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Services Worth Paying For as a Startup
- gravitycop 18y agoThe list: FreshBooks Basecamp DreamHost WooThemes Animoto Angelsoft.net StreamSend Remember The Milk Amazon Prime Amazon Web Services Joe’s Goals The article also recommends the free Google services: Docs Calendar Mail Analytics Reader
- eibrahim 18y agoThanks for the summary, but you will be missing all the humor - it takes a lot of energy, coffee and cigarettes to add humor. And no, I don't feel bad that I spent an hour writing it :). PS: No refund offered if article not found humorous
- pclark 18y agoWhy pay for basecamp when unfuddle has a great free version? I strongly recommend avoiding dreamhost. A Small Orange .com are far better, and only a little more money - its a balance. I read advice, and agree, that you should never have to pay to apply for angel investment. Seems bizarre - If I were an investor and someone had just spent $250 to ask for more money ... Angel Investors try to make themselves as accessible as possible - go network! :) Just my thoughts.
- eibrahim 18y agoThanks for the advice. One thing I don't get is why people comment on hacker news and not at the actual blog post??? Sure it gives the link more points and push it to the top which will generate more traffic, but wouldn't it be more helpful if this comment was at the actual article so others reading it can benefit from it? Just a thought.
- pclark 18y agojust habit. I just like commenting on here as its nice and easy to track all my comments, and usually get more replies on here.
- TooMuchNick 18y agoKarma whores. But seriously, mostly we care more about talking to the HN community than we do about adding value to your article. When you say "more helpful," you mean more helpful to you and your readers. "More helpful" to me might mean more accessible to Hacker News. Get used to this. The more your startup gets covered, the less control you'll have over the conversation.
- eibrahim 18y agoDon't get me wrong, I love hacker news. I just wish there was a way to integrate this great discussion with my article. Wordpress hacker news plugin anyone?
- kragen 18y agoThere are lots of reasons to comment in different places. HN has a more pleasant UI (not as nice as Reddit's, though), I don't have to wait for the blog owner to approve my comment after moderation (or worry that they'll delete it if it's critical), I don't have to worry that it'll be rejected because it's too long or cites too many sources, I don't have to try to figure out what goofy markup the blog expects, and I can go back and see the replies to my recent comments fairly easily. And with the voting system it's easier to find the good comments. There are advantages to doing it on the blog post itself, too. People who find the blog post a year from now will see comments on the blog post itself, most blog comment software at least supports more markup than just paragraphs and italics, the blog author is more likely to read it, etc.
- eibrahim 18y agoBasecamp has a free version too. But unfuddle looks pretty good.
- phdmageddon 18y agoVPS hosting (at first, I like linode, slicehost, or vpsfarm), some kind of project management (bug tracking, Trac is fine for most things probably). The main thing to pay for is Adwords, a small investment that only attempts to bottom feed can be worth far more than you pay for it.
- alain94040 18y agoI wouldn't pay for angelsoft. If you think fundraising is done by submitting an online application to hundreds of angels and paying $250 to do so... all I can say is a fool and his money are easily parted.
- eibrahim 18y agoI have never raised money before but I thought reaching so many investors for $250 is definitely worth it. It would cost me $250 to fly somewhere and meet ONE investor. But like I said in my post, I don't know how effective it is. I will update my post in a couple of weeks with more information on its effectiveness.
- pclark 18y agowhere are you based? if you don't know any investors (if only by name) you're not networking hard enough.
- eibrahim 18y agoI am in the DC metro area (specifically Arlington). Yes, I am not networking enough - it takes too much time and is not as fun as coding. Seriously though, I just started this whole raising money thing a few days ago. So I am learning. Speaking of networking, I am going to a happy hour tonight in DC.
