Patrick McKenzie

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) continues to deliver really insightful commentary at the software/business interface. https://bam.kalzumeus.com/

I don't know which aspect for the "best" you mean, if you meant best on monetary gain by reading their articles, definitely https://kalzumeus.com (HN user patio11)

Highly recommend patio11's site and blog: https://www.kalzumeus.com/ His post on salary negotiation should be mandatory reading for all software engineers: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

Do you follow any Gaijin programmers or entrepreneurs who live in Japan? You should try contacting the guy at Kalzumeus Software (https://www.kalzumeus.com).

If you have not already looked at it, it's probably worth looking at Patio11's (Patrick McKenzie's) website and reading his blog and listening to his podcasts. http://www.kalzumeus.com/

First, I'm impressed that you were brave enough to post that under your regular account. Kudos. Second, here's an idea for you off the top of my head, so take it for what its worth: You are in the middle of an area that most techies consider "flyover country" and that is therefore grossly underserved by the tech industry. I would bet dollars to donuts that there are industries in your backyard with unmet needs you could fill that are worth lots and lots of money. My suggestion would be to find someone local to you who knows a local industry inside and out, and try to start a company together serving that industry. If you do consider going down this route, Patrick McKenzie's articles are a gold mine of advice: http://www.kalzumeus.com/

If you want to be an entrepreneur, why not learn the marketing side? I recommend reading Patrick McKenzie's blog. He has some great articles on why developers need to be marketers. http://www.kalzumeus.com/

You mean like the guided tours that 'patio11 made a video about that I watched recently? :P (I recommend the http://www.kalzumeus.com/ mailing list if you haven't seen it yet)

Patrick (patio11) has a great blog and covers all sorts of interesting topics, including marketing/targeting: http://www.kalzumeus.com https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11 Also, there's plenty of previous HN discussions on niche targeting: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=niche#!/story/forever/0/niche As for the cross-over between hikers and hackers, I've seen the OpenBSD developers self-described as "A hiking club with a hacking problem." Nearly all of their main hackathons involve a hike of some sort. http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html

White Hat SEO: unique title tags, unique meta descriptions, unique urls, correct use of headers and other HTML elements, fast loading pages, & content, content, content. The best way it was described to me is that its best to think of each page of content as a lottery ticket to the google front page. The more unique original content you have the better chance that one of your pages will get ranked for some keyword. Really as simple as that. I have articles from my app ranked on the 1st page of google in less than a week just following these guidelines and my app has a page rank of 0 since its new. (http://moz.com and http://www.kalzumeus.com are great resources) Black Hat SEO: Compensate people to link to your website or find websites that pass link "juice" to your site. I don't recommend this path. (http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed)

On the traffic and subscribers front, I'd recommend reading everything that patio11 has written about Bingo Card Creator: http://www.kalzumeus.com/

More: the size of the market also indicates a certain fragility. The chance of competitors/demand/etc may mean that eventually it won't be worth enough money to commit further effort to. If you can bring your app to a point where it's sellable and maintenance work to a point where there almost isn't any, then you have something. Edit: Also - read everything patio11 has ever written (http://www.kalzumeus.com/).

http://www.bingocardcreator.com - made by HNer patio11, here's his (amazingly interesting and useful) blog: http://www.kalzumeus.com/

What do you want to do exactly? Do you want to build an app to help people do A/B testing? It might be worth trying to get in touch with someone like Patrick McKenzie. His username here is patio11 and his blog is http://www.kalzumeus.com. He's done a lot of writing about A/B testing and has even released a testing framework: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo. I'm sure he has a lot of thoughts that would be very beneficial (I'm sure there are other people around here that could impart their knowledge too). The nature of A/B testing often requires things to be pretty tightly coupled with the app itself. If you're providing a service for this it'd be interesting to see how you overcome that.

