How much was the deal for? Great job
How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code
51–60 of 118 posts
Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code
#52After 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.
Haha, thanks. Yep, we get lost sometimes. There isn't a Feb 31 :)
Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code
#53Is yours the product used at SHDHs? I (and others) were very impressed with it :)
Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code
#54Question: how do we "click the above link?" It shows up as text for me, which I cut and pasted into the address bar (you won't know I came from HN) Am I missing something?
oh shoot--hmm , HN doesn't allow links from the page. So you're going to have to paste it in the bar or if the link works, click this: http://view.io
Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code
#55I 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 ti…
I think a distinction between your argument and the OP's motivation is that it isn't money he wants - its to work on something he loves doing. It may have started with a mobile app, and he found some tangential success with printing name badges at conferences. But nowhere in your response addresses that maybe the OP didn't want to print name badges for a living. He sold his company which he wasn't truly passionate ab…
That's a perfectly valid approach, and one I have no problem with, but I did get the impression they also want to build a successful business, rather than just keep food on the table (which is why they killed the prior product, which they also loved working on, apparently).
My point is merely that I don't think they really learned all the lessons they could have learned from these experiences. I'm almost certain they undervalued their label printing business, for instance. Certainly they should have started charging for the service earlier.
And, I also think that they're maybe underestimating the value of listening when the market speaks.
But, by all means, people should work on stuff they love. There's no way a small, bootstrapped, startup can possibly weather the hardships in the beginning, when money is tight, rewards are few, and everything takes longer than expected, without having a real passion for the work they're doing.
Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code
#56Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code
#57Thanks4sharing. In NYC's Google office(s), when you walk-up to the front desk there's a system to enter your name (or anything for that matter) and it prints out a sticker-badge. And I've used a scale programmed to spit out sticker labels with prices depending on the weight of the product code entered. Perhaps an add-on to the event badges would be color coding them based on some other attribute voluntarily entered into the system (not weight :)
Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code
#58This makes me feel even more confident about my recent decision of ditching bloated and too ambitious "next big thing" ideas in favor of small, practical ideas that help people's lives somehow. And the latter ones are much easier to iterate through than the former, especially when you convince yourself that many of your "silly" small ideas may actually be pretty interesting if well executed.
Thanks for sharing your story!
Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code
#59Interesting. I typed in my local equivalent of a zip code (four digits beginning with a zero) and it accepted it. So either you guys are planning on going global right away, or your validation's not all that flash?
Re: How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code
#60From the landing page, view.io sounds like an useful product. As someone new to NYC, I'm always looking for relevant upcoming events. In a city like NYC, there has to be events of interest, but they are hard to find. This sounds like what view.io addresses.
That said, this trend with spamming friends to receive an invite (thanks to UseHipster, LaunchRock, etc) is frustrating. Yes, it may increase your launch e-mail list, but it's an extra step that deters certain users (I gave up after being told to tell x friends to sign up).