5 ms·

Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 2)

166 points by n9com 15y ago

AlexMuir 15y ago
Previous discussion on Part 1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955214 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955214
sosuke 15y ago
In the last thread someone mentioned they disliked posts being broken up into parts. I'd like to see a Part 1 of X or Part 2 of X so I know when the series is complete and I can read them all at that point. Thanks for writing out Part 2 this quickly though now I want to read Part 3 where what I expected to read in Part 2 is presumed to be after discovering I was on a multi-part post when I read Part 1 and was disappointed I had to wait to finish the story.
- illumen 15y ago
  You'd like to buy the whole boxed set of articles, rather than watch the articles once per week with ads between? Me too. But I also like the tease.
sushumna 15y ago
Found this original interview abt Fiplab and copterkid along with founders Pix. Great going guys. All the very best. http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/OpenFeint/m_news.asp?c=14776&t=news&srch=openfeint http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/OpenFeint/m_news.asp?c=1...
davedx 15y ago
It's always great to see startup success stories outside of San Francisco. Well done fiplap! (cups of tea all round)
Robin_Message 15y ago
The story with Barclays † is the kind of pernicious theft of IP that unfortunately small businesses always face when dealing with big businesses, and is what always makes me laugh when patents are suggested as a good way to encourage innovation. A patent is worthless if you can't sue, and a small company can't sue a big one. Congratulations to the team for remaining philosophical though, and winning on quality and timing. They truly are real artists. † They were negotiating to sponsor the app, the developers sent them a roadmap of their plans, all went quiet and then, a year later, Barclays released their own app.
dpcan 15y ago
"[..] we were really feeling the pressure to start making money, particularly since all our friends had found jobs and were earning a good income. The social stigma surrounding being 'unemployed' really sucked [...]" Their motivation to make money was social? Their friends had jobs so they felt inadequate? I've never heard that one before. I guess it's been a LONG time since I first forged out on my own, but every year I take on new risks and search for new opportunities, and never do I think, gosh, what will my friends think? I'm not sure if this is somewhat off topic, or if I'm asking if this is a common way of thinking, but I'm a little shocked that one entrepreneur's drive to make money was only because their friends were earning good salaries.
- matdwyer 15y ago
  I understand it perfectly - if my friends could all afford to go out and have a pint on the weekend, go on a road trip, vacation, etc. and I was excluded because I couldn't afford it then it would be upsetting to me, and motivate me to earn a better income. That being said, people typically associate with people in their economic class to avoid those types of issues, so I'd assume if they weren't motivated the friends would eventually fade out (to an extent of course)
  - dpcan 15y ago
    As I thought about it a little more, I came to this conclusion as well. It could just be a young single-person's motivation, certainly. I had kids before I even had a chance to know what it was like to be a young single guy out of college, and I started my company when my first son was 1, and my motivation was to be a success in his eyes at the time. Still is. I started developing games because I wanted my kids to see that no matter how far-fetched it may seem, go after your dreams, succeed on your own terms. But I can see how having money for beer might have been a motivating force when I was 21 and if I had no children at the time. EDIT: I'm being sincere. That read-back as dickish, but I'm serious. I'm far removed from that world, but I respect anyone's motivation for becoming a success on their own terms, I just don't always grasp it right away.
    - 15y ago
muxxa 15y ago
The Sponsors of the Dublin bike scheme (JC Decaux) were worse than Barcleys, shutting down an independent app in 2009: http://www.lecraic.com/2009/09/22/dublin-bikes-app-pulled-due-to-threat-of-legal-action-by-jc-decaux/ http://www.lecraic.com/2009/09/22/dublin-bikes-app-pulled-du...
Sukotto 15y ago
Barclays ... develop[ed] their own app ... even went so far as to add ‘fiplab’ as a keyword in their app description! Can you takedown the Barclays version of the app claiming some sort of infringement on the name "Fiplab"? I frequently hear about that happening to little devs. It would be a nice turnabout to have it happen to someone big. (Bonus points if they don't get told why they got yanked... as seems to happen so often to other small developers)
- n9com 15y ago
  We could probably kick up a bit of trouble for their app, but frankly speaking, is it really worth it? We've moved on to bigger and better things, and despite their app launching, we've still got by far the biggest user base of cycle hire app users, so why bother with them? But on second thoughts, we may just do it for the lulz ;)
  - nonane 15y ago
    You can do this by reporting it to Apple. App search keywords can not be trademarked or copyrighted names. I had this happen to me once - Apple gave me a week to resolve the issue or have my app taken down. I had to update my binary to remove the keyword.

