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Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

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Re: Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

#2
Great article and always good to hear more from Patrick. I still find it incredibly humorous that one of the more influential startup stories on HN is a "simple" Bingo Card Creator. Patrick continually shows that there is no such thing as "simple" when you're striving to be successful.

Favorite bit from the article: "Prior to running a business I ran a WoW guild. It was rather substantially more work and more drama than running a business, for dramatically worse loot."

Re: Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

#3
I can't help but always be totally impressed with Patrick. I admire the way he focuses on every detail of his business and is so thoughtful about everything he does. He is a big reason why reading the comments on this site can be so rewarding.

This was an excellent read.

Re: Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

#4

Great article and always good to hear more from Patrick. I still find it incredibly humorous that one of the more influential startup stories on HN is a "simple" Bingo Card Creator. Patrick continually shows that there is no such thing as "simple" when you're striving to be successful. Favorite bit from the article: "Prior to running a business I ran a WoW guild. It was rather substantially more work and more drama t…

I get a lot of credit (perhaps more than I deserve) because I talk a lot, am amicable, and write in a compelling manner. Communication is the great underlooked startup/engineering skill.

I prefer taking the opposite tack [+] with regards to simplicity: there is indeed such a thing as simple. Your business, on day one, is simple. It will gradually become more complex as you learn things and learn what the business needs, but you don't need to let the complexity coming down the pike scare you away from starting something today. (And compared to many businesses -- from megacorps down to a lot of the startups around here -- BCC is still pretty simple, even four years in. My best marketing strategy can be explained in three Powerpoint slides, all the code I have is under 10kloc, and the core customer need is pretty much unchanged.)

[+] Some day I will learn this English idiom properly, but until I do, thank you guys for correcting me on it.

Re: Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

#5
post #4

Great article and always good to hear more from Patrick. I still find it incredibly humorous that one of the more influential startup stories on HN is a "simple" Bingo Card Creator. Patrick continually shows that there is no such thing as "simple" when you're striving to be successful. Favorite bit from the article: "Prior to running a business I ran a WoW guild. It was rather substantially more work and more drama t…

I get a lot of credit (perhaps more than I deserve) because I talk a lot, am amicable, and write in a compelling manner. Communication is the great underlooked startup/engineering skill. I prefer taking the opposite tack [+] with regards to simplicity: there is indeed such a thing as simple. Your business, on day one, is simple. It will gradually become more complex as you learn things and learn what the business nee…

"the opposite tack". In the interests of compelling writing. And pedantry.

Re: Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

#6
> Apache has a habit of taking down memory-constrained VPSes when hit by large amounts of traffic

Give Nginx a spin if you can. I use 300MB VPSes running Nginx + PHP and have memory to spare to run the dropbox daemon, lightly loaded mysql, etc.

Re: Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

#7
post #6

> Apache has a habit of taking down memory-constrained VPSes when hit by large amounts of traffic Give Nginx a spin if you can. I use 300MB VPSes running Nginx + PHP and have memory to spare to run the dropbox daemon, lightly loaded mysql, etc.

[deleted]

Re: Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

#8
post #4

Great article and always good to hear more from Patrick. I still find it incredibly humorous that one of the more influential startup stories on HN is a "simple" Bingo Card Creator. Patrick continually shows that there is no such thing as "simple" when you're striving to be successful. Favorite bit from the article: "Prior to running a business I ran a WoW guild. It was rather substantially more work and more drama t…

I get a lot of credit (perhaps more than I deserve) because I talk a lot, am amicable, and write in a compelling manner. Communication is the great underlooked startup/engineering skill. I prefer taking the opposite tack [+] with regards to simplicity: there is indeed such a thing as simple. Your business, on day one, is simple. It will gradually become more complex as you learn things and learn what the business nee…

I think the idiom is difficult because it's not a properly understood idiom for most people who speak English. It's a sailing term. When you're sailing into the wind, you criss-cross against it, changing the side of the ship the wind is coming across, so the ship ends up taking zig-zag path through the water. Changing the orientation of the ship so the wind comes across a different side is tacking. It's the opposite of jibing, which is changing which side the wind is coming across with the wind at your back.

Hopefully the context of it helps, taking "the opposite tack" is changing your orientation to reach towards the same goal on a different approach when you're getting off-course with your current approach.

Re: Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

#9
post #6

> Apache has a habit of taking down memory-constrained VPSes when hit by large amounts of traffic Give Nginx a spin if you can. I use 300MB VPSes running Nginx + PHP and have memory to spare to run the dropbox daemon, lightly loaded mysql, etc.

Yep. Sometime after this interview I figured out what my Apache configuration problems were. The short version: KeepAlive, which might as well be called as TurnThisOnToBlockThisServerTotallyEveryTimeYourSiteAppearsInSocialMedia.

Re: Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

#10
Patrick, this was really a great read.

It wasn't clear to me from the article, but it seems that a lot of the 'syncing' of information between databases and services was programmed by hand by you. How much time did you spend on this and if you had to re-setup your infrastructure, would you go with a service that does most of this for you (if one even exists)?

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