Having this option makes me think that maybe the author is having a tough time being a capitalist. I've come across quite a few people who are uncomfortable making a profit off of someone else and instead provide the option to give things away so they don't "feel bad".
Great idea, but I get spooked easily. I signed up, figured I'd add GitHub, saw "This application will be able to delete any repository to which you have admin rights," and ran away.
Thanks for you feedback. I get it, we had a few people say this. We're working on limiting what GitHub can do, whilst retaining usefulness.
Despite the admin rights, we don't include that functionality to delete repos. All we do is calculate and display cost, show relevant contextual info such as repos and organizations.
Completely understand. We've just updated our scope to the minimum requirements to collect billing data. Please feel free to connect and let us know your thoughts. Thanks!
Interesting idea. My wife and I joined something similar but specifically for new parents in Seattle called "PEPS" (http://www.peps.org) when we had kids. We got together once a week for twelve weeks. We had a facilitator who loosely guided us in a discussion theme. Of course we all had one big thing in common (kids born within about 3 months of each other), but it was still surprising how well we got along. I've heard similar comments from people in other groups.
So, a few questions...
1. Where are you right now in bringing this to life?
2. What are you finding difficult about getting this launched, and what are you doing to address those challenges?
3. Describe the person who really fits your target audience - what defines them as a group?
I've soft launched it. You can sign up now. Still in the early days, so not a huge user base yet. But it's fully capable of doing what's promised.
I really think anyone who doesn't have a really great network or feels like their part of a community would benefit greatly from using it. It's not just about meeting a few people, or make a couple friends, it's about building a really powerful community.
However, the people I think would benefit most are the ones who have recently moved to a new city or even a new neighborhood in the same city and don't know many people nearby. Kids coming out of college would be an easy target, but middle and old age people also tend to be the most socially isolated.
As someone who is in the scenario you describe (new city - don't know many people), I really love this idea. I would definitely use it if it were a big thing, but it will be a less than ideal experience in the early stages (not many prospective friends/groups).
I think one of your biggest challenges would be getting enough users to start. Also, it seems like you'd run into problems that face online dating, where if the service is successful, your users will no longer need you. Have you thought at all about how to deal with that problem?
It's true that there aren't many filled out groups yet. If it were an online dating type thing where you have to choose people from a list, then it would be a problem. But placing people into groups is handled automatically, choice is removed from the equation. That's definitely a feature, not a bug. No one in history has ever chosen who their friends from a big list. User's sign up and then forget about it. When they get a notification that people join their group, then they can become active on the platform. I can grow slowly and organically to get to the point where groups fill out and they start hanging out together. Once they do and they really start loving it, I hope it'll pick up a lot.
I think there is already a lot there for people to want to keep using it. First, expanding the group is kind of a slow process (so you're given enough time to become close to people). So if you want to have that expansive network, then you'll keep using it. A lot of the time on dating apps, you're looking for one person and then you're done. But you're allowed (expected) to have multiple friends. So it doesn't end with your first group. Second, I think the group messaging system is pretty solid. You're "born" into, so you don't have to go to Facebook messenger and set up a group there. Third, the activity creator is also really solid. It get's rid of all the back and forth involved in getting people to hang out, so it helps alleviate that pain point too.
I have a lot of other ideas for features to add in the future that will keep people engaged, but I won't get into them here.
Consider an insurance agent who sells to small businesses. They have zero software people in-house and perhaps 1.5 people who do marketing.
You tell those people "Write about the businesses you work with. Write about the kind or risks they have... Do the work upfront on education and you will be the obvious place to buy it from."
This works. Very well.
It works very well, if you can get the insurance agent to follow your instructions. In my experience (I co-founded agentmethods.com, which is roughly "Hubspot for insurance agents"), the best insurance agents often aren't the best writers and frankly don't want to do the work.
In a world where everyone wants the results but nobody wants to do the work, you quickly find snake oil sales people showing up selling the promise of no-work instant results. We've all come across those sleazy SEO firms promising first page rankings for a phrase nobody searches for. I'm not saying that Hubspot is that firm, but it is the world they play in.
Last update was pretty good especially in case of 15" MBP, increase of SSD read to 2GB/s and write to 1.5GB/s is, in my opinion, significant. Current CPUs are still very good.
