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How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code

#21

Post by dmor »

As one of the early event organizers to use imhello just want to say we love you guys, and still want to have you back -- until I read this I thought you'd fallen off the face of the Earth. You guys helped us with badges at out City Hall event (where Tim O'Reilly spoke) and also with an event at Twilio HQ. I'm really happy to hear you're back, and my one piece of advice is that once you have that initial traction and buzz don't let it die.

As an event organizer, I felt like you guys were doing for free what I normally had to pay someone to do - manning the front door. It was very valuable, having you there and putting your logo on our badges felt like 100% win-win. Good luck with view.io

Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code

#22

Post by axod »

[deleted] wrote: post #18
wccrawford wrote: post #6

The exaggerations in titles are really starting to bother me. Yes, you started with 300 lines of code... But then you modified it several times for different conferences, and enhanced it a lot when you really become popular. Only after that did you sell it.

[deleted]

Because HN used to be above that linkbait BS.

The story is interesting and useful and stands up on its own without having to resort to "in only 300 lines!!!".

Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code

#23

Post by bjonathan »

"Make sure you click the link above instead of typing it through the browser, so we can know you were referred from Hacker News and can give priority access." (even if I think this point is bullshit): There is a clickable link to View : http://view.io

Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code

#24

Post by SwellJoe »

I reached the end of this story and thought, "These guys have not fully learned the lesson of product failure. Nor have they learned to recognize product success."

You made a product no one wanted, and in order to market it, you stumbled onto a product that lots of people wanted in a market where billions of dollars are spent each year (we spend about 10 grand a year on conferences, and we're a tiny company with a tiny marketing budget). You've now ditched the product people wanted, presumably selling it for a pittance, and went right back to a similar mobile app to the one you couldn't convince anyone to use, despite excellent marketing savvy.

It sounds like you guys are a great team, and I bet you'll make many great products in the years to come. I hope you'll also figure out that when the market speaks that loudly, it's a good idea to listen. I had the same problem for many years; it took me three years, from the time we first wrote the code, to realize that Virtualmin could be a great business.

Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code

#25

Post by noodle »

pclark wrote: post #15
noodle wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and evangelized the hell out of it, too, which isn't exactly easy work. i mean, its still a good story. but the tl;dr title isn't accurate.

Titles aren't meant to be a tl;dr

they aren't always, no, but this one's wording definitely sounds like a summary, and is at least somewhat misleading.

Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code

#26

Post by [deleted] »

wccrawford wrote: post #6

The exaggerations in titles are really starting to bother me. Yes, you started with 300 lines of code... But then you modified it several times for different conferences, and enhanced it a lot when you really become popular. Only after that did you sell it.

[deleted]

Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code

#28

Post by axod »

zbowling wrote: post #16
wccrawford wrote: post #6

The exaggerations in titles are really starting to bother me. Yes, you started with 300 lines of code... But then you modified it several times for different conferences, and enhanced it a lot when you really become popular. Only after that did you sell it.

The actual number lines actually hovered around that until we sold. It was fork soup because we hardcoded everything for each event (I love git so much for making that so easy). For every event, we always seen it as just one more event for promotion so we didn't want to make everything configurable. Simple and easy to test basically. Towards the very end we rewrote everything, made it configurable, integrated all pas…

Never has the measure of 'lines of code' been less relevant to anything though.

Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code

#30

Post by mdwrigh2 »

borski wrote: post #12

After signup, there is a syntax issue: To try our initial beta on Feb 31, invite 2 friends that live nearby: Feb. 31 doesn't exist. :) Also, the watermarks don't show up in Firefox; I almost assumed I needed to know the "secret codes" to get an invite.

Are you sure that's a syntax error? I'd probably catch that during typechecking...

:)

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