tjic

118 ms·

931.
by tjic 18y ago
I own a self-funded startup, and have the president hat, obviously. I'm working through Josh's list of books, and paying for an hour of coaching with Josh once per month...and I find it invaluable.
932.
Kanji backspace seen in the wild.(tjic.com)
7 points by tjic 19y ago|2 comments
933.
by tjic 19y ago
I know that everyone ("everyone") hates software patents. Personally, I don't see what the difference is between patenting something made out of atoms that accomplishes a task in a new way, and patenting something made out of bits or memes
934.
magic / the worm Ouroboros(tjic.com)
1 points by tjic 19y ago|0 comments
935.
"in orbit" (getting a startup to profitability)(tjic.com)
1 points by tjic 19y ago|0 comments
936.
by tjic 19y ago
2,000 subscribers in 90 days? Big deal. We launched HeavyInk.com less than 90 days ago, and we're on track to beat that. ...and those are <i>paying</i> customers. ...and we haven't advertised at all.
937.
by tjic 19y ago
There is a TON of information out there. If even one firm in an industry is public, you can look up their SEC filings at Edgar. You can then look up their web traffic at Alexa, and look up that of their competitors. Hand wave a ratio bet
938.
by tjic 19y ago
Agreed. I'm not down on the humanities - I double majoried in CS and History. I love the humanities - art, literature, history: these things are important. Women studies are not among the "real" humanities - this is a made up, politicall
939.
by tjic 19y ago
Why was this posted to YC news?
940.
by tjic 19y ago
As soon as you can "fix" human nature, you'll have this one solved. People communicate for lots of reasons...and, unfortunately, transmitting information isn't the most important. People posture, they seek out status, they build alliances.
941.
by tjic 19y ago
I haven't investigated yet, but I've got a cron job that fires off once a week, in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, and it googles for a certain term, and requests the first N pages of results, and sees where a particular web page is in th
942.
by tjic 19y ago
I have no moral opposition to contract work - I've been a contractor, and I've hired contractors. There's a trade off. Contractors cost more per unit time than do employees (in the short term), and are usually looking for the next gig. At
943.
Feature: non-YC startups to post to jobs.YC
19 points by tjic 19y ago|10 comments
944.
by tjic 19y ago
I've gotten recommendations from several people...and none of the recommended designers were all that great. The one I use all the time I met on the general interest town mailing list - we are two libertarians in a sea of Massachusetts Dem
945.
by tjic 19y ago
Pretty much. SmartFlix is profitable, but it has debt. All of the salaries, rent, startup inventory, consultant fees, trademark fees, legal fees, etc. for HeavyInk were payed for by profits from SmartFlix. That said, SmartFlix itself has de
946.
by tjic 19y ago
Thanks! You can read a lot more about our design process on our old blog ( http://heavyink.com/blog/ ), but the short version is: 1) come up with basic idea for website 2) put up a survey 3) ping comic bloggers; get 400 people to take sur
947.
by tjic 19y ago
Not personalized recommendations, no. A question for YC-ers: does this sound like a valuable feature? My inclination is to think "no", but I might be wrong...
948.
by tjic 19y ago
The market is about $500 million/year. We're not going to get VC funding, because there's no chance to become a billion dollar player. However, we'd be more than happy to get 2% of the market, and make a 10% profit! As far as why the desi
949.
by tjic 19y ago
My personal blog once got linked by BoingBoing. The machine glowed fiery red, just before it caught fire and died. :-) Hopefully the fact that we've got a dedicated box with extra memory for HeavyInk will stop a repeat of that story...
950.
by tjic 19y ago
Our team of 2.5 engineers (two real engineers, and one half business guy / half engineer) have spent the last three months coding up HeavyInk.com in Rails - it's a mashup of an Amazon.com style retailer for comic books (individual issues, g
951.
Critique our startup: HeavyInk.com(heavyink.com)
19 points by tjic 19y ago|30 comments
952.
by tjic 19y ago
We recently launched HeavyInk.com (a mashup of a comic book retailer, collection management, social networking, etc.) competing in a somewhat crowded market of comic book retailers. Before we did this, I did a lot of competitive research. I
953.
by tjic 19y ago
A profitable company has earnings. A public company (or even one that has recently sold shares on SOME market) has a price. Divide the price by the earnings, and you get the P/E ratio. There is a range of sane P/E ratios. No stock ever tra
954.
by tjic 19y ago
I object to your phrase "worthy individuals". Noone is worthy or unworthy - what they choose to do with their time and talents are either worthy or unworthy. I am not an ABSOLUTE apologist for capitalism, but I will say that the vast major
955.
Ruby hacker needed for 1-2 week gig a short bike ride from Cambridge(heavyink.com)
1 points by tjic 19y ago|0 comments