely see.
These days I make a conscious effort to attend anything I possibly can with friends, and it certainly helps.
My point is that if there are any high school/college aged people reading my advice is that you take advantage of every opportunity with friends now. Focus on quality and quantity of relationships. If you have a choice between a "B" on a project if you go out with friends and an "A" if you stay home and study, pick the former. The relationships you build will be far more useful to you in life that getting the "A."
Not saying all the fun stops, it just becomes less sporadic and further between visits with friends.
The reason I am saying all of this is because I wish someone would have told it to me...not that I would have listened anyway.
Been listening to this duo Chiddy Bang lately. Finding some inspiration in that as well. Not as mainstream as what you mentioned but noteworthy. http://chiddybang.net/
I agree, the next buttons are too invasive. I'd love to see them as left and right arrows near the edges that bold with mouseover. I think that users would be more familiar with that as well. Also love the idea to have voiceover too by another HN reader.
I too dislike screencasts. This is a great concept. Good luck.
I don't think it is a problem to use the design methods outlined in the article. In fact, Microsoft didn't invent this type of design per se. They simply coined the term "Metro" for tiled block layout. Check out "responsive design" at the link below and you will notice several similarities.
"...Do not, under any circumstances, work for free..."
Totally agree with this. It ha been my experience that well paying customers are the best kind. They are more respectful of my time and less of a headache. The people that want thing low cost or for free are happy to drain your time for really no good reason.
This theory is why I also charge a certain flat fee upfront to get started on any client work. It gets the client emotionally invested in the project since some of their money is in the pot. Most of the time when I have done things without upfront payment or free work, the client is lazy to get me necessary graphics, text, authorization, etc. to do what I said I would do. Then it still reflects badly on the freelancer.
Agreed. It is one thing to falsify customer reviews, for example, but something completely different to have several aliases to promote an active community. The information and links that were posted obviously provided value to readers. Who posted it is not quite as important. The same thing with Kevin Rose saying that digg was a friends site. People are naturally guarded against being sold to - even if the said item acutally does provide true value. People just want to decide on their own without the sales pressure.
Agreed. Keep in mind the liability aspects as well. From what I understand, payroll mistakes are not easily forgiven. That is part of the reason there are so many HR outsourcing companies.
Hack their systems. Partially joking. But in all honesty companies have hired hackers that did built something slightly destructive (in the short term) to their website/app.
Disclaimer: I would just be sure that they are a very liberal startup and might appreciate a joke otherwise you might find the FBI knocking on your door.
In a Stanford lecture, Tina Seelig said something along the lines of: find where your interests, what your good at, and the market (ie someone will pay you) intersects and do that. I've always liked that advice.
Can you sketch? A picture is worth a thousand words.
If you can create pictures either with a sketch pad or digitally then it will help your developer visualize it and make it work correctly.
Also "use cases" are very helpful. For example, instead of writing specs, write several stories about how a user might interact with the app. In my experience, these always help me develop a product more inline with the overall vision.
Lastly, you could send your sketches to a designer to create, then send those PSD/PNG files to the developer.
$20k per month sounds like a good problem to have for two people with little overhead.
I'd recommend getting out of town for a few days without an Internet connection to just rest and get some clarity. You sound scattered.
It's difficult to give you specific advice without knowing more about the ins and outs of your business. However I would suggest answering a few questions for yourself:
- Which of your three products is generating income? If it is the moble app then start there. Drop the others and focus your attention on what IS working. Read PG's article on ideas. To summarize PG you can only focus on one thing at a time. I think he is spot on.
- Why are you receiving late payment? Do you have to manually collect payments each month/year? If so, that might be your problem. Anything scalable should require little human interference, especially when collecting payments. For example, you want to download an app, you pay immediately with the credit card Apple already has on file; you sign up for a web app, you enter your credit card info immediately so when the free trial is done your account automatically gets debited. Any business where you must hunt down payments is not scalable. Perhaps that is what is stunting your growth. Not "features" per se.
Lastly, talk to your customers to find out what what you are doing right and wrong. This can't be discovered in a survey because it is too open ended. Call them, email them, whatever. Just tell them you wanted to see how they liked the product, how they use it, what they don't like, etc. if you do this enough you should see a trend.
I totally agree. I too am shocked to see so many "quit your side projects" comments. The trick is prioritization, like the old saying goes: "anyone with more than 3 priorities has no priorities." I have a 6 month old that I am very involved with.
