Rakathos

5 ms·

1.
by Rakathos 12y ago
Slightly off-topic, but I wanted to expand on anxiety quick: > Anxiety, though, (and I'm speaking from experience here, having had some light anxiety attacks caused by too much regular caffeine usage) seems to be characterised by a
2.
by Rakathos 12y ago
As someone that has a Windows Phone and uses Cortana, yes. Everything he was doing is a pretty standard response or action from Cortana. I mention this every time, but I think the most interesting thing about it is that developers can integ
3.
by Rakathos 12y ago
FYI, it looks like the mobile site has some issues in IE on Windows Phone. The white text is a bit hard to read with the background image [1], and refreshing the page results in this [2]. Looking forward to trying it out though! [1]: http:
4.
by Rakathos 12y ago
Oh I agree, it shouldn't be advertised as a headline feature if it's not fully functional. I'm just pointing out that Microsoft considers Cortana to be in beta, and it's only available on the developer preview of the OS.
5.
by Rakathos 12y ago
It's important to note that the Cortana app itself is in beta. I think the most interesting news about Cortana is that, unlike Siri and Google Now, it can be extended by 3rd-party developers. For example, my Chase Mobile app uses Corta
6.
by Rakathos 12y ago
Just bought a makeup bag from her Etsy shop that my girlfriend is sure to love. Good luck!
7.
by Rakathos 13y ago
A few people were upset that I called it a failure after 4 months. You're right, 4 months is nothing compared to most other startups or software businesses. Let me clarify that I'm calling it a failure not because I wasn't ri
8.
by Rakathos 13y ago
I'm a very proud person, and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. That being said, you're right about coming off as negative or ashamed. I don't actually feel that way about myself or my efforts, but I realize that
9.
by Rakathos 13y ago
If there's one thing I've learned from Rob Walling and Mike Taber's podcasts[1], it's that marketing and customer development are by far the most important parts of building a successful SaaS business. > the product
10.
by Rakathos 13y ago
My entire site design and copy have been a source of downright embarrassment. In fact, this week's "challenge goal" is a brand new home page, landing page and sales page design. The copy itself is going to need to change to r
11.
by Rakathos 13y ago
> <4 months part-time is't really enough time to spend on a business before evaluating it as a failure. Wile pivoting may make sense, I'm pretty sure that $300 + 120 days doesn't generate enough data to say anything co
12.
by Rakathos 13y ago
Not harsh at all! You're right, but in my defense "Iron Conversions" was just going to be a massive dunning email generator. It would have hooked into a user's Stripe account and responded to webhooks with A/B teste
13.
by Rakathos 13y ago
> I'm interested in knowing why you think it's worth doubling down? There's a bunch of reasons for me to try it again. The most persuasive one has been all of the great feedback I've received from trial users, peopl
14.
by Rakathos 13y ago
> The flipside is that a lot of developers don't have enough hobbies to draw from with which to start a business. This was (is?) definitely me. I have a grand total of three hobbies: Building software (also my job), playing WoW an
15.
by Rakathos 13y ago
(Blog post author here) I wondered where the random burst of traffic came from. For those who haven't read the more recent posts, I received a ton of great feedback from HN and other entrepreneur friendly places. I've also been go
16.
by Rakathos 13y ago
I sell Inventory Management software, and I priced the three plan levels by guessing. I went for $29/$59/$129 across three different plan levels. Many trial users have told me that my pricing is way too high. I imagine these peopl
17.
by Rakathos 13y ago
You're right, the online inventory management bidding for AdWords clicks averages far more than I spend per click. I haven't checked recently, but $3-$6 sounds about right. I started to bid as cheap as I could, figuring it'd be better to g
18.
by Rakathos 13y ago
By a fluke I noticed that "mobile inventory management" and variants brought me tons and tons of clicks from AdWords for incredibly cheap. Attempting to capitalize on that, I did my best to make the product "mobile ready" and started flingi
19.
by Rakathos 13y ago
The entire backend of Rakasheets is built in C#/Asp.Net. For the real-time technology I'm using SignalR, which I highly recommend. It's like websockets for .Net and it's very simple to use. Sidenote: While I love SignalR, "real-time invento
20.
by Rakathos 13y ago
You're somewhat correct, I'm building Iron Conversions as a way to boost my trial-to-paid conversion rate for Rakasheets. Without going into too much detail (I'm not 100% sure this is what I want it to do or how I want to word it) I'm build
21.
by Rakathos 13y ago
I'm still here! HN is throttling my comment submission rate though, so I can't reply to very quickly right now. I agree, this advice is priceless.
22.
by Rakathos 13y ago
Thanks for your feedback! 1) I've quickly learned this point but for a long time I resisted adding any other "features" to the app. I considered it a waste of time, if I couldn't get more than one person paying for the product, why should I
23.
by Rakathos 13y ago
"Small business owners aren't hackers" is what I've learned recently, and I wish I learned it months ago. In hindsight I know I went about finding my problem-to-solve in the wrong way. Instead of interacting with my potential customers, I o
24.
by Rakathos 13y ago
This seems to be a common theme so I'll post this here instead of replying to each comment with the same thing: I probably should have named the blog post "I've lost interest in my product" instead of calling the whole thing a failure, as t
25.
by Rakathos 13y ago
Great advice. I admit I had no plan of action when I started building my product. My line of thought was: "Okay, I'll build it. People will somehow hear about it and start using it. I'll make money which I can then put into marketing the pr
26.
by Rakathos 13y ago
A grand total of zero. With all of my projects I've been adamant about not doing phone marketing, phone calls, or phone anything. I realize that that is a crippling problem, especially when my target demographic is small business owners who
27.
by Rakathos 13y ago
Agreed, four months definitely is not enough time to be calling this a failure. I've explained my motivations for calling it a failure elsewhere in this thread if you're interested. I probably should have named the post "I've lost interest
28.
by Rakathos 13y ago
That's what nearly all of the feedback I've gotten has been. "It needs to be like X or do Y". I fought that for a long time but I've been forced to see that inventory management by itself is not something that many businesses can use. They
29.
by Rakathos 13y ago
Agreed, thanks for the feedback. I'm not a great writer, and my marketing skills definitely leave something to be desired. Nevertheless, it's something I've been trying to improve recently. When comparing the copywriting I have on my produc
30.
by Rakathos 13y ago
Actually that was a bit that should have been cut out. I previously had a paragraph in there that said most of my mailing list subscribers were from India (according to MailChimp). I then went on and said that the people on my mailing list

More ›