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Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#21

Post by maneesh »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #14
maneesh wrote: post #3

After years of R&D, heartache, and rough decisions --- I finally turned my hardware company ( http://pavlok.com ) profitable! We make technology to break bad habits, wake up earlier, and reduce cravings. I decided to try to build a hardware company without raising VC --- which is probably one of the hardest decisions you can make. And required about 30 people to make a reality. But now that we have finally got our ma…

And quite a niche. Just wondering, do you dropship or sell to webshops? Seems quite nice usage of a watch. I also have another proposition which i would like to share / ask. Is there an email where i can contact you?

maneesh@pavlok.com, of course. I'm better at FB: http://facebook.com/msethi .

We manufacture in Massachusetts and we sell on our own site, Amazon, and as of last week in retail(!!!). We are certainly open to wholesale, whitelabeling, and partnering --- we have a totally open API as well! (http://pavlok.com/api)

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#22

Post by echelon »

I wrote a concatenative Donald Trump text to speech engine [1]. It kind of sounds like garbage right now since I rushed to complete it before the election--I had no idea he'd win. I read lots of literature on speech and linguistics, synthesis algorithms, and more. I also had to curate a large sample of Trump speech.

I wrote the backend in Rust, so I was able to learn quite a bit more about Rust in the process.

Since Trump won the election, I'll devote some time in Q1 2017 to improving the voice quality. I'm especially interested in applying deep learning techniques to generating a larger n-phone data set.

My second largest accomplishment will be what I'm going to pull off for New Year's, but that's a surprise. It involves multiple watts of lasers, though. :)

[1] http://jungle.horse

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#24

Post by joshcanhelp »

Sold a company.

I learned A LOT in the process, main one being that you should keep meticulous and separate records for anything that has the chance of being spun off. The company I sold grew out of my freelancing but was separate with a separate name. Unwiring the financials as well as the logins and everything else was a headache. It also looks better to your buyer if you can quickly produce accurate records on sales. I had to back-track and re-calculate several times, leading to more back-and-forth than was necessary.

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#25

Post by [deleted] »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #14
maneesh wrote: post #3

After years of R&D, heartache, and rough decisions --- I finally turned my hardware company ( http://pavlok.com ) profitable! We make technology to break bad habits, wake up earlier, and reduce cravings. I decided to try to build a hardware company without raising VC --- which is probably one of the hardest decisions you can make. And required about 30 people to make a reality. But now that we have finally got our ma…

And quite a niche. Just wondering, do you dropship or sell to webshops? Seems quite nice usage of a watch. I also have another proposition which i would like to share / ask. Is there an email where i can contact you?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#28

Post by doh »

Many great stories here already.

Mine biggest accomplishment (probably of my life) was turning our almost bankrupted company into profit just in 4 short months [0].

I learned many great things, but the most important lesson is that if you treat your employees with respect and you don't hide things from them, they will stick around and help you to push through. Without them, I would have nothing today.

[0] https://medium.com/@synopsi/from-near-bankruptcy-to-profitab...

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#29

Post by arrmn »

maneesh wrote: post #3

After years of R&D, heartache, and rough decisions --- I finally turned my hardware company ( http://pavlok.com ) profitable! We make technology to break bad habits, wake up earlier, and reduce cravings. I decided to try to build a hardware company without raising VC --- which is probably one of the hardest decisions you can make. And required about 30 people to make a reality. But now that we have finally got our ma…

I got one this year but I'm not really using it. I should really give it a shot

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#30

Post by LaSombra »

I landed my dream job 20 years after I decided what and where I wanted.

It took me a lot of time. Battling low self-esteem, giving it up for a while, following the wrong path, surviving after being fired for the first and only time.

I learned perseverance. Once I set my mind on it and worked around distractions, people and my own mind, I got what I truly wanted and I'm loving and learning every single day.

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