My New $156 Startup • Hacker News Board

Re: My New $156 Startup

#21

Post by morgante » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 3:08 AM UTC

mrrobbo wrote: post #16

Hi all - I appreciate your concern over my methodology. Fact remains that I turned a $156 into a startup which has generated over 30k since launch about a month ago - while you might not understand the niche it serves our customers are schools for which there are no shortage of. All of the UI has been reskinned since the fiverr mockups and if you see the finished product it needs little resembelence. We also have two…

The $156 figure is disingenuous though. Without the $10k of development costs, you didn't have a startup—you had an idea.

Really, it's you're $10,156 startup—still something to be proud of though. I see many people spending way more without any signs of traction.

Re: My New $156 Startup

#22

Post by adventured » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 3:11 AM UTC

chrsstrm wrote: post #13

As someone who is currently going through setting up a company, a list of words I didn't read in that article include: incorporation, insurance, attorney, EIN. I can assure you these costs alone are well above $156. I don't know of a single state that looks kindly on un-registered businesses. I'm about to spend my Friday night (and Saturday and Sunday) doing legal research so I don't have to pay my attorney to use th…

You don't have to form a corporation to start a business, and you don't need an attorney, EIN or insurance.

Millions of businesses operate in the US as non-incorporated entities (eg sole proprietorships or partnerships).

Re: My New $156 Startup

#23

Post by japhyr » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 3:15 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #14

dikaiosune wrote: post #3

Perhaps I'm just jaded or not "in the know," but this seems like a shallow and short-term business model for a SaaS product. How do you maintain the codebase? Oh, I just go grab a dev on Elance again. What happens when they introduce bugs into the codebase? Elance! OK, cool, that's definitely a long-term solution. Do you perform meaningful A/B testing? Add new features? Do anything to justify the continuous cost of S…

> "Jarrod is a teacher and online entrepreneur whom has built well over 100 online products and services" To the OP: something to fix Who=He, whom=him.

It's an interesting post, but the copy is not very well edited overall. It's certainly part of what makes me question what happens with the quality of his projects beyond the initial sales.

Re: My New $156 Startup

#24

Post by fsk » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 3:21 AM UTC

orik wrote: post #2

I don't know how I feel about this race to the bottom that is design work through sites like fiverr. I can only hope oDesk and the like don't ever replace the need for a full time programmer or I'll be out of a job.

Having inherited a bunch of products that were developed by outsourcing companies, at several different employers, I can safely say that outsourcing companies aren't going to replace the need for COMPETENT full-time employees.

I even spoke with several clients who switched from outsourcing in 3rd world countries back to hiring local developers. Wages are going up 10%-20%/year in the 3rd world countries while they stagnate in the USA, so there was no long-term economic benefit to outsourcing.

On each of those projects, the outsourcing company did the minimum effort to get paid, and left an unmaintainable mess.

Then the employer has two rough choices. Keep the outsourcing company on at inflated rates to support it, or hire full-time employees to do the support. Or find someone to rewrite it, they don't deliver, and now a couple years and a lot of money is down the drain.

The outsourcing company does not have the same incentive as a competent employee. An outsourcing company just wants to get paid, and technical debt doesn't matter. An incompetent employee will obfuscate things to protect his job security (or because he doesn't know better). A competent employee wants to eventually move to another project, so the incentive is more to do a good job so it can be handed off to someone else.

Re: My New $156 Startup

#25

Post by mrrobbo » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 3:22 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #5

The author seems to be making the mistake of conflating accounting profit and economic profit. After 4 months of work, he has achieved accounting profit, but I speculate he's pretty far from economic profit ($5,000 for 4 months is likely far less than he'd earn as an employee). Moreover, the idea doesn't seem interesting or large enough to actually grow into an economically profitable venture.

Hi - I spent no more then 24 hours of combined work on getting this validated and pre funded. Leveraging the power of the globe and the Internet to bring it to life :)

Re: My New $156 Startup

#26

Post by leereeves » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 3:22 AM UTC

japhyr wrote: post #23

leereeves wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Jarrod is a teacher and online entrepreneur whom has built well over 100 online products and services" To the OP: something to fix Who=He, whom=him.

It's an interesting post, but the copy is not very well edited overall. It's certainly part of what makes me question what happens with the quality of his projects beyond the initial sales.

It sounds like he does market research, marketing, and sales, and pays someone else (probably more detail & quality oriented) to develop the products.

Re: My New $156 Startup

#27

Post by shubb » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 3:24 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #21

mrrobbo wrote: post #16

Hi all - I appreciate your concern over my methodology. Fact remains that I turned a $156 into a startup which has generated over 30k since launch about a month ago - while you might not understand the niche it serves our customers are schools for which there are no shortage of. All of the UI has been reskinned since the fiverr mockups and if you see the finished product it needs little resembelence. We also have two…

The $156 figure is disingenuous though. Without the $10k of development costs, you didn't have a startup—you had an idea. Really, it's you're $10,156 startup—still something to be proud of though. I see many people spending way more without any signs of traction.

But he only put $156 in. Everything from there was self funded.

Re: My New $156 Startup

#28

Post by mrrobbo » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 3:24 AM UTC

dikaiosune wrote: post #3

Perhaps I'm just jaded or not "in the know," but this seems like a shallow and short-term business model for a SaaS product. How do you maintain the codebase? Oh, I just go grab a dev on Elance again. What happens when they introduce bugs into the codebase? Elance! OK, cool, that's definitely a long-term solution. Do you perform meaningful A/B testing? Add new features? Do anything to justify the continuous cost of S…

Hi - you will find I have an enormous fan base of Loyal customers al over the planet whom love everything I do at www.thepegeek.com

Adding value is all I do

Re: My New $156 Startup

#29

Post by wodenokoto » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 3:25 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #21

mrrobbo wrote: post #16

Hi all - I appreciate your concern over my methodology. Fact remains that I turned a $156 into a startup which has generated over 30k since launch about a month ago - while you might not understand the niche it serves our customers are schools for which there are no shortage of. All of the UI has been reskinned since the fiverr mockups and if you see the finished product it needs little resembelence. We also have two…

The $156 figure is disingenuous though. Without the $10k of development costs, you didn't have a startup—you had an idea. Really, it's you're $10,156 startup—still something to be proud of though. I see many people spending way more without any signs of traction.

But he collected the money to pay for dev cost from the initial 156$ investment. It's not disingenuous at all.

Re: My New $156 Startup

#30

Post by zackbloom » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 3:27 AM UTC

I honestly think this is great. He got a website built that clearly folks need enough to pay for, without any real risk. The wonderful thing about business is you can't argue with revenue, either you have it or you don't. If you do, no one really gets to tell you your doing it wrong (outside of security and ethical issues).