There's another type of hybridized consultancy/product business to consider: have a product and provide value-added consulting around the product. This tends to work best with B2B products that require implementation legwork, customization, or just general thought on the customer side to get maximum value.
For example, at Guidearama.com, our platform lets businesses turn marketing assets (videos, white papers, case studies, etc.) into a resource center on their website with lead generating landing pages. We've often ended up managing the entire program our clients are implementing around our platform. This can be packaged at a fixed cost and is much easier to price based on value than normal time & materials work. To our clients, we look like heroes because we can produce results very quickly using guidearama.com that in their minds should take 10x longer to complete.
There are a few benefits to this hybrid approach:
* The consulting work becomes decommoditized. You gain an unfair advantage because you developed the product the client is interfacing with.
* Your product builds your pipeline for you so you spend less time on sales and marketing.
* Your consulting work becomes more efficient because you can automate many tasks in your product that would otherwise take time if you were doing straight consulting work
In patio11's case, I don't think there wasn't an opportunity to do this because his consulting work and Bingo Card Creator didn't overlap - the case might be different with Appointment Reminder.
I'll second that. It makes CB Insights look good because it now is well-known that a slightly more unscrupulous competitor stole the otherwise brilliant design of CB Insights because they were unable to come up with something they could call their own (or do better than CB Insights).
It's the lazy way. The beautiful thing about it? Those who copy (blatantly) are doomed to fail. In most cases, they will lack the understanding and foundation of how you arrived at the designs in the first place which certainly consisted of iteration and changes based on interactions with & feedback from customers.
"What if he doesn't take the garbage out in the correct manner?"
Funny example. We stayed at a place rented through airbnb last weekend in Tokyo that had a three ring binder containing only a 10 page guide on how to properly sorry the recycling. And even with that, I'm 100% sure we got it wrong.
Yep, the recycling/trash system is nightmarish. Furnishing a new apartment (they don't typically come with anything, including a washer or fridge) results in a huge amount of packaging (the Japanese absolutely love to box, rebox, bag, rebag, wrap, rewrap, etc.) which makes your first month a very nasty lesson in how trash pickup works and doesn't.
On the same logic moving out of a place requires planning in advance what to throw and when. You're moving on saturday and have to throw your remaining cleaning stuff ? Too bad, non burning garbage is on tuesday. If your building doesn't have a garbage room you'll be pissing off the neighbourhood for 4 days.
I was going to justify all the complexity by an extremely good recycling rate, but it seems Japan is at 20% on average, which is behind 16 other countries [0], way behind South Korea.
If you are moving out, then you bring the trash of the old apartment with you and you throw it the day that you are supposed to throw it in the new neighborhood.
It is a no-brainer for Japanese.
Been there, seen that. :)
I'm a work from home dad. One thing I've learned is that no work gets done when the kids are at home (well, awake and at home). I start work super early and we still send the kids to daycare, but I do have tons of flexibility to be a dad that a regular job wouldn't provide.
I've never worked through elance, but I've hired a lot of people there. In my experience (again, as a hirer), once I find someone good, I stick with them. I've got freelancers that I met on elance years ago that I still work with. Don't know if this is normal, but if it is, I'd focus on building relationships and think of it as a marketing channel as opposed to your long-term revenue stream.
You mean like last Friday (closed for training) and yesterday (closed for Columbus Day)? Well, one thing I don't do during those days is read hacker news (sorry for the delay getting back to you).
I take full advantage of my flexibility. When the kids are off, I take the day off too. My wife's vacation days are limited & tracked, mine aren't, so I'm the first backup when daycare is closed. Not always the best for work, but I do really enjoy those days. Friday was a blast - I made breakfast for the kids, we hit the park, met my wife for lunch, I sped through some work while the kids napped, and then we had an encore park visit.
Looking back over your list of skills, you cover a lot of different technologies. I think it might be wise to pick something to be known for and run with it. Don't leave it up to your future customers to figure out what they can use you for because they will never figure it out.
Yep I was particularly interested in long breaks for the kids and how you handle that, but I see you're able to work around it.
Thanks for the feedback on picking my tech, I guess you're right but thats what happens when you work in project environments. I'll put forward my primary skills as my value prop.
