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Good call. I need to forward vladlokshin.com to DarwinApps.com If you wrote a blog post about apps pricing & expectations, ran an app dev shop, and frequented

Good call. I need to forward vladlokshin.com to DarwinApps.com If you wrote a blog post about apps pricing & expectations, ran an app dev shop, and frequented HN, wouldn't that be only logical to do if you posted something? Nice detective skills, but I'm not hiding anything.

napoleond 14y ago
No kidding. I'm really glad you posted--my company is (by my estimation) a couple of years behind yours, and I think we can learn a lot from the way you guys are doing things, so thanks!
- vlokshin 14y ago
  You'd probably be surprised at how new/young we are, but I appreciate the unintentional compliment :) In reality, we've been doing this outside of our 9-5s for a couple of years (with the majority of the "we" coming together while trying to build a few internal projects). Most of our dev team has been full-time for a bit over 1 year now. Start-ups are rough and when you're bootstrapping through consulting, some months are great, and some months are rough. I kept my full-time to feed in money during the bad months to keep the machine growing at times that I knew it was in the right direction. I had that job up until a little over a month ago. The full-time job was actually great (consulting at the US HQ of a top-tier German car company, ironically enough) but I'm awful at working for someone else, there was too much talent and goodness brewing behind the DarwinApps team, and I was clearly the bottleneck. It's not easy doing something like this while you have a 9-5, but if you're young and single, it's doable. I'm not saying it's not doable otherwise, just speaking from what I know. We are by no means a success just yet, but most of the core team is finally in one of two offices, working on the same problems full-time. It's a beautiful thing, but it's by no means a success just yet. That being said, a lot of awesome people helped me with advice along the way. I'd love to help if you have any specific questions, think I could answer them, and if you think it would help progress your company in the right direction. Feel free to email me: Vlad (at) DarwinApps.com
  - napoleond 14y ago
    That sounds like quite the journey! Thanks so much for your generous offer Vlad, I'll be in touch with specific questions soon.

napoleond 14y ago

No kidding. I'm really glad you posted--my company is (by my estimation) a couple of years behind yours, and I think we can learn a lot from the way you guys are doing things, so thanks!

vlokshin 14y ago
You'd probably be surprised at how new/young we are, but I appreciate the unintentional compliment :) In reality, we've been doing this outside of our 9-5s for a couple of years (with the majority of the "we" coming together while trying to build a few internal projects). Most of our dev team has been full-time for a bit over 1 year now. Start-ups are rough and when you're bootstrapping through consulting, some months are great, and some months are rough. I kept my full-time to feed in money during the bad months to keep the machine growing at times that I knew it was in the right direction. I had that job up until a little over a month ago. The full-time job was actually great (consulting at the US HQ of a top-tier German car company, ironically enough) but I'm awful at working for someone else, there was too much talent and goodness brewing behind the DarwinApps team, and I was clearly the bottleneck. It's not easy doing something like this while you have a 9-5, but if you're young and single, it's doable. I'm not saying it's not doable otherwise, just speaking from what I know. We are by no means a success just yet, but most of the core team is finally in one of two offices, working on the same problems full-time. It's a beautiful thing, but it's by no means a success just yet. That being said, a lot of awesome people helped me with advice along the way. I'd love to help if you have any specific questions, think I could answer them, and if you think it would help progress your company in the right direction. Feel free to email me: Vlad (at) DarwinApps.com
- napoleond 14y ago
  That sounds like quite the journey! Thanks so much for your generous offer Vlad, I'll be in touch with specific questions soon.