how do you do customer development in a forest, unless all your customers are gorillas and bears.
The entrepreneurial adventures of a coder living in a tent in the forest
51–60 of 87 posts
Re: The entrepreneurial adventures of a coder living in a tent in the forest
#52In another life, long before taking up coding, I spent 6 months in the mountains of southern Spain (near Grenada) living in a Rainbow community where tepees were the lodging of choice. Amazing experience, obviously not much "work" getting done ;-)...except for this English guy, lived in a crude stone structure on the range across the way from where the community was situated. Somehow he had electricity, either throug…
I had childhood friends living way out in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. They had electricity and telephone service. On a pole at the bottom of their pasture was a directional antenna connected to a cordless telephone base station. One time we took a hike down the mountain, along the creek and up the other side. There was the homestead of the family who's telephone that was. They lived in a hexagonal treehouse and an old school bus. They had solar power and the handset connected to another home-made antenna pointing across the valley. The father was a programmer.
He wrote software for parking meters and used a hand-held GPS receiver to keep track of the ginseng he had planted in the National Forest.
Re: The entrepreneurial adventures of a coder living in a tent in the forest
#53Maybe he is taking "Lean Startup" a bit too seriously ;-)
But otherwise great idea. I wonder how far into the swedish wilderness their mobile broadband extends and how soon someone is going to rob him of his posessions...
Re: The entrepreneurial adventures of a coder living in a tent in the forest
#54This is awesome. Personally, I occasionally daydream of "escaping it all" and coding by the ocean. This piece reminded me of someone else who "escaped it all": Paul Lutus [1]. In the spring of 1976, he built a 12 x 16 foot (3.65 x 4.87 meter) cabin in Oregon and developed Apple Writer [2] on his Apple II. He documented his story in a piece entitled, Cottage Computer Programming [3]. [1] http://www.arachnoid.com/admin…
Glad you brought him up. I learned about him reading his book about solo sailing around the world in a 31 foot boat. Good read even if you aren't interested in sailing. Free ebook here: http://www.arachnoid.com/sailbook/
Re: The entrepreneurial adventures of a coder living in a tent in the forest
#55This is awesome. Personally, I occasionally daydream of "escaping it all" and coding by the ocean. This piece reminded me of someone else who "escaped it all": Paul Lutus [1]. In the spring of 1976, he built a 12 x 16 foot (3.65 x 4.87 meter) cabin in Oregon and developed Apple Writer [2] on his Apple II. He documented his story in a piece entitled, Cottage Computer Programming [3]. [1] http://www.arachnoid.com/admin…
Glad you brought him up. I learned about him reading his book about solo sailing around the world in a 31 foot boat. Good read even if you aren't interested in sailing. Free ebook here: http://www.arachnoid.com/sailbook/
He used to post here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=lutusp
It's been a while, but perhaps he's on his boat.
Re: The entrepreneurial adventures of a coder living in a tent in the forest
#56Couldn't help but notice that his April entry refers to 'trying out new wilderness recipes', and his next May entry refers to 'a rough time with food poisoning'.
Haha, yeah.. But the food poisoning come from some nasty sliced pepper salami I had for dinner. (Can't even think about them..) That was one b a d day..... Luckily a friend of mine did a rescue mission and brought me some coke and salts in the evening.. =)
Re: The entrepreneurial adventures of a coder living in a tent in the forest
#57I'm sure it's possible to sit in isolation and create a livable startup. In my experience, though, the best things professionally, such as bizdev deals, finding people to work with or making large sales, come from personal connections. That is, people that you've actually met. I love the outdoors and I love to code as well. This sounds super fun and I'm kind of jealous of that lifestyle, but I'm not sure if it's a so…
Life is full of phases. I don't think anyone would recommend someone do this for all their life, but for a time and place, it might be the best decision ever made.
Thanks, thats kind of how I see it too =)
Re: The entrepreneurial adventures of a coder living in a tent in the forest
#58Just wait for winter, Thomas. I'm from the south of Sweden and even I wouldn't like to be living in a tent come winter. He better stop coding and start building some proper shelter. ;)
As they say "winter is coming".. Yeah, when winter does come it will be hard using the electronics.. We'll see where I'll go then I guess.
Re: The entrepreneurial adventures of a coder living in a tent in the forest
#59Somewhat off-topic; but if you're wondering how this became a story on HN: it was submitted to the ListServe a bit over an hour ago. The ListServe is a really cool email lottery where every day one person wins the chance to send an email to everyone else on the list, and the results have been nothing short of mesmerizing so far. http://thelistserve.com/
Given that they have >22k subscribers already, the chances of actually getting to say something in your lifetime are pretty low - assuming nobody else joins and there are no repeats, it would take over 60 years for everyone to get to post once. That said, it sounds interesting, as a "15 minutes of fame lottery" at least.
Someone should create something like ListServe, where there were that many subscribers, but I had a higher chance of getting selected :-)
Re: The entrepreneurial adventures of a coder living in a tent in the forest
#60Wow this is really exciting. After reading his experience via his posts i feel like at least before i die i wish to experience such thing once for sure.