rstocker99

9 ms·

31.
by rstocker99 15y ago
You know what I'd pay for? Enterprise sales office hours and online customer acquisition office hours. That would rock. Basically 15 minutes of an experts time over Skype. They'd have to really be an expert but I'd happily pay.
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by rstocker99 16y ago
This is topic that is near and dear to my heart as well. I'm not sure there is a well worn path especially if you're looking to start a business (i.e. something that puts cash in your pocket vs. "starting a startup"). From my experience the
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by rstocker99 16y ago
The fact that the company was rejected by YC and went on to get bought by google seems relevant given the forum and the timing. Lots of people have recently been rejected by YC and hearing about people that have gone on to succeed seems lik
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by rstocker99 16y ago
I'm not sure the problem is that most politicians don't have a decent grasp of the power of incentives or lack a basic understanding in economics. Unfortunately I think they are in fact extremely adept at understanding incentive. Is it poss
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by rstocker99 16y ago
If you're doing something enterprise-y (which it sounds like you are) then you should take a look at the article, "Sean Murphy on the first dozen enterprise customers" that was recently posted to HN here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?
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by rstocker99 16y ago
1) Books. A number of years ago when the startup I worked for got acquired my wife suggested that I go out and buy myself something nice to celebrate. After wandering around looking for something fun to buy and not finding anything that exc
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by rstocker99 16y ago
If you're into this sort of thing and want an engineer friendly breakdown of different approaches for getting off fossil fuels that actually add up I highly recommend, "Sustainable Energy – without the hot air". It lays out a number of alte
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by rstocker99 16y ago
How often have you picked one product over another because of a key difference between them besides price? Price is an important difference but not the only one and not the most important one for all people all of the time. Be different on
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Maturialism: September 2010 Trendwatch Briefing (trendwatching.com)
1 points by rstocker99 16y ago|0 comments
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Tactics for Finding Early Customers For Alpha/Beta Feedback(groups.google.com)
25 points by rstocker99 16y ago|1 comments
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by rstocker99 16y ago
This book is fantastic. It's a great book for bootstrappers. I believe I ran across it on Fog Creek's book list which has some other good books as well. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum...
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by rstocker99 16y ago
I consulted to pay the bills. It worked for me. I think the three toughest things with the contracting approach are: 1. Being disciplined and actually working on your business. I don't have a great answer for this one. Just knuckle down. 2.
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by rstocker99 16y ago
Would folks rather make 70k per year working in their own small profitable software product company (either alone or with a partner) or 100k working for a large software company as a Sr. Software Engineer? What about 60k? I'd happily trade
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by rstocker99 16y ago
Or worse you become the middle manager.
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by rstocker99 16y ago
I really like this idea. I can even imagine signing up. But before I sign up I need to see clear 3rd party validation from 3 or more reputable sources (e.g. Harvard Psychology Prof) that this approach is effective. In a perfect world this w
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by rstocker99 16y ago
I haven't ordered a wakemate. I'm not the target market but I'm always amazed at the level of vitriol that follows their posts here on HN. There is no doubt that their overall communication strategy is a bit "rough". I'm always surprised an
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by rstocker99 16y ago
Anybody have a good list for python?
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by rstocker99 16y ago
I can't stres enough how important your comment is. This is exactly the advice I got from a few of the very successful entrepreneurs that I've met. you can discover much bigger problems and opportunities from working on anything as opposed
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by rstocker99 16y ago
Agreed re: live tv but for everything else "channels" where someone else bundles up content and controls when you watch something makes no sense. How about a model where you pick what you want to watch when you want to watch it and either p
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by rstocker99 16y ago
I found Selling to Big Companies ( http://www.amazon.com/Selling-Big-Companies-Jill-Konrath/dp/... ) helpful. A referral is very helpful. That's not always easy but it's worth racking your brain to try and find a connection. It's also worth
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by rstocker99 16y ago
BTW I'm sure you and the rest of the people who work on Django don't hear this enough so... THANK YOU! I've seen a few similar post recently griping about Django for one thing or another. I guess that's their right but Django saves me a lo
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by rstocker99 16y ago
We're talking about the same conference that was broadcast live for free on justin.tv right?
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by rstocker99 16y ago
It's very likely your pricing is too low. If you're new to pricing consider reading this short free ebook on pricing written by the CEO of Redgate software: http://www.neildavidson.com/dontjustrollthedice.html . It will help you think thro
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by rstocker99 17y ago
I imagine I'm like a lot of HN readers that mostly lurk but have quietly gotten a lot of value out of Patrick's comments and blog posts. In fact just last week I ended up implemented his omnibox idea and automating the cancelation process f
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by rstocker99 17y ago
We use Moneris. The product that covers what you want is eselectplus. You can get info on their API here http://www.eselectplus.ca/en/downloadable-content . They are pretty clueless. We went with them because at the time (2006) they were t
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by rstocker99 17y ago
I see it a little differently. There are only so many viable opportunities available at any given time to invest in. Even if you believe the number of good opportunities is limitless, number of capable people who can act on them isn't. As t
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by rstocker99 17y ago
It's actually more like asking a candidate airplane pilot to fly in a simulator. I'm personally a huge fan of interview questions that require candidates to do tasks that are as close as possible to what they'll actually need to do on the j
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by rstocker99 17y ago
The "how other disciplines think" as tools for your mental toolbox approach is articulated very well by Charlie Munger. It's fair to say that it's worked well for him. He's got a great talk on the topic which pg has posted ( http://ycombina