mtlynch

42 ms·

1. 751.▲
   by mtlynch 3y ago

   It's sort of apples and oranges because the mini PC you purchased almost certainly can't capture HDMI video and can't emulate a USB device.
2. 752.▲
   by mtlynch 3y ago

   I think detailed tracking can be helpful, but I don't think it's necessary. I reduced time I spent on TinyPilot in 2022 even though I don't have rigorous time tracking to prove it. Do you have recommendations for granular tim
3. 753.▲
   by mtlynch 3y ago

   No, that's an interesting idea. I don't know that much about that market, but I guess it seems like a bad sign that SlingBox couldn't make it work even with dominant market position.
4. 754.▲
   by mtlynch 3y ago

   Nice work! I think units sold varies so much by business, so no need to feel shame at all. Selling 100 units per year is a nice spot to be in because you're making sales frequently enough that you probably have some knobs to adjust and
5. 755.▲
   by mtlynch 3y ago

   > I looked up the CPU for one of the devices. It's the same one used in Raspberry Pi 4. It's the same CPU because inside it is a Raspberry Pi 4. We publish instructions for people to build their own.[0] > he has a privile
6. 756.▲
   by mtlynch 3y ago

   > Folks love Shopify, and it does work very well. But for my small businesses I've been very happily using Woocommerce on Wordpress, basically nothing but the hosting cost for Wordpress, and it's been delivering very well. I&#x
7. 757.▲
   by mtlynch 3y ago

   Thanks for reading and for the kind words! > Have you always been so disciplined in life? If not, how did you improve it? No, I was a lot less disciplined when I was younger. I remember as a teen trying to learn Java several times and a
8. 758.▲
   by mtlynch 3y ago

   Thanks so much, Wenbin! It's been really fun following your journey with ListenNotes as well!
9. 759.▲
   by mtlynch 3y ago

   Yes, I'd very much like to! So far, I just have the landing page: https://refactoringenglish.com/
10. 760.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for reading! I hadn't heard that about credit card rewards. I'll talk it over with my accountant. Thanks for the tip! > Also those cloud expenses look significant. That looks like an 80% increase year-over-year which is
11. 761.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Cool to know that there are people interested! I'm still a Zig beginner, but I'm hoping there are enough Zig-curious folks to support a book or course.
12. 762.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for reading! > How did you manage stress/depression during the time? I don't think I ever reached the point of depression, but I definitely had bouts of severe stress and anxiety about the business. Some things that hel
13. 763.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for the kind words! Yeah, power cycling is one of our top requests and a feature I'd like to have personally. If we just plugged into the ATX pins on the motherboard, that would be technically pretty straightforward, but it incr
14. 764.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks! I'm currently contributing roughly that amount into a SEP IRA.
15. 765.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for reading! > I'd like to understand the steps leading up to these six years. What motivated you to create that particular product? was it simply something that interested you and that you believed had potential? What was th
16. 766.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Yeah, I think there are ways we can do it. It's just that with every hoop to jump through and layer of friction, it makes it a little less appealing than other paths to increase revenue, so I end up not doing it. I think it's very
17. 767.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for reading! > where do your advertising dollars go and how do you measure their success? Sorry, but advertising spend is one of the few things I avoid sharing publicly. Most other things about my strategy, I think our execution
18. 768.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    I did try that for a while and still have a couple of affiliates, but it wasn't that successful. It could be that I just didn't invest in it enough for it to work. One of the biggest obstacles was that I hated all of the affiliate
19. 769.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Are you sure you're not thinking about corporations? TinyPilot is a single-member LLC, so all the income is on my personal tax returns. When I said I don't draw a salary, it was to prevent confusion about whether payroll includes
20. 770.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Cory Zue writes about similar topics, and I draw a lot of inspiration from him: https://www.coryzue.com/ Suket Karnawat also left Google to pursue a similar path, and he writes regular updates about his progress: https:&#x
21. 771.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for reading! > /r/tinypilot link in the footer leads to a locked sub, so it's kinda pointless. Oh, thanks for catching that! I've been unhappy with reddit's direction ever since the 3rd-party APIs meltdow
22. 772.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for reading! > I am curious about your ad spend. I noticed that it dropped 24%. I added a few more details about that in a different reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39398746 > Can you talk about yo
23. 773.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for reading! Edit: Sorry, I just realized you meant my blog, not the TinyPilot website. My blog is just Hugo + Netlify, and the source is public.[2] -- The web tech stack is actually one of my biggest regrets. It's a static site
24. 774.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for reading, and that's really nice to hear. That quitting Google post ended up being more popular than I ever expected, so from time to time, people tell me, "Oh, you're that quitting Google guy. Glad it worked out!&q
25. 775.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for reading and for the kind words! > Shipping a hardware product as a bootstrapped founder sounds (at least) an order of magnitude harder than a software product. Yeah, it ended up being way harder than I expected. I actually di
26. 776.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Good question! I actually hadn't noticed it changed that much, but you're right. The biggest difference was that in 2022, I hired a paid ads consultant to set up ads automation for me on a few different platforms. That had a high
27. 777.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks so much! I'm really glad to hear that. I take the support really seriously because I get so frustrated with most companies' customer service and technical support. When customers contact TinyPilot, I always want them to fee
28. 778.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Thanks for reading! > Have you run any pricing experiments after that? No, I haven't tinkered with the price much for the past few months. I have a hard time doing price experiments because at my volumes, I have to collect a few we
29. 779.▲
    by mtlynch 3y ago

    Author here. As always, I'm happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.
30. 780.▲
    My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder(mtlynch.io)

    1071 points by mtlynch 3y ago|321 comments