The first few months was difficult by default due to the chaos. But now that my wife and I are in a routine (and he is sleeping through the night), I am getting a lot done. Perhaps not as much "work" as before but what it has allowed me to do is get rid of everything that doesn't really matter and focus only on the things that do (ie, it makes me happy, it makes me money, self improvement, etc).
Mornings I typically get up with him and spend an hour or so playing with him, feeding him, etc. My wife looks after him during the day. When I get home from work I devote my entire attention to him and my wife. I take care of bath time. We split the feeding time before bed. Sometimes we spend time all together then, other times we each do the tasks at hand while the other feeds. After he is in bed we either spend time together and then work, or vice versa. A couple nights a week it is date time where we watch our favorite shows together or whatever and there is no work.
Am I busy? Hell yeah. But I make an effort to be effective with my time. I use the web app Rescue Time to track my productivity. It at least quantifies my time at the computer.
Also, As far as freelancing, before I cut it out altogether, I simply raised my rates. This gave me less freelance jobs but allowed me to earn more per hour. Wasnt making quite as much however I was a whole lot happier.
My point is that I agree that you need to put your family first, but feel you can live your dreams AND be a good parent if you simply remove everything that is not important.
I guess I missed that when viewing on my phone. I went straight to the meat and potatoes. Touche to that. From my first and second hand experiences, I still feel that it is not accurate.
Congrats. You are in a great position that many hackers would kill for (no pun intended). My advice echoes and negates several of the comments already posted:
- I agree that, at best, you should launch something in a space you know about (ie oil) or at least in a vertical you are very interested in. However I would be less concerned about how "lucrative" the market is (as one commenter suggested), other than the fact that there is a market. Many businesses have been started in markets one wouldn't typically associate with "lucrative" - selling to teachers is one example.
- Instead focus on creating value or solving a problem. Seems obvious but so often startups try to find problems for their solution that they've built. I've been guilty of this myself.
- Don't angel invest. That is a good way to lose your position and some money. Plus you imply that your more interested in entrepreneurship anyway.
- Learn how to code a little, even if you plan on finding technical co-founders or paying someone to build your product. It gives you perspective and depth while making you better at properly scoping projects for others.
True but this launch and then build is common practice these days. In fact, many product launches on tech crunch, et al do this also.
When launching a company/service/product the most difficult part for me has been creating something that people actually want to pay for and reaching those people. Launching barebones and selling the vision proves that the product is worthy first.
That essay is garbage in my opinion. My wife and many of our friends are teachers and it doesn't take into account things like lesson plans and grading papers - both Of which are typically done on the teachers personal time (at least in Florida and with elementary aged kids).
In other words, although other professions are as likely to work from home or other places, it fails to mention the amount of hours that teachers DO work outside the office - at least the good ones that actually care. In the same breath there are many teachers who just skate by because they know they won't get fired.
The essay also doesn't take into account the length of a teachers workday nor the nature of the work. When my wife taught she had to arrive at 6:30am and often didn't get home until 4:30 or 5:00pm on a good day. Have you ever tryed to entertain twenty 7-year-olds for 10 hours? It's pretty exhausting - not to mention the fact that they also have to deal with the administration requirements, parents, standardized testing, other bad teachers that never will lose their jobs, etc. All for 34k per year before taxes.
Say it's 11:23am and you need to use the restroom. Sorry, you can't exactly just walk out of class to run down the hall. You have to wait until your 20 minute lunch break which includes walking the kids to and from the lunchroom.
Just to give some perspective, this is such a problem where we live that that I know or know of nearly a dozen teachers no longer in the classroom or looking for other employment.
For those teachers who feel they are living the life, I'd love to know where they live because from where I sit summers odd is about the best thing going for teachers.
Back then I was very involved in church, went on ski trips, camping trips, kayaking, and participated in weekly extracurricular activities. Friends were just around all the time.
Also looking back, all of my good memories are people an experiences, not money, projects, or things - all of which education and the real world focus you on.
Now that I'm 28 and have a family, it is difficult to spend time with friends - even the ones with families as well. Everyone has jobs and lots of other commitments.
By now most of my college friends have moved away and even the ones that haven't I rarely see.
These days I make a conscious effort to attend anything I possibly can with friends, and it certainly helps.
My point is that if there are any high school/college aged people reading my advice is that you take advantage of every opportunity with friends now. Focus on quality and quantity of relationships. If you have a choice between a "B" on a project if you go out with friends and an "A" if you stay home and study, pick the former. The relationships you build will be far more useful to you in life that getting the "A."
Not saying all the fun stops, it just becomes less sporadic and further between visits with friends.
The reason I am saying all of this is because I wish someone would have told it to me...not that I would have listened anyway.