Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

theappifier.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 204 posts

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#61

Post by agentgt »

lucaspiller wrote: post #55
agentgt wrote: post #49

At what point is it okay to post you have started a new website / business on hacker news? Here goes my karma. Since we are doing shameless plugs here are my two (and yes I quit very high paying jobs ... 1.5~2 times more than @gozman ...): http://snaphop.com http://evocatus.com

Good stuff, but I'm a bit confused by what SnapHop is. From the landing page it sounds like you are an agency, but you talk about a platform. What exactly (i.e. not marketing speak) does the platform let me do? Where can I see it in action?

Signup an see! I'll upgrade your account also for free and give you SMS if you blog about us. Yes we need a better video somewhere. We kind of went the enterprise route as our competitor did (http://44doors.com) where showing less unfortunately pays you more.

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#62

Post by Jem »

gozman wrote: post #10
bzalasky wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. I caught that too, had to read it twice to make sure I didn't miss a play on words though.

Thanks! I can't believe that slipped through!

If the Google SERPs for your site are up to date, you've also spelled WordPress wrong in the meta description (should be uppercase P).

I know the WP guys are very passionate about their capital P: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/capital_P_dang...

:)

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#64

Post by city41 »

arpit wrote: post #46

For those having trouble with the site, I ended up looking at Google's cached copy and then finding the walkthrough youtube video that you can watch here: http://www.youtube.com/embed/QkwDDB0I5_g?autoplay=1

That video is really well done. The product looks slick too. I do wonder how much demand there is to read individual blogs on an iOS device? Would an RSS reader meet the demand better?

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#65

Post by mgkimsal »

phugoid wrote: post #41
gozman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I was a software engineer that got an MBA and was doing management consulting. 2. Over 80k / year 3. My runway is private, but we financed ourselves by taking on short-term iOS/Wordpress dev/design consulting gigs to stay fed.

I'm in a similar situation (quit high-paying job, following startup dream). May I ask how you broke into dev/design consulting? I'll have to go that way too, and soon. But I'm still a bit mystified about where one finds consulting gigs... Places like ODesk/Elancer?

Networking by and large will be your best bet. An odesk may get you some short-term work, but it won't necessarily be all that high paying. With a decent rep on odesk or elance you might get some good gigs, but those will probably develop in to non-odesk relationships with clients ("going direct").

I don't know many people who use odesk who pay more then $20-$25/hour, and it's typically for smaller type stuff. There are people who get "I want a full copy of XYZ for $500" and a number of people who bid on that, but there's "real" projects in there too sometimes. I just have a hard time looking at elance/odesk sites as something that 'real' companies use for 'real' (read: valuable) projects.

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#66

Post by robbiea »

andys627 wrote: post #59
phugoid wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a similar situation (quit high-paying job, following startup dream). May I ask how you broke into dev/design consulting? I'll have to go that way too, and soon. But I'm still a bit mystified about where one finds consulting gigs... Places like ODesk/Elancer?

+1 - best fastest way to find freelance jobs? edit - not sure why this was downvoted 4 times - but to elaborate on my question - what were the most rewarding gigs - in terms of ease of getting hired & finding them, most money, learning stuff that was relevant, expanding network, bbb

the best way is to expand your network and go to networking events. go to mobile meetups, tech meetups, business meetups, etc. From there you will notice a lot more opportunities will arise. This is also assuming you are good at something. Wether it's development / design or making pancakes. You have to be good at something before someone else will bring you on as a consultant / freelance.

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#68

Post by mgkimsal »

jeffcouturier wrote: post #43
dangrossman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site owner wouldn't have to charge for the app (unless I missed something). They just now have a native app for their website. Native app interaction speed and offline use are obvious advantages over using the blog in the mobile browser, so there's definitely value here. And the number of WordPress sites is so huge (over 70 million) that there's undoubtedly a market for this.

Unless the app auto-updates its content to be sure it is always in sync with the website, having native app speed and offline use grows increasingly less desirable the farther out you get from the date the app was created. For Wordpress sites one would expect new content daily. If Appifier pulls content and makes it all available offline that's great, until/unless the site being "appified" has new content. Will the a…

I don't disagree with your premise, but I do think there's a fair number of people who push wordpress as a CMS rather than a 'blog' as such. Given that, many WP sites are rather static anyway.

I agree on the 'auto update' aspect, but if you only update your CMS once every 2-4 months, it may not be that big a loss if there's no auto update right now.

I saw a demo of mulberry.toura.com and that was a question that came up - auto-updating. Apparently the iTunes store is a bit iffy about updating the apps if the functionality has changed too much, but if it's just content, it should be OK.

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#69

Post by traftonesler »

larrys wrote: post #30

You need to move this site to a host that can handle the load today. I'm getting timeouts and finally got the home page to load. I can't get any of the other pages to load either.

Trying to reach you via e-mail -- www.wpengine.com can help with your site. We specialize in high traffic!

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#70

Post by bmelton »

lcusack wrote: post #28
dangrossman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site owner wouldn't have to charge for the app (unless I missed something). They just now have a native app for their website. Native app interaction speed and offline use are obvious advantages over using the blog in the mobile browser, so there's definitely value here. And the number of WordPress sites is so huge (over 70 million) that there's undoubtedly a market for this.

Support for push notifications would be a huge plus as well.

It does support push notifications.
Post reply on HN