One note here: Experiment 2 isn't exactly passive income, not until I get a lot more comfortable with the code. That's the goal, though, and I think it's the likely choice for the greatest amount of income (and least amount of work) in the long run.
I have had a few interesting experiments here in the past year.
Experiment 0: I bought a hotel affiliate site off of flippa. It did pretty well initially, but I didn't do enough investigation into how the previous owner had been generating traffic. In short, there was a lot of untoward stuff going on. As I was getting all of that straightened out, the site got (deservedly) banned from Google's index for a few key terms. I made my money back and learned a valuable lesson: don't buy sites off of flippa.
Experiment 1: I created a few different sites around a big product launch, and monetized via product reviews and the Amazon Affiliate program. This worked very well for a period of time; the site was grossing $100 a day for several weeks with essentially 0 work. Slowly, my site dipped in the rankings for the key terms as much bigger players got their act together. From this, I learned that one-off sites can be valuable, but probably not in the long term. I should've sold the sites at their peak.
Experiment 2: I wrote some algorithms to find underpriced stocks and then examinate a few strategies around that security's options. This was actually a lot of fun. Based on my program, I ended up buying out-of-the-money puts on 5 or 6 different stocks. I'm sitting on a small profit right now. The next step is to exit my positions, finetune the algorithms based on a few key things I learned, and put more money into action.
Thanks for the shout out, it's always great to hear from a happy user!
You are correct on the business model; right now, it's promotional fees from developers plus device manufacturer licensing fees.
You are also correct that we focus on a different use case than Kyte. It seems to me they're more focused on location and telephony (very worthwhile, btw!), whereas we are all about making it for kids to find and play great apps.
This looks like an excellent implementation of a great idea. It's actually somewhat similar to what we do at Famigo (see http://www.famigo.com/sandbox/), though we're much more about content management and recommendations than GPS and telephony features.
With respect to the location feature, AT&T actually offers a somewhat similar service called AT&T Family Map for a monthly fee of $10-15. I believe that's a white-labeled version of an existing app (it might be Life360, not sure) with some integration into their back office APIs. I really encourage the Kyte folks to do some investigation here; other carriers might be looking to solve similar problems with respect to family location. That is, after all, the carriers' most lucrative market segment.
On the fiction side, I absolutely loved Shogun by Clavell. I didn't know what to expect, and I found an epic that was captivating in many ways. I also started Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. I realize I'm about 10 years behind everyone else, and I've found it most deserving of all of the hubbub.
With respect to nonfiction, I enjoyed Schroeder's recent biography of Warren Buffett, entitled the Snowball. It was much less of a hagiography than much of what you read on him. He's a fascinating, complex man.
Ha, this is actually pretty funny in retrospect. There I was, giving a talk on all of this great stuff we do with our data, having no idea that a good portion of that data had just vanished. The universe has many potent mechanisms for keeping us humble.
For a lighter side of both Steve Russell and Alan Kotok, you absolutely must read Steven Levy's Hackers.
A large chunk of this book deals with the very early computer scene of MIT in the late 1950s and 1960s. Both of those guys played a big role, especially Russell. He developed a game, Spacewar, that just enraptured the whole PDP crowd and led to this mania of gameplay and hacking, gameplay and hacking, etc.
It is really a delightful book. It's great to see these gentlemen recognized for their more formal contributions.
Unrelated: one thing we've really learned with this launch is the value of a great video. People seem to be responding really well to that as compared to a wall of text, probably because it's much more effective in telling the story behind the product. These videos actually aren't all that expensive, either.
I agree with the author that Chef is an incredibly powerful tool and that it has numerous benefits over plain old bash. However, I'm reluctant to actually use it because of its dependencies. Chef relies on CouchDB, RabbitMQ, and Solr, and all of those have non-trivial dependencies as well. Then, with a stack like that, I worry about the overheard involved.
FWIW, Puppet's dependencies are much simpler. I don't know much about Chef vs Puppet, but I can say that from an installation and dependency maintenance POV, Puppet wins.
Thanks for pointing this out. We JUST pushed a change this week where we removed a huge banner saying "We help families find and manage blahblahblah" and replaced it with a few other things. Maybe we need to revert that!
Blackmail. I have pics of pg and Steve Ballmer sharing an ice cream cone, and I'll make them public unless I get the proper upvotes.
I actually don't know what happened here either. I was at a kid's birthday party, and I look on Twitter to see one of my cofounders had submitted this and that it was shooting up the front page.
Oops, I think I didn't express myself very clearly. When I was sending 20 requests a sec in a load test, the average response time for all the requests was 9 seconds. In a normal case, the page was loading in a fraction of that.
Also, we didn't lack all indexes, just a couple of important ones. We've been iterating quickly on the site and we weren't analyzing the performance as our queries were refactored.
I am legally obligated here to post the Famigo Sandbox. Our app finds the kid-friendly stuff on your phone and builds a sandbox around it, so your kids can play the games thy like without them accidentally sending a text, getting on the Internet, etc. Then we send you an email with what they've been playing, and games we think we'd like.
Other great apps, gaming focused: the Marbians, Alchemy.
If you accept the article's theses that older developers are a big asset AND that they're at a disadvantage in the marketplace due to discrimination, there's an opportunity here. Rather than try to woo and retain 30 hotshot developers in their 20s, it'd be easier to hire 18 or 20 developers in their 40s. The turnover would certainly be lower, the output should be equal (or greater?), and there'd be less need for extensive management oversight.
Anybody know of a company that's tried that approach? If none exist, that leads me to think that either we're onto something interesting or that this approach simply doesn't work.
Excellent idea and very nice execution! The design is great, plus it's incredibly easy to signup and share your registry. You're definitely on to something here.
In terms of suggestions, I'd suggest you tweak your index page a bit. When I landed there, I was most interested in seeing what one of these registries looked like. I assumed that clicking the image of John and Jane's Baby List would show me an example, but it's not currently linked. To actually find an example, you have to think a bit and either find the text link under your Create button or realize that the Showcase link is what you're looking for.
Also, the Vendors page needs a bit of work. I'm sure that's number 7273 on your priority list, but I don't think it'll be very successful in engaging vendors as is.
I agree. Infochimps has a whip-smart group of folks and they're rapidly acquiring the resources needed to be the major player in the data market. Not only that, but knowing a lot of them, they're genuinely decent, helpful people. It's great to see another Austin startup rocking and rolling.
I can vouch for getting together with Louis. He and I have done coffee a couple of times now, and he's got a great perspective on everything from funding to really in-depth technical issues.
I can speak from experience when I say that Austin's entrepreneurial community is welcoming, supportive, and full of very sharp folks. You should definitely check out the Lean Startup group (http://www.meetup.com/Austin-Lean-Startup-Circle/). Our next meetup is a joint holiday mixer with a lot of other Austin groups (like Austin on Rails), and it promises to be a great way to meet a ton of folks.
Also, I'm not sure if you're looking for a workspace with a lot of people in the same position, but we've really benefited from participation in the Austin Technology Incubator.