- diN0bot 18y agoIt sounds like you have experience here. Do you have more networking advice or information referrals. My startup is based in Boston. We have some MIT and Harvard professors on our board of advisors, but we don't have other connections to networks and investors, and our advisor board hasn't been able to give us good leads. We've engaged in fund-raising efforts through letters and applications, as well as by going to relevant conferences, sometimes on the schedule, sometimes just passing out stickers on the side (or the street when they kick us out). We talk to a lot of people and have a vibrant but fluxful volunteer community. How do we find investors? (or grants; we're currently a non-profit, but we have revenue models and would be ok with employing a for-profit partner model) thx (diN0bot @t bilumi org)
- fallentimes 18y agoAs another data point, here's what we pay for at TicketStumbler headquarters: GitHub, Light House, Amazon Prime, ATT's Usb Connect (back up internet), Comcast, Softlayer, The Week (magazine), Wired, Quickbooks Online Edition, Vonage
- eibrahim 18y agoThanks. I really wish people would comment on the actual blog, so that others can benefit.
- fallentimes 18y agoPeople do here. Fred Wilson often says the same thing as if the Hacker News community should comment on his blog instead of on HN. You could always provide a link to the Hacker News discussion :).
- eibrahim 18y agoDone. I added a link to the HN comments in the post.
- brandnewlow 18y agoYou know, someone should really, really make a widget that a blogger could add to the bottom of their posts that automatically picks up the HN submission link for that post and displays the current number of comments on HN. HN is "stealing" the conversation. And that's just the way it is. But surely someone could create a little JS that would help bloggers point readers over to where the conversation's actually happening.
- mattmaroon 18y agoOr just syncs them. It's funny how many times a person will manually leave the same comment both here and on my blog. That would be an awesome feature for Disqus.
- jwesley 18y agoThis guy would have more credibility if the post wasn't filled with affiliate links. The truth is that the right combination services will be unique to every business.
- eibrahim 18y agoRead the disclaimer on my article. Here it is again: Disclaimer: I am sure you noticed that most of the links have a referral code. Don’t worry, that didn’t affect my recommendations or integrity (what is that?). I actually use all the services mentioned above. Plus we are bootstrapped and the economy is in the crapper so give me a break and use these links.
- xenophanes 18y agoOh, you said "Don't worry," it's OK then.
- diN0bot 18y agoeibrahim, your comments are getting down voted pretty bad. you're probably a nice guy, and i hate seeing so many downvotes because, you know, that can feel bad. i have to admit that i downvoted some of your comments, too. hopefully there won't be a trainload of down votes. anyway, i'd like to at least explain what i think is going on: i bet most of us went to your blog post with an open mind about services that are worth paying for. it's definitely a topic of conversation my partner and i have pondered before. some aspects of the blog post are a little...vacuous. the angelsoft one sounded particularly ridiculous to me. where's the meat of the advice? the affiliate links makes things seem even more slimey. ok, so those comments are made here, hopefully not to harshly (critical is good, mean is not so good). your responses are defensive and, IMHO, unthoughtful. for example, this disclaimer doesn't address my concerns of bias at all. in fact, it makes them worse! > "Don't worry, that didn't affect my recommendations or integrity (what is that?)" ok...you don't value integrity and don't have a reason for why your recommendations have substance, which is bad in itself but somewhat insulting in your view of readers. i'm not sure i've communicated my point very well. ultimately, good luck, and i hope by thinking about your comments they'll fair better in the future.
- iuguy 18y agoWe use Google Apps Premier, Salesforce (which is awesome) and Gradwell for VoIP (similarly awesome). We're just about to start using Amazon S3 with some encryption for secondary backup.
- tptacek 18y agoUs: OneBox virtual PBX, Basecamp, Campfire, bit of GitHub, Slicehost for one-off servers, a managed colo. I'm not sure Animoto was such a win for this guy; looks like a video just for the sake of having a video. I'm not sure AngelSoft was a win at all; this seems even less effective than resume blasting services are for getting jobs. If Basecamp was working well for him, I'm surprised he also needed RTM and "Joe's Goals". Would really like a solid recommendation on a mailing list hosting provider (something like StreamSend); it is surprisingly hard to run even a private mailing list without landing in the Yahoo and Gmail spam folders now.