You're most welcome. The very best of luck to you! I'll be in your shoes in a couple of months, just finishing up college now so I can't really work on my numerous ideas. Can't wait to get into it! You might also consider keeping a blog of your progress, like this guy with Bingo Cards, of all things: http://www.kalzumeus.com/ Even though his product isn't pitched at a HN-type demographic, the process of how he develops his ideas makes for an interesting read. It's a great way of generating free buzz - writing passionately about your startup with no BS. Something you may wish to consider also.

Read everything by our own patio11: http://www.kalzumeus.com/ specifically this post: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/03/20/running-a-software-business-on-5-h… I'd also suggesting reading Getting Real (or Rework, if you want to pay, I think it's worth it) by 37signals: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/

Alternatively, if he isn't able to do the contact, I would highly recommend reading all of his comments http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patio11 and all of his blog http://www.kalzumeus.com/

That's my business. I also blog about lots of related topics. Business: http://www.bingocardcreator.com Blog: http://www.kalzumeus.com Just hit $20k in revenue this year does a little happy dance. Distribution: Website. I get people to the website by mostly SEO and AdWords, with an increasing word of mouth contribution (more than a thousand paying customers means that, increasingly, you hear "Oh, I was looking for JUST THIS and then Myrtle at church told me..."). Sales: Web site? See blog for copious tips on the use of payment processors (I use http://www.e-junkie.com as a wrapper around Paypal/Google Checkout) and how to write sales copy. Download sites: Nearly worthless for PC software.

But every business is always looking to maximize, but why is there a sort of contraction, and why now? There used to be a period of “Patrick McKenzie way of doing business” during 2005-2020 (https://www.kalzumeus.com/): - Be nice with customers, - Reimburse when they haven’t used the software, - Provide value, even with 3 fields on a webform, - And you’ll get positive feedback loop into higher revenue, even with a crappy layout, It was the time of Basecamp and Joel on Software. It was the time of Atlassian. It was the time of entrepreneurs being cool kids. What happened is the Schumpeter cycle (40-70 years, as opposed to Kondratiev cycles, 5-7 years due to stock movements). Internet entered a more stable phase, instead of the startup phase. The cake is now limited, everyone has reached peak time spent on phones, the eyeballs you get are eyeballs someone else doesn’t. The goal is to stay big. Now, to be heard, you need a designer, not only for your services, not even for your software, but even to publish your CVE (Heartbleed). If it’s not sexy it’s not worthy. Unless, of course, unless all of these Twitters and AirBnbs were fluff that can go away without any part of the economy depending on it, in which case we’ll just see another short cycle until we invent the final technologies/services which will stay.

Honestly, if she’s ready to graduate High school and enter college, she’s old enough to be researching those questions on her own (not that you can’t too). She should be, too. Learning how to learn in your industry is an actual skill to learn. Learning what the “pulse” of the industry is will also be valuable for her during studies and beyond, and she’ll also meet peers who can have those discussions with her. That said, I think for many this forum is actually the place to learn about the industry. It’s too broad an industry to find more specifics without knowing her interests. Does she like startups? Does she care more about the business side? Financial tech? AI? App development? Does she not know? This site is honestly a great mixed aggregator of other sites. Find interesting ones and see the other posts. She’s in HS so the bar is low on deep technical knowledge and expectations. She should probably focus less on intense research topics unless she has an actual interest in a more academic side (simply because academic research is less approachable to someone without much academic experience). If she doesn’t have an answer to those questions, I would say she just start googling things that pique curiosity. “How does X work” is how I started. That’s how I learned which buzzwords and jargon mattered to me. Probably more approachable for a younger person earlier on the journey. Here are some newsletters I follow. My interests skew towards business. Bits About…

I think what the author describes about a tipping point in receiving offers/intros is true. I also think he is right about social media (FB, Instagram, Twitter) for someone like him. This is also in-line with the author's writing on 'Deep Work' so his stance is not a surprise. However, I see a great great counter-example--Patrick McKenzie (Patio11). I just checked and he has over 42k Twitter followers and is regularly brought up on HN. Yet, here's the third paragraph on his personal website: "I love talking to other small businesses at any time, for any reason: please, drop me an email. I respond to as many as I can, time permitting. Nothing makes me happier than helping people out. See the Standing Invitation for details." https://www.kalzumeus.com/ I wonder if the way Patrick portrays himself and his openness to connecting, ends up with him having a higher quality of inbound than the author. I realize that's a conjecture wrapped up as a question.

