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Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

kinsta.com

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Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#101

Post by adventured »

dilyevsky wrote: post #96

> Wait to receive 50, 100 or even more applications. Make sure you have a big pool of candidates because that’s how you’ll find your next dream employee. > After that, we start narrowing down the list to the top 5 or 10 candidates. We have multiple rounds of job interviews, usually 2 or 3. Thanks to this we are able to narrow down our list to the top 3 candidates and make the final decision. Yes, this process takes t…

By the time they're done compiling that massive list, and then narrowing it down, in this job market (which is set to get even tighter), their dream candidate is long gone.

Far more realistic: you have to constantly adapt to the labor market a lot more than their rigid premise suggests. There is no actual dream candidate (just like the article's premise is a fantasy), they do not exist, they have never existed, they will never exist; smart compromise is an always present requirement of success and that goes for team building as well as anything else.

Or to steal from a related concept: a great candidate hired today, is better than a fantasy dream candidate hired at some unknown time in the future.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#102

Post by ben-schaaf »

enraged_camel wrote: post #46
hawkice wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recommendation: leave. Websites won't stop doing something intrusive and annoying until it costs them more than it gets them.

Yeah but how are they going to realize people are leaving because of that one specific thing?

Natural selection. Sites that use this tactic would get less revenue and thus have a higher chance of dying than those that don't. Therefore, over time, sites would trend towards not having that feature.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#103

Post by dahart »

wheresmyusern wrote: post #32

this blog post is a kind of guide to starting your own company and making millions of dollars. this is a little unrelated but i just find it funny to read this guide because its very convoluted. there is actually a much simpler guide that their guide is a derivation of. here is the actual guide: step one: be more intelligent than most people behind almost every business, behind almost every professional success and b…

> behind almost any success in general that ive seen, is a highly intelligent person

This sounds to me like multiple flavors of selection bias, e.g., survivorship bias, confirmation bias, etc.

Have you looked into how many very smart people achieve nothing of significance? There are a lot of them...

> step one: be more intelligent than most people

Studies have shown that founder IQ correllates lower than other factors with business success. (I assume you're talking about IQ, otherwise defining being "smart" to mean do what it takes to be successful is a tautology.)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2013/11/27/smarts...

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140717120528-117825785-what...

http://scientificbrains.com/people-with-higher-iq-makes-more...

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#104

Post by nathan_f77 »

There's a few other comments in here talking about their own experiences, so I'll add mine as well. I'm working on a bootstrapped startup called FormAPI: https://formapi.io

I launched about a month ago, and my MRR is 3 figures. Here's a few of the marketing ideas I've tried.

* I spent around $100 on AdWords, but didn't get any conversions. I think my ad was pretty good, but my theory is that most of my target audience are using ad-blockers.

* I started a blog, and wrote a post about Rails/React development [1]. It was included in the Ruby Weekly newsletter, which was great, although it didn't get too many views (* I ran a "Bitcoin Treasure Hunt" [2] with a few programming challenges. I had a good spike of about 60,000 views, so some programmers might remember the service next time they need to generate PDFs. I couldn't get any attention on Reddit or Hacker News, but maybe I'll have better luck next time.

I learned a lot from this experience, so the next one will be much more interesting, and it won't have any ambiguities or mistakes. It will be less of a "scavenger hunt", and will have more fun challenges with algorithms and logic puzzles. (There's a signup form at the bottom of the post, if you're interested.)

* I paid for a short marketing consultation with someone who has a lot of relevant experience. They've been really awesome, and have provided a lot of great advice that I'll be implementing soon. Lots of things to improve around pricing, SEO, UX, social, PR, etc.

The initial launch went pretty well on HN and Product Hunt, but that traffic has died down, so now I've just got to put in consistent work over the next few years.

[1] https://formapi.io/blog/posts/json-patch-with-rails-5-and-re...

[2] https://formapi.io/blog/posts/bitcoin-treasure-hunt/

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#105

Post by j_s »

mikeokner wrote: post #40

The #1 best piece of advice in the article is: > The best way to get things done is to simply sit down and start working on them. So many people worry so much about failure that they don't even bother to start. You can't possibly plan for every roadblock and eventuality. The only thing you can control is your execution, and there are no short cuts. Hard work won't guarantee success, but lack of it will guarantee fail…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7602816

"stop trying to be clever and start trying to be done"

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#106

Post by rovek »

tw1010 wrote: post #9

Is it possible to block all websites from asking about enabling notifications? Every time I have allowed it have I regretted it, and every time I see the little dialog box asking for my permission do I feel slightly more desire to just close down the tab and read something else.

The question I often end up asking myself is "what possible reason could this website think I have for wanting notifications from them?", this site being a great example. I guess the sad reality is they want you to just dismiss the popup with the primary button, without thinking, so they can spam you.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#107

Post by mattmanser »

helloimraghav wrote: post #59
_m8fo wrote: post #10

Random sidenote: I feel that a ton of sites have the exact same visual style as kinsta. Is this a template or something? If so, which one is it?

Relevant: https://twitter.com/chopse/status/930935055274225664

Her personal site is terrible though, slow loading, 3.2Mb, has to compile and run all the javascript before it even starts displaying anything.

Why listen to someone who's basically got the new version of a flash website?

Also, try making your screen half width, as if you had two browser windows side-by-side, something I do regularly.

I mean, it's one thing to throw mud about everyone copying stripe, it's another when your own site is shockingly bad.

All it does is show that perhaps it's better to have designers copy successful designs given what they'll sometimes do left to their own devices.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#108

Post by ransom1538 »

zenlikethat wrote: post #93
ransom1538 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, just not use servers. Aws lambda, etc - and never care ever.

Until you run out of your starter account limits. AWS magic still needs to be monitored and alerted on.

Click on the email? Create a ticket? really? Compared to devops?

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#109

Post by albedoa »

dilyevsky wrote: post #96

> Wait to receive 50, 100 or even more applications. Make sure you have a big pool of candidates because that’s how you’ll find your next dream employee. > After that, we start narrowing down the list to the top 5 or 10 candidates. We have multiple rounds of job interviews, usually 2 or 3. Thanks to this we are able to narrow down our list to the top 3 candidates and make the final decision. Yes, this process takes t…

Yup, followed by "Oh you've received other offers? We'll see if we can accelerate the process on our end".

No thanks, I'll just go with the existing offer from a company that doesn't hoist neon red flags during their interview process.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#110

Post by brightball »

confiscate wrote: post #97
brightball wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That I can't say. I took a class in person once a week.

which class did you take?

It's been years now, but it was one of the Sandler Training classes.

https://www.sandler.com/sales-training

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