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

theappifier.com

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

#111

Post by patio11 »

larrys wrote: post #110
traftonesler wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You should add to your marketing more info about how you are good in handling traffic and most importantly why. In a way that will make sense with both tech and non tech types. (Non tech has no idea what aws is or a cdn is for example). I've looked at your site a few times (even right now) and that isn't the thing that stuck in my mind from your marketing. The takeaway for me was "expert at WP" not necessarily "exper…

We're (literally) working on a website refresh right now, which hits that and other points. Sample factoid: One of the customers was on 20/20 recently and sustained 2,500 requests per second for 15 minutes.

Boring technical details: Varnish caching, automatic load balancing, redundant servers (beefy physical hardware to avoid poor disk performance on virtualized systems), "Death to KeepAlive", etc.

(Ooh, it is live now: http://wpengine.com/our-infrastructure/ )

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

#112

Post by nakkiel »

gozman wrote: post #13
BigCanOfTuna wrote: post #8

Nice idea. I'd be interested to know (and if you're willing to share with the community): 1. What was your job. 2. How much did you get paid. 3. How much savings(runway) do you have to support this product. Thanks!

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.

28, an MBA and 80k / year. I must be doing something very wrong.

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

#113

Post by gozman »

magsafe wrote: post #93

Interesting idea, but can't get it to work. I created a test account and added 2 WordPress blogs to it: TechCrunch and the official Wordpress blog ( http://wordpress.org/news/ ). Went through the steps, downloaded the sandbox app on my iPhone 4S and tried to preview them. App instantly crashes when loading both sites. Is it just that these blogs don't have the required JSON plugins (possible)? Or is it that they have…

Sorry Magsafe, you need to have JSON API installed. This is written on the site.

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

#114

Post by dangrossman »

underwater wrote: post #104

I don't want to knock your product, because I know site owners will love it, but does anyone actually like and use these simple apps that wrap a website?

Yes. I do, for one. For a site you like to use every day, being able to just tap and swipe to get to everything is so much better than constantly pinch zooming, aiming for little links, waiting for the page to load, pinch zooming, aiming for little links, etc. of a website.

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

#116

Post by dangrossman »

magsafe wrote: post #93

Interesting idea, but can't get it to work. I created a test account and added 2 WordPress blogs to it: TechCrunch and the official Wordpress blog ( http://wordpress.org/news/ ). Went through the steps, downloaded the sandbox app on my iPhone 4S and tried to preview them. App instantly crashes when loading both sites. Is it just that these blogs don't have the required JSON plugins (possible)? Or is it that they have…

That plugin is a core part of their app. You have to download and install it. You can't just put in someone else's blog URL; they don't have the appifier plugin running. WordPress doesn't have a JSON API built in, that's something he created.

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

#117

Post by magsafe »

gozman wrote: post #113
magsafe wrote: post #93

Interesting idea, but can't get it to work. I created a test account and added 2 WordPress blogs to it: TechCrunch and the official Wordpress blog ( http://wordpress.org/news/ ). Went through the steps, downloaded the sandbox app on my iPhone 4S and tried to preview them. App instantly crashes when loading both sites. Is it just that these blogs don't have the required JSON plugins (possible)? Or is it that they have…

Sorry Magsafe, you need to have JSON API installed. This is written on the site.

My point was the app should never crash, for whatever reason. You need to handle failures gracefully.

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

#118

Post by huhtenberg »

gozman wrote: post #26
marknutter wrote: post #22

Kudos to you for following your dream, but I do have to say I'm fully against making it easier for people to move that which should stay on the web to native apps. We have web browsers for a reason.

hey mark! it was strange to me too at first, but we built it in response to the fact that we kept on getting asked about getting onto the "app store" by small business owners who were going digital and building Wordpress sites. Everyone wants an app nowadays - so we're filling a niche. In the end, browsers are great but mobile safari doesn't yet let you have access to everything you can get in Cocoa. We want to open…

> Everyone wants an app nowadays

Every merchant wants an app, but their customers couldn't care less. Not that it affects your business model in any way.

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

#119

Post by mountaineer »

wodow wrote: post #95
city41 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has grown a good deal in the past year or so. It has quite a big "slashdot effect" now :)

Has anyone who's been hackernews'd done an analysis on the load numbers? Back in the day there was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect#Notes_and_refer...

Rob "CmdTaco" did some analysis - http://cmdrtaco.net/2011/10/then-along-came-hacker-news/

John Sheehan mentioned numbers the other day too - https://twitter.com/#!/johnsheehan/status/156271988195860480

Seems like the "Hacker News 10K" would be an approximate general number or its going to approach that soon.

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