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Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

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Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#71

Post by japhyr »

TamDenholm wrote: post #49
guynamedloren wrote: post #47

> We usually clock between four and six hours a day, and most of us don’t even get to the office before noon. Realllly interested to hear more about this. Can anybody from Flow elaborate? How well does this work? How did 4-6 hours come about? Why not 5-7 hrs? Or 3-5? How do salaries work - is everybody full time? > We believe in working smart, not hard, and having lives outside the office. Why can't you work smart an…

One of the problems with old school thinking is that working hard means working long, which is absolute rubbish. Personally I can't be productive for 8 hours a day and I'm pretty sure nobody can, all the time you're not being productive you're generally wasting time by making coffee, checking emails, attending meetings etc. So why not actually just work the time that you're productive and then go and enjoy the rest o…

This is why some of us can reasonably hope to launch a startup on the side while working a full time job. We're not putting in two 8-hour days, we're putting in 8-hour days at a full time job, and then putting in a couple highly productive hours on our own project every night or early every morning.

I'm pretty sure there are a good number of people on here who are splitting their days like this.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#72

Post by noonespecial »

guynamedloren wrote: post #47

> We usually clock between four and six hours a day, and most of us don’t even get to the office before noon. Realllly interested to hear more about this. Can anybody from Flow elaborate? How well does this work? How did 4-6 hours come about? Why not 5-7 hrs? Or 3-5? How do salaries work - is everybody full time? > We believe in working smart, not hard, and having lives outside the office. Why can't you work smart an…

One of the first bosses (entrepreneurs) I ever worked for used to pride himself on how "well balanced" his work and life were (and that of those of his early partners as well). They'd roll up about noon and were out buy 4:30.

That all changed once they hired their first devs, for actual money. Once he was paying "$5000 per month for you" you damn well better be in by 9 and stay till 6.

I wonder how their culture will change when they start paying big bucks for real employees.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#73

Post by bdunn »

hackNightly wrote: post #11
joelhaasnoot wrote: post #4

Is it just me or is the space of project/organization tools getting really swamped these days? Seems like every day I hear of a new one. I guess it is something that comes down to preference alot, and some are too opinionated to be flexible and offer all the options (i.e Basecamp), others too simple. But maybe they're all the "MS Project" of this generation. (Oh, and personally use Pivotal Tracker and love it)

I think that companies are just trying to be too broad about project management. It appears that they all want to be the "go to" tool for task management. However, I feel that there's opportunity in the project management space if some of these apps would cater to more of a niche audience. Think, "Task management for dog owners"

I built Planscope (http://planscope.io) - very specific (freelancers) and so far successful after only being live two months.

Most products, including PM apps invent the tool and then try to find a customer, which ends up resulting in generalized products. There's a lot of opportunity for products to capitalize on a specific customer and their workflows.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#74

Post by bdunn »

acabal wrote: post #37
Bamafan wrote: post #25

Nice product and the team seems very talented. But whenever I read these stories (from 0 to $8 billion in 3 monthz!1!!!11), lots of important details are left out. #1 How are you able to connect to 4,000+ paying customers so quickly? Actually, that's it. I'm guessing any number of HN guys could create this product. But we don't know how to get people to buy it.

That's what I'd like to know. How did they get so many people interested in yet another project management app (I swear I hear about a new one every month)? That's the most crucial piece of info they could possibly share, anything else is not really useful at all, frankly.

People manage projects, and usually get paid for it. The audience is use and wildly segmented.

You see a lot of apps in this space for two reasons: a lot of people need project management tools, and most of these people will pay for one that works well for them.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#75

Post by jasonkester »

marknutter wrote: post #46
jasonkester wrote: post #41

In case the Flow guys are reading this, please please please put out a simple HTML version of your thing. Flow sits at the top of my "most annoying web app ever" list, because it follows the pattern of loading an empty shell, then populating it. I bet this works amazingly well for the guys developing it from their local dev server, but for those of us across the Atlantic from your servers it's really really painful.…

I'm guessing you don't actually use flow day to day. I'm also guessing that if they made an HTML version you probably wouldn't use that either; you probably have your own way of managing your projects and todos. I'm also guessing you're using this post as a sounding board for your gripes with single page javascript applications. Are any of these guesses accurate?