166 points by n9com 15y ago

Previous discussion on Part 1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955214 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955214

In the last thread someone mentioned they disliked posts being broken up into parts. I'd like to see a Part 1 of X or Part 2 of X so I know when the series is complete and I can read them all at that point. Thanks for writing out Part 2 this quickly though now I want to read Part 3 where what I expected to read in Part 2 is presumed to be after discovering I was on a multi-part post when I read Part 1 and was disappointed I had to wait to finish the story.

illumen 15y ago
You'd like to buy the whole boxed set of articles, rather than watch the articles once per week with ads between? Me too. But I also like the tease.

sushumna 15y ago

Found this original interview abt Fiplab and copterkid along with founders Pix. Great going guys. All the very best. http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/OpenFeint/m_news.asp?c=14776&t=news&srch=openfeint http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/OpenFeint/m_news.asp?c=1...

davedx 15y ago

It's always great to see startup success stories outside of San Francisco. Well done fiplap! (cups of tea all round)

Robin_Message 15y ago

The story with Barclays † is the kind of pernicious theft of IP that unfortunately small businesses always face when dealing with big businesses, and is what always makes me laugh when patents are suggested as a good way to encourage innovation. A patent is worthless if you can't sue, and a small company can't sue a big one. Congratulations to the team for remaining philosophical though, and winning on quality and timing. They truly are real artists. † They were negotiating to sponsor the app, the developers sent them a roadmap of their plans, all went quiet and then, a year later, Barclays released their own app.

dpcan 15y ago

"[..] we were really feeling the pressure to start making money, particularly since all our friends had found jobs and were earning a good income. The social stigma surrounding being 'unemployed' really sucked [...]" Their motivation to make money was social? Their friends had jobs so they felt inadequate? I've never heard that one before. I guess it's been a LONG time since I first forged out on my own, but every year I take on new risks and search for new opportunities, and never do I think, gosh, what will my friends think? I'm not sure if this is somewhat off topic, or if I'm asking if this is a common way of thinking, but I'm a little shocked that one entrepreneur's drive to make money was only because their friends were earning good salaries.

matdwyer 15y ago
I understand it perfectly - if my friends could all afford to go out and have a pint on the weekend, go on a road trip, vacation, etc. and I was excluded because I couldn't afford it then it would be upsetting to me, and motivate me to earn a better income. That being said, people typically associate with people in their economic class to avoid those types of issues, so I'd assume if they weren't motivated the friends would eventually fade out (to an extent of course)
- dpcan 15y ago
  As I thought about it a little more, I came to this conclusion as well. It could just be a young single-person's motivation, certainly. I had kids before I even had a chance to know what it was like to be a young single guy out of college, and I started my company when my first son was 1, and my motivation was to be a success in his eyes at the time. Still is. I started developing games because I wanted my kids to see that no matter how far-fetched it may seem, go after your dreams, succeed on your own terms. But I can see how having money for beer might have been a motivating force when I was 21 and if I had no children at the time. EDIT: I'm being sincere. That read-back as dickish, but I'm serious. I'm far removed from that world, but I respect anyone's motivation for becoming a success on their own terms, I just don't always grasp it right away.
  - 15y ago

muxxa 15y ago

The Sponsors of the Dublin bike scheme (JC Decaux) were worse than Barcleys, shutting down an independent app in 2009: http://www.lecraic.com/2009/09/22/dublin-bikes-app-pulled-due-to-threat-of-legal-action-by-jc-decaux/ http://www.lecraic.com/2009/09/22/dublin-bikes-app-pulled-du...

Sukotto 15y ago

Barclays ... develop[ed] their own app ... even went so far as to add ‘fiplab’ as a keyword in their app description! Can you takedown the Barclays version of the app claiming some sort of infringement on the name "Fiplab"? I frequently hear about that happening to little devs. It would be a nice turnabout to have it happen to someone big. (Bonus points if they don't get told why they got yanked... as seems to happen so often to other small developers)

n9com 15y ago
We could probably kick up a bit of trouble for their app, but frankly speaking, is it really worth it? We've moved on to bigger and better things, and despite their app launching, we've still got by far the biggest user base of cycle hire app users, so why bother with them? But on second thoughts, we may just do it for the lulz ;)
- nonane 15y ago
  You can do this by reporting it to Apple. App search keywords can not be trademarked or copyrighted names. I had this happen to me once - Apple gave me a week to resolve the issue or have my app taken down. I had to update my binary to remove the keyword.