I suppose it would be backwards from what you typically experience. Let me try again: You're looking for a piece of software, you need it, and are ready to buy. Let's call it a CRM and the feature you're looking for the ability to add a new contact from the main screen. (It could be anything and any feature, but just as an example) During the demo, you love the software, the people instill confidence, and you can see yourself using this everyday. If it takes three extra button clicks to add a new contact (giving you a workaround) would this make you happy? Or you're really happy with everything, and the choice is to sign the contract and we would have the button before install date (written in the contract.) Would that be a better option? I'm interested in how you as the person listening to the demo, would take those two options (giving only one option would be presented during the demo) Does this make more sense? As a reference, The guys at Close.io use the first option ( http://blog.close.io/) patio11 (who is kicking around here) uses the second option (http://www.kalzumeus.com/)

1) Remember that tech news is biased towards that kind of people. They are the "ideal", young "wizkids", the ones that fit the narrative. The fact that you don't hear about 30 or 40-something entrepeneurs/engineers with great ideas that make a difference and/or make millions doesn't mean they don't exist. 2) You need to understand that there is always going to be somebody better, more talented and/or more hardworking. Remember to play the market, assess yourself objectivly, understand your strengths, understand the context, see the real problem, know where to push and get good at timing your pushes. Don't bruteforce, be sophisticated, precise and elegant. And most importantly, understand that the alternative to "The Constant Grind" is NOT being a couch potato. Remember that beating yourself accomplishes nothing. Be prepared to accept that if the procastination is too deep maybie, just maybie, you might just be lying to youself when you say you "love" what you are doing. 3) Read Patrick Mckenzie's blog: http://www.kalzumeus.com/

Devops actually makes things a little easier I think. With Ansible, setting up a server on AWS feels a little like maintaining a vimrc file. Get a starter playbook from someone and run that to setup a server on AWS. Then you modify as needed as you go through your days as a developer. The great thing about Ansible playbooks is that it codifies the setup. You have a "recipe" that you can modify and run as needed. For me, this is much better than the days where I would set up a VPS "firing from the hip." If you had me setup 10 different servers, I would have set them up 10 different ways. I think for development knowledge in general, it might be good to look at the following people... http://www.kalzumeus.com/ (patio11 here) http://brennandunn.com/ http://unicornfree.com/ Take a read through. For these guys, it's all about products. In the end, that's all that matters. Maybe try for a change of perspective where you look at your skills in terms of products. In Amazon, there are probably projects where they lock developers in dark basements to learn arcane crafts so specialized that these engineers forget how to spell their name. These engineers would probably struggle just the same as you if the need for these specialties were to disappear. Faced with the need to "retool" - would they be able to do it? Some might, some might not. There is (and probably will be for quite some time) still a lot of need for people doing the sort of "LAMP" development that you cut your…

Submission I cannot stress enough the importance of reviewing the App Store Review Guidelines before submitting your app. My recent app got rejected because of a problem that I literally fixed in 5 seconds, but I have to wait another week before it will be reviewed again. Don't let that happen to you. https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guidelines.htm… Marketing Think about how you will market your app. For your app, I would research the marketing origins of startups like Uber and Lyft. A "Show HN" is a great place to get feedback, but it is unlikely that the HN community is your target market. Go to Twitter, Google+ Communities, and find forums tailored to carpooling and ride sharing. Hit the blogs!Often times, moderators of blogs will give you FREE advertisement, just because you made something that their readers will enjoy. Do not spam, and