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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

#61

Post by Swannie »

axod wrote: post #28
zbowling wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup, every fork = +300 LOC! :P

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

#62

Post by ck2 »

Wait, those were simple black-and-white "HELLO MY NAME IS" badges printed on a mailing label?

Event organizers paid how much for this?

At first I though maybe this was the 1990's but then I read netbooks.

Very confused. How dumb/lazy/cheap are conference organizers?

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

#63

Post by alain94040 »

Agreed. Printing name badges for a meetup (like the co-founders meetup for instance - 150 people) is actually 50% of the whole effort of putting such an event together. What a pain! I can see why event organizers would call you so you solved their headache!

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

#64

Post by poet »

axod wrote: post #22
[deleted] wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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!!!".

What HN used to be above is this stupid pedantry. 300 lines of code is a euphemism for a simple system. That's it. Who gives a shit if the actual system was 800 lines, or even several thousand lines?? The system they made was simple.

Notice how it's a self post? It's not some grand ploy to get more pageviews for a blog. What's bullshit is that half of the comments section is being taken up by this contentless debate. That's the actual poison on HN.

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

#65

Post by cpeterso »

tlack wrote: post #7

Did you not see enough money in the event market to continue trying to build products in that space? View.io seems to be a bit of a departure from that.

Plus I could easily imagine a View.io-like app directed to event planners and attendees that leverages the badge printing service: an event-specific "mobile app that 'tells you what you need to know, wherever you are' could be useful for people networking (like their original business plan), visitors new to the conference city, or promotions of related events/services.

When you have to turn away interested, paying customers, it's time to increase your rates and leverage that relationship to sell them more products and services.

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

#67

Post by mkramlich »

alttab wrote: post #39
SwellJoe wrote: post #24

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 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…

You're both right. But SwellJoe's argument was basically, "A hundred thousand dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? Ten million dollars!" The OP was lucky enough to find a vein of gold underground, mined like 5% of it, then stopped so they could go open a restaurant. They could've mined out the rest of that vein and with the extra cash started ten restuarants and bought a yacht, etc.

That said it's always hard to criticize success. It's like these guys just did a gymnastics routine and got a 9.5 and then we harp that they should have gotten a 10, while we sit here gobbling popcorn from the couch. :)

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

#70

Post by jarin »

ck2 wrote: post #62

Wait, those were simple black-and-white "HELLO MY NAME IS" badges printed on a mailing label? Event organizers paid how much for this? At first I though maybe this was the 1990's but then I read netbooks. Very confused. How dumb/lazy/cheap are conference organizers?

Very. Well, actually I would say that they're extraordinarily busy and would rather just throw money at people to do things so they don't have to worry about it.

Having set up wifi networks for big conferences (under contract) and written conference software (under contract), I can say that literally everything is a pain point for them.

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