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Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

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Re: Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

#91

Post by bhayden »

dangrossman wrote: post #90
bhayden wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, and I don't mean this at all in a negative way: Why do people pay for W3Counter when Google Analytics is free and seemingly a lot more powerful? Do people really find GA that intimidating?

W3Counter's more fun. It's bright, colorful, nothing's buried multiple menus deep. Whole classrooms sign up for it every year while learning to build webpages. It gives your site a hit counter so you can watch the visit count go up every time someone new checks out your site. You can "spy" on those new visitors, seeing where they came from, watch them move page-to-page, stuff GA doesn't do with its aggregate-level ba…

Unless I'm misunderstanding, I am fairly certain GA does everything you just describe. They have a real-time menu option and I can see my users going from page to page. I can see the number of people on my website right now (21).

I guess the bottom line is your platform is much more approachable and easier to understand. Thanks for the response.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

#92

Post by dangrossman »

bhayden wrote: post #91
dangrossman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

W3Counter's more fun. It's bright, colorful, nothing's buried multiple menus deep. Whole classrooms sign up for it every year while learning to build webpages. It gives your site a hit counter so you can watch the visit count go up every time someone new checks out your site. You can "spy" on those new visitors, seeing where they came from, watch them move page-to-page, stuff GA doesn't do with its aggregate-level ba…

Unless I'm misunderstanding, I am fairly certain GA does everything you just describe. They have a real-time menu option and I can see my users going from page to page. I can see the number of people on my website right now (21). I guess the bottom line is your platform is much more approachable and easier to understand. Thanks for the response.

Following individual users around (something W3Counter lets you do) is fundamentally different than a real-time aggregate dashboard of the same users (something both sites have). A dashboard is interesting to a business. Friend-watching is interesting to ordinary people. "Oh, I just got a new visitor from Facebook in Camden. I have a friend in Camden, that's probably Jessica! I wonder what she's looking at? Oh, she just opened the guestbook page and has started writing something!" is fun for someone running their first blog.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

#93

Post by bhayden »

dangrossman wrote: post #92
bhayden wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, I am fairly certain GA does everything you just describe. They have a real-time menu option and I can see my users going from page to page. I can see the number of people on my website right now (21). I guess the bottom line is your platform is much more approachable and easier to understand. Thanks for the response.

Following individual users around (something W3Counter lets you do) is fundamentally different than a real-time aggregate dashboard of the same users (something both sites have). A dashboard is interesting to a business. Friend-watching is interesting to ordinary people. "Oh, I just got a new visitor from Facebook in Camden. I have a friend in Camden, that's probably Jessica! I wonder what she's looking at? Oh, she j…

Thanks for the responses, this sounds cheesy but you're an inspiration for the goals that I'm working towards right now (making SaaS products for small businesses). I will start working on it full time in about 4 months (with ~2 years of living expenses saved up). You give me hope that it's not just a pipe dream :)

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

#94

Post by zephyr4434 »

I am in year two of my startup and it's basically:

Wake up at 7am, work out, work until 7pm, rush home to eat quickly for 20 minutes (on the walk to and from work listening to podcasts about startups and business), and working until midnight.

Weekends, spend the afternoons working. Paying ourselves (two founders) $36k/year until we reach certain milestones.

I make tradeoffs - there is only really time for work, working out, and occasionally going out. This means not a lot of time with friends, going back to China to see extended family, and constantly feeling stressed.

But getting to work full-time on something you believe in and having the opportunity to build a great business and achieve financial independence is totally worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

#95

Post by tootall »

HankRollings wrote: post #53

I build and sell an enterprise software product. First 12 months--sales were low. Eventually, I saw sales in the $10-50K/mo range. I'm now seeing $50K-100K/mo. I work alone, I have no investors, and my overhead is minimal. My main luxury is eating out. I don't sweat ordering what I want. I get that appetizer when I want it. I don't wince when a waiter reminds me that refills cost. I live in a modest city apartment. L…

This was highly inspirational and I loved it, especially "My customers and I enter into a business transaction as peers. This mutual respect is very important to me".

If I might ask, what kind of enterprise software can generate that much profit from a one-man shop?

Thanks

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

#96

Post by amac »

I try to work on my startup on the side between a job and studying for a masters. I spend time on my company (an ecommerce based wearable startup) developing and shipping product.

The free time I have I use to run around Hong Kong Island where I live and elsewhere, in the university library reading various books.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

#97

Post by 147 »

dangrossman wrote: post #37
dereking wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you go about gathering customers? Also, what are the 3 main lessons you learned from the other failed startups?

These lessons won't apply to 99% of startups, but they're what I've learned work for me: Sell to small businesses. Not consumers (too hard to convince them to spend money), not enterprise (too much work for me; I hate sales). Make something that will earn the customer money, or save them money. If it can earn or save them more than you charge, it's easy to sell, and they'll be happy to pay for it. That covers a surpr…

Hey Dan,

Got a ton of value out of your post. Just wondering one thing, how much of Improvely did you build before you started running ads?

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

#98

Post by HankRollings »

tootall wrote: post #95
HankRollings wrote: post #53

I build and sell an enterprise software product. First 12 months--sales were low. Eventually, I saw sales in the $10-50K/mo range. I'm now seeing $50K-100K/mo. I work alone, I have no investors, and my overhead is minimal. My main luxury is eating out. I don't sweat ordering what I want. I get that appetizer when I want it. I don't wince when a waiter reminds me that refills cost. I live in a modest city apartment. L…

This was highly inspirational and I loved it, especially "My customers and I enter into a business transaction as peers. This mutual respect is very important to me". If I might ask, what kind of enterprise software can generate that much profit from a one-man shop? Thanks

My business is in the IT security realm.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

#99

Post by rajacombinator »

eastdakota wrote: post #70

What's struck me is how much it's changed over the last 6 (!) years of building CloudFlare. 2009: "Student Life" / CloudFlare started as a student project. First year felt very academic. Worked irregular hours. Weren't sure what we were supposed to be doing. Lots of research. Lots of change (relocated from Boston to the Bay Area). The whole time we didn't really think we were building a company, we thought we were re…

Great story thanks for sharing. The parts about your personal and business security problems was surprising. I would think Cloudflare is a pretty niche product with a rational customer base. But I guess if you really piss off some developers they can think of clever ways to make life miserable.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what's your lifestyle like?

#100

Post by snowwrestler »

dangrossman wrote: post #23

Mostly free time. Probably not much different than most retirees with money in the bank. I always wanted independence. I never wanted employees. SaaS is a wonderful business model for that. It took 10 years and a dozen ideas to find 2 businesses I could run on my own, be low-touch enough that I'd not have to be hands-on with every customer, and pay enough to be a viable alternative to employment. Most of my web app i…

Your Zendesk link on the Awio site does not work.
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