> After that moment we basically stopped talking to artists for a year and built (and rebuilt) the software until we thought it was acceptable.
And there is the biggest mistake.
Just throw a MVP together over a couple of months and invite some people to have a look.
> Our first beta test was a disaster when Amazon (who was our payment processor) suspended our account for not complying with money transfer issues.
No, it was a disaster because you were focused on money. You didn't need money, you needed feedback. Working with payment processing was a waste of time.
> From that beta test we found out that our software needed to be rewritten to comply with Amazons terms. More importantly though, people really didn't really LIKE anything about our product.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Better strategy: Release MVP. Whole thing is free. Collect feedback from close contacts, friends, networking etc (i.e. no spending money on advertising or wasting time with social media or SEO). Then implement features based on requests. Continue with this for quite a while until it has some noticeable improvements. Now go public, still remain free. Amass users. Collect more feedback. Amass users. Now you have something that is actually worth something and you have leverage. Next thing you know Justin Bieber is knocking on your door, he wants to throw a few million in and release it under his name. THEN the monetization can begin.
TlDr; Crybaby sick of Microsoft says he's going to start learning linux and wants to learn Hadoop. Wooptie-fuckin-doo. 12 year olds have been doing this for years.
The only difference is that you are finding these on sites like meetup.com instead of an advert in a magazine or newspaper.
This is significantly easier in a city as in a tow you are unlikely to find a meetup that is tailored to your exact needs e.g. "Game programming on Raspberry Pi Workshop", rather you need to be flexible and willing to try new things.
Any links to other blogs/sites where the hacker talks through their thought process like this?
There are plenty of online databases which list exploits but I feel like you can learn a lot more from the process they used to come up with the exploit, as given here.
Children learn faster because they have to, i.e. they can't get a chocolate bar unless they ask for it. Most adults learning a new language have the luxury of being able to use their native language to survive, and tend to default to the easy option if given the chance, especially if they are learning in a country that doesn't use the language they are learning, in which case they can't use it all the time anyway.
And there is the biggest mistake.
Just throw a MVP together over a couple of months and invite some people to have a look.
> Our first beta test was a disaster when Amazon (who was our payment processor) suspended our account for not complying with money transfer issues.
No, it was a disaster because you were focused on money. You didn't need money, you needed feedback. Working with payment processing was a waste of time.
> From that beta test we found out that our software needed to be rewritten to comply with Amazons terms. More importantly though, people really didn't really LIKE anything about our product.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Better strategy: Release MVP. Whole thing is free. Collect feedback from close contacts, friends, networking etc (i.e. no spending money on advertising or wasting time with social media or SEO). Then implement features based on requests. Continue with this for quite a while until it has some noticeable improvements. Now go public, still remain free. Amass users. Collect more feedback. Amass users. Now you have something that is actually worth something and you have leverage. Next thing you know Justin Bieber is knocking on your door, he wants to throw a few million in and release it under his name. THEN the monetization can begin.