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6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

lunchbag.ca

161–169 of 169 posts

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#161

While I commend the creator on a good looking and well-designed user interface - I will say that it boggles my mind when people give up their login credentials to unknown entities on the internet. There is this fundamental disconnect between wanting to save yourself some money - but not realizing that you are setting yourself up for immense risks. You can lose far-far more by signing up to a site like this than what…

Or they do, they've done the calculus, and their threat models are different from yours. Ideally, yes, Bank of America, Chase, and Wells Fargo would make an API and give OAUTH (or SAML) access for mint.com to your bank account. But that problem's been around forever, and they trust lunchbag.ca with their login creds. You could fake a site similar to lunchbags' and grab a bunch of login creds and steal all their money? Go for it.

The issue here is the banks: until they change, the status quo here is stupid - you, the user of mint/lunchbag/etc, have to trust an agent with your password.

How do I convince Bank Of America that it's worth their time to work on giving 3rd parties API access to my account?

https://xkcd.com/364/

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try reading this: https://johnnycupcakes.com/pages/about Then sit down and "tell your story" in writing as if you were telling it over beers at a pub to a few new-ish friends who don't all equally well know your backstory. Get someone to read through it before publishing it. Good feedback is very helpful. Also, grammar check, spell check, etc. You want to be somewhat entertaining, but more importantly you want to cap…

Thanks for pointing me there! This whole about us thing took me longer to write than the content for the rest of the page, I hate selling myself. Seems I have my work cut out for me over the next couple of days!

Feel free to email me with your first draft or whatever.

I don't know how to do this networking thing or whatever, but I do know something about writing and about doing stuff on a budget.

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing me there! This whole about us thing took me longer to write than the content for the rest of the page, I hate selling myself. Seems I have my work cut out for me over the next couple of days!

Feel free to email me with your first draft or whatever. I don't know how to do this networking thing or whatever, but I do know something about writing and about doing stuff on a budget.

Sounds good! Expect mail next week. And I ain't good at this whole networking thing neither.

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to email me with your first draft or whatever. I don't know how to do this networking thing or whatever, but I do know something about writing and about doing stuff on a budget.

Sounds good! Expect mail next week. And I ain't good at this whole networking thing neither.

Awesome!

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#165

This was super interesting! The design really helped as well. I liked this one: "Lesson learned: People care about the narrative behind your product, so don't be afraid to tell your story!" As someone who finds new things on HN all the time, I always check the "about" page, especially if it's something that isn't free. I'm surprised at how often the "About Us" isn't actually "About Anyone", there's no names, it's all…

I'm surprised at how often the "About Us" isn't actually "About Anyone", there's no names, it's all just "Us" and "We". That's something I often get instructed to use when doing freelance writing. It is considered "professional" and "corporate speak." The other thing is that women and minorities sometimes intentionally hide or downplay their personal details. One guy with a very "foreign" sounding name legally change…

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Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing that jumps out at me is you seem to be saying what holds women back is that men don't trust them Throwaway for obvious reasons. As a man, I’m rather skeptical about trusting women in business. I will never have a one-on-one meeting with a woman (especially somebody under my management), and I will especially never interact with with woman I work with outside of the office. I will generally try to keep dis…

I know some men have this attitude but I still find it astounding. Are you really so unable to determine appropriate behaviours that you think women are making extreme overreactions to normal “banter”? Or that the risk of a false/inflated accusation is so high that you think freezing out all women is a reasonable and rational approach? Women finally begin talking publicly about the endemic sexism they face, which man…

I don’t have any concern about the appropriateness of my behaviour. I care a lot about the people I work with, I want them all to succeed, and I want them all to feel good about coming to work. The problem is that it’s very easy to paint personal discussions as being inappropriate. Take an example of a discussion related to family. This could be a perfectly ordinary personal topic for two colleagues to discuss. But you don’t have to think very hard to come up with a reason that family could be a taboo topic of discussions with female colleagues. Why is he talking to me about family? Does he want to know what my plans are? Is that why I didn’t get that promotion?...

> I mean, sure, some woman might maliciously make some accusation against you. That’s certainly possible. It’s also possible that a man makes a false bullying accusation.

It sure is. But if I catch the ire of a malicious man at work, it’s much more likely to just amount to the regular office politics nonsense. Even if a man were to make a more outrageous accusation against me, I’d expect to be treated to some reasonable form of due process. With the same accusation from I woman, I absolutely would not have such an expectation. I would also expect that such an accusation could follow me around for perhaps the rest of my life.

Now, I’ve worked with some very talented women, and I’ve done what I can to support them. But sadly I don’t feel as though I can do as much as I would like. You’re free to criticize me for that, but from my perspective it’s a perfectly rational risk avoidance strategy. It’s motivated by cultural factors that are entirely beyond my control, and it’s a perspective that I would guess is shared to some extent by a non-trivial amount of people.

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds good! Expect mail next week. And I ain't good at this whole networking thing neither.

Awesome!

This was an excellent exchange that I learned a lot from. Thank you both.

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...I don't think most men are intentionally, actively and on purpose trying to keep women out, but it's a big, big problem that they don't want to talk too much to a woman for fear that it might lead to an affair or a really terrible misunderstanding or gossip" It's bewildering how everybody knows there are these tremendous informal barriers, that have withstood all past attempts at equal rights, and yet everybody a…

> One thing that jumps out at me is you seem to be saying what holds women back is that men don't trust them Throwaway for obvious reasons. As a man, I’m rather skeptical about trusting women in business. I will never have a one-on-one meeting with a woman (especially somebody under my management), and I will especially never interact with with woman I work with outside of the office. I will generally try to keep dis…

Really well put and so true. I have know careers ruined because of falsehoods believed without question.

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#169
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask why you picked this model instead of a subscription based model?

If you check the apps I currently offer (link in my profile), I’d have a hard time asking for recurring payments. I’m basically implementing missing OS features. I have other products in the pipeline where I will consider a subscription model.

Your model is what sustained the personal computer industry (as standalone apps) for 30+ years before subs and webapps became so prevalent over the past decade. You might benefit from paying a bizdev type person for a couple hours (or enough for a plan) to figure out how to get some recurrence out of those apps. People absolutely paid for new versions of Eudora, for instance.
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