No. I used Flow on a daily basis for the better part of two months, to coordinate a team of six on a major product feature we were developing. The things I mention above are chronic issues I ran into every day, not superficial things I saw once before dismissing the thing.

They're also 100% fixable.

If you're going to do this sort of "empty container" app, it's worth modifying your approach a tiny bit and instead going with "filled container". That is, sending the actual page content over the wire, then doing all your smartness and auto-updating behind the scenes where the user can't see it. You get all the benefits that the browser gives you for free such as cache management and back-button support, and you can also build in all your rich UX just like before.

And of course, if you're going to rip out a 20-year-tested native control like the scrollbar, it's up to you to make absolutely certain that the thing you replace it with is better. Theirs is demonstrably worse in pretty much every way a scrollbar can be worse, and actually fails the simple case of "scroll the document", as it tends to lose its position. The fix for this is as obvious as it is easy to implement: use the native scrollbar to scroll your list.

If they do those things, they may win me and my team back.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#76

Post by robryan »

redguava wrote: post #67
juddlyon wrote: post #33

One detail left from the analysis: these guys are already well-known for their UX work amongst the crowd most likely to purchase Flow. Reminds me of when Guy Kawasaki launched Alltop for "only 10K." Yeah, 10K + 500K worth of PR that comes with having an enormous following. This is not to diminish what Metalab or Guy Kawasaki do, I'm admire both. But it's not like these results are as reproducible as they infer withou…

It's not luck that they are already well known for their UX work. That is part of their hard work to get them to that point. You say these results aren't as reproducible without significant connections... but getting significant connections is reproducible. I guess you could consider that step 1 in their process. I would also say that you can build an audience and get connections with some hustle and/or money. A well…

Yeah, the article glossed over that step 1 though, lots of similar articles do. Once you have a big network of the right people have have your work well known and respected lots of things become easy.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#77

Post by hiccup »

guynamedloren wrote: post #68
metalab wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, definitely a lot of money. We funded using cash from doing client work part-time.

I'm assuming most (all?) of the work was done in house, so did the $300k go to paying employees? Thanks for sharing your story.

I'm betting this is the calculation: hours of product development X hourly bill rate = $300k

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#78

Post by tbergeron »

I really love Metalab, I always looked at them for inspiration and seriously I'm proud of those guys.

They took the other road, the road which is in my opinion the best and the wisest. You must work hard to get to your point, being funded is not working hard (opinions may vary that while you're funded you can focus on your project instead of money but I think this is a very good part of the startup concept).

Once again, Metalab inspires me, my projects are starting to get real and I'm doing it the Metalab's way. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one and that this method is successful as well. (I couldn't care less about having 4.2m or 500k, at least you have enough fund to back up your dreams and projects).

That was my 2cents. Keep up the good work guys!

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#79

Post by cjmauthor »

We believe in working smart, not hard, and having lives outside the office

It is very difficult to not give every single minute to a startup. There is always so much to do. My first question is, if these guys were able to accomplish this with short days, would they have gone further and achieved even better results if they worked just a little bit harder. How do you know when you are giving too much, and is there really an amount of hours of work per day where you go from progress to regress? Does somebody say hey I can see your project and at this stage you can add a little bit at a time?

My second question is would this company have received so much more than the 500k had they had investors, and ultimately be better off?

I would appreciate any feedback or suggestions. My startup is http://1800businesscards.com and it is all self funded. Do I continue to put exhaustive hours in or do I step back and let it mature slowly. Should I seek venture capital or do I move slowly? There is just no resource or place for advice on these issues in my very small world. Thanks all.

Re: Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money

#80

Post by nhangen »

jasonkester wrote: post #75
marknutter wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you don't actually use flow day to day. I'm also guessing that if they made an HTML version you probably wouldn't use that either; you probably have your own way of managing your projects and todos. I'm also guessing you're using this post as a sounding board for your gripes with single page javascript applications. Are any of these guesses accurate?

No. I used Flow on a daily basis for the better part of two months, to coordinate a team of six on a major product feature we were developing. The things I mention above are chronic issues I ran into every day, not superficial things I saw once before dismissing the thing. They're also 100% fixable. If you're going to do this sort of "empty container" app, it's worth modifying your approach a tiny bit and instead goi…

You sound like the type of customer I'd be thrilled to lose.
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