I am wondering about your economics. Back of the envelope: 800 usd per month (min 80 hrs of work) translates into max 10 USD hourly revenue. Does not sound like much for "expert knowledge".
I suppose there are different approaches: are you using amazon mechanical Turk (there was a recent HN post on it a few days ago)? Or are you planning to use massive scale effects (as in: build up a contact database that you can reuse)?
1) For our company to make a decision it would be really important to roughly know the costs per lead upfront. Have you considered this kind of pricing and if yes: why did you decide against it?
2) do you have any special areas of expertise? A car dealer has different requirements than a biotech startup, so how do you cope with that?
- Mandatory: Good experience in PHP, MySQL, Javascript
- Optional: Git, redis, memcached, nginx, ubuntu
- Bonus points: Objective-C
We're a fast growing, cashflow positive startup and desperately seeking for help in development. You will directly work with our experienced lead developer (me), really lot's to learn, not only technical but also business-wise.
Ideally, you can assist us for a fulltime internship OR part-time. It's perfectly possible that we hire you if everything fits :)
Please send short email with introduction and work experience to p dot rappold at linksderisar dot com.
- iOS or Android dev. We have a huge amount of client work to do.
- PHP/MySQL dev. 1-2 days regular per week. Admin and continuous improvement of one existing portal application (one of Germany's biggest nightlife communities, highly scaled deployment)
BOTH positions can be remote, but we have a beautiful office in downtown which can be used (free of charge). Will help with relocation. Email philipp.rappold at gmail .com
Would definitely be in, let's keep the event dead simple: No long date + time discussions, just pick a date ~2 weeks from today (weekday!) and choose a nice location, where we can make a reservation. Maybe something in the "Uni-Viertel"?
Memcache, for example, is explicitly not meant to be run with "public access", as it is not secured against attacks. I am pretty sure the same applies to redis.
If my assumption is correct, i wonder why one should use a (potentially slower) http client or protocol in favor of the "native" protocol.
What a great idea - I'd love to join but unfortunately I am busy on the 8th. Would be great to schedule the next meeting a bit more in advance (1-2 weeks) and preferably on Thu-Sun ;)
I highly doubt whether they're using the right econometric models.
In table 2 and 3 they're using an OLS model although the dependent variable is binary ("choosing and aggressive strategy 0/1"). A logit model seems much more appropriate here.
This does not give me much confidence in the results.
First: I wonder if all jpeg viewers accept the "new file", I guess some will choke on the altered files.
Second: If this works it might be possible to distribute hidden files through profile pictures (one facebook and friends) :) I'm glad I never store original jpegs in my web projects, but rather saved processed versions (resized etc).
I'm trying hard finding something missing, but I think your points are very good already. I'd also choose this sequence.
Just brainstorming on the things I wish someone had told me before:
(1) Be careful when picking friends as business partners:
Having good friends as business partners can be tough, especially when things don't go as expected. I think this is a personal thing, as some people can argue on a business level and still stay friends. Thing is, you have to be sensitized to that fact.
(2) Endurance
It takes longer than you plan. Period.
(3) Set quantitative, measurable goals.
When I started a project with some friends :) two years ago, we had a great product (e-commerce), but never implemented any "controlling" into our application. Of course, we could track units sold, but the whole idea would have given us much more data points that could be used for analysis and further development - only had the scripts to read them out never been implemented. Use numbers whereever possible to make your decisions.
Well, there actually there are 3 things that make me mad about PayPal:
(1) Bad process (users have to create accounts/ passwords before they can checkout)
(2) Rejection of some credit card numbers (happened to some of our customers, due to their PayPal's security measures - the cards worked on other sites)
(3) Blocking of merchant accounts (happened to us twice. Only way to resolve the issue was entering my drivers license + id number, which were not accepted - spent several days trying to get it fixed by phone)
You're absolutely right that one could probably avoid issue (1) by choosing their $30 plan and integrating it into our own website. But I am pretty sure (2) and (3) will still apply, which is nothing but horrible if you are a small business.
Another question: Does anyone have an idea why there is no competition in the market so far? I suppose there must be kind of regulatory issues, although they must be even harder in the US where there is competition.
[AND thanks for your code-offer - I think I'll get that done on my own anyways ;) If not, I'd be happy to get back to you ;))]
There is afaik no service, that offers a nice and easy payment integration for small e-commerce websites. Of course you can get all the heavyweight stuff with merchant accounts and so on. But if you're a small garage-shop which wants to accept credit card payments, there is no alternative to paypal (at least in germany).
I think there's no need to mention here how much the payment process of paypal sucks anyways, as it has been discussed here already extensively.
Within my own little company, I've estimated that we loose about 30% of our customers in the last phase of checking out, where people are on behalf of paypals website. As far as i've seen, amazon does a much better job here.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but i think you dont even have to open an account with pasword and stuff to checkout using ur credit card?
This is great news, but it would be even better if amazon dared to start their service in Europe as well.
So far, there is no "real" competition to paypal for small developer sheds. In fact, I am sooo p about it, that I think I'm going to start a payments service myself! Anyone come and join me?
Although it's nice to see these numbers, I'm a bit sceptic and think one should not over-interpret them.
Reason: Who says this is a systematical effect due to their organizational strucuture? I know I'm being picky now, but you could also be the leader in this table if you were selling half of your assets in one year.