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I don't want to be too harsh on this guy. He should be proud he pushed out 5 projects and he seems really really passionate about Keto. The fact he made even on

by jimhi 7y ago

I don't want to be too harsh on this guy. He should be proud he pushed out 5 projects and he seems really really passionate about Keto. The fact he made even one dollar is impressive, it is always hardest at the start. But some of the things he did make my head explode. He spent more than his total revenue ever on...testing software? He paid hundreds of dollars for every project on logos? He paid a developer thousands of dollars to develop a blog? Half his projects are free wordpress/(insert popular website builder) templates. He managed to burn 6k a month on rent/food while doing this? Even in New York that is kinda ridiculous, I did 2k a month in Brooklyn with my startup. That said, the amount of traffic his blog gets is amazing. I think his biggest achievement was that. Hopefully he can direct that traffic towards future projects.

mtlynch 7y ago
Thanks for reading! A lot of the feedback I got after my one-year update was that I was overspending. I mostly disagree, though with acknowledgement that my businesses don't earn much money, so I don't have much of a leg to stand on in defying conventional wisdom. The key disconnect is that people seem to be arguing that I should strive for profitability at all times, whereas my goal was to minimize the time to find high revenue. Once I find something that gains traction, I don't expect it to be that difficult to reduce costs. If take on more work myself in the name of lower costs, I might make a small profit sooner, but it would probably be longer until I find something that earns large profits. There's obviously a limit. I can't afford to hire a whole team of developers just to speed up my projects. But $1-2k here and there to save me a week or two of work annually still feels reasonable to me. >He paid a developer thousands of dollars to develop a blog? Half his projects are free wordpress/(insert popular website builder) templates. There's a bit more to the site than it might seem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19057745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19057745
- jimhi 7y ago
  That’s impressive, but I feel like you are avoiding the main criticism in that link. Testing doesn’t matter at your stage. Imagine if you spent a bunch of time perfecting the human resource procedures for your websites, it’s too early to think about that. Maybe that is hard to internalize since it was your job for so long
  - mtlynch 7y ago
    >Testing doesn’t matter at your stage. Imagine if you spent a bunch of time perfecting the human resource procedures for your websites, it’s too early to think about that. Maybe that is hard to internalize since it was your job for so long Ah, I see what you're saying. I respectfully disagree. For me, testing earns back time invested very quickly, often before I even commit a changelist. I would write more tests if I were working for a large company or I was maintaining a mature product, but I don't buy the idea that zero is universally the correct number of tests for any early-stage product. My E2E tests and CI routinely prevent me from breaking major functionality in my websites and APIs. It seems like a no-brainer to spend an extra 20% of my up-front development time writing automated tests to catch those instead of discovering the breaks after the fact, patching it, then testing all the functionality manually.

by jimhi 7y ago

mtlynch 7y ago

Thanks for reading! A lot of the feedback I got after my one-year update was that I was overspending. I mostly disagree, though with acknowledgement that my businesses don't earn much money, so I don't have much of a leg to stand on in defying conventional wisdom. The key disconnect is that people seem to be arguing that I should strive for profitability at all times, whereas my goal was to minimize the time to find high revenue. Once I find something that gains traction, I don't expect it to be that difficult to reduce costs. If take on more work myself in the name of lower costs, I might make a small profit sooner, but it would probably be longer until I find something that earns large profits. There's obviously a limit. I can't afford to hire a whole team of developers just to speed up my projects. But $1-2k here and there to save me a week or two of work annually still feels reasonable to me. >He paid a developer thousands of dollars to develop a blog? Half his projects are free wordpress/(insert popular website builder) templates. There's a bit more to the site than it might seem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19057745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19057745

jimhi 7y ago
That’s impressive, but I feel like you are avoiding the main criticism in that link. Testing doesn’t matter at your stage. Imagine if you spent a bunch of time perfecting the human resource procedures for your websites, it’s too early to think about that. Maybe that is hard to internalize since it was your job for so long
- mtlynch 7y ago
  >Testing doesn’t matter at your stage. Imagine if you spent a bunch of time perfecting the human resource procedures for your websites, it’s too early to think about that. Maybe that is hard to internalize since it was your job for so long Ah, I see what you're saying. I respectfully disagree. For me, testing earns back time invested very quickly, often before I even commit a changelist. I would write more tests if I were working for a large company or I was maintaining a mature product, but I don't buy the idea that zero is universally the correct number of tests for any early-stage product. My E2E tests and CI routinely prevent me from breaking major functionality in my websites and APIs. It seems like a no-brainer to spend an extra 20% of my up-front development time writing automated tests to catch those instead of discovering the breaks after the fact, patching it, then testing all the functionality manually.