- eibrahim 18y agoGreat suggestions. I use RTM for personal TODO and basecamp for project management and collaborating with my team. Like StreaSend is OK, I just chose them because they are cheap. But they do the job.
- jeremyw 18y agore mailing lists / newsletters: I've had good luck with campaignmonitor.com. You can pre-test your send against ISP loopbacks for both spam filtering and final rendering checks. API for list mgmt, plays well with design staff. And one hopes their email standards project gains traction: http://www.email-standards.org/ http://www.email-standards.org/ .
- tptacek 18y agoCampaign Monitor looks awesome, but, like SendStream, it's for 1-to-many email broadcasting. I need something more like a listserv.
- davidw 18y agoapt-get install mailman ? It's not that hard to set up, especially if it's just some sort of internal thing and you don't have to worry about things like clients. Even in that case, with a bit of fiddling it should work just fine.
- sscheper 18y agoI'm a huge fan of Jott over RTM... I can't understand what's so great about RTM ;-)
- theBobMcCormick 18y agoI wasn't very sure about RTM either until I read this: http://sheenonline.biz/2008/06/super-charge-remember-the-milk-with-smart-lists-and-tags/ http://sheenonline.biz/2008/06/super-charge-remember-the-mil... There's still some things I'd like to see change about RTM, but discovering how to really get the most out of smart-lists and tags made me appreciate RTM a lot more.
- eibrahim 18y agoWow... I thought I was posting something useful for other startups and entrepreneurs, but for some reason, I am getting crucified in here :) Whew!!! tough crowd.
- Shamiq 18y agoYea, that's life on the internet for ya.
- froo 18y agoI liked that you used Animoto for a promo video, but I found my interest waning after about a minute and I eventually switched it off (the quick cuts don't work well with longer vids) I think if you concentrated 1 or 2 ideas into each video and instead created several videos it would have more impact. Just a thought :)
- eibrahim 18y agoGreat suggestion. I tend to lose interest after a minute or so as well - damn ADD.
- wastedbrains 18y agoOur quick list... github, lighthouse, AWS, Broadband, wireless broadband, Vonage, 1 server off amazon... that is about it for us.
- okeumeni 18y ago" It is so low, I want to pay extra with my bill (but I won’t)." Saying this for the only service you're actually paying for say much about what you truly believe about paying for startup services.
- imp 18y agoDon't forget Clicky Analytics.
- Tunecrew 18y agoour list was: Google Apps Premier Edition for mail/calendar/docs Google Analytics Godaddy as registrar Slicehost Callcentric for VOIP + Snom phones Flow Jamaica for internet (15 Mbps cable) + local phones Yousendit (paid) Constant Contact
- lionhearted 18y agoPersonal experience: Dreamhost is the suck. What I saved in hosting fees, I lost due to downtime ("oops, our bad") and absolutely no customer support to call and wonder what the hell is going on. I did some research into hosting, so did an Information Architect friend of mine, and Slicehost has got a good blend of price/reliability. Dreamhost, if you're doing anything with a decent margin or lifetime value of a customer, is a big no-no. Really big. Important business mantra: "Always pay well for money." Hosting that's up falls into this category.
- callmeed 18y agoThe article seems to be based on the premise that "we're bootstrapped, here's the essentials" ... but you're paying to submit to angel investors. Why? If you're able to bootstrap your company, you don't need angel funding (a later vc round, maybe). I do like your writing style though.
- eibrahim 18y agoExcellent observation. I think the problem is that I am currently at the crossroads of being bootstrapped and also considering funding. We have a ton of things that need to be done and can't really do them while bootstrapped. For example, we need an iPhone app and unfortunately, I don't develop for the iPhone. I can probably pick it up pretty quick but I don't have the time (resources) to invest in learning it and would rather pay someone to do it - hence the need for funding. Thanks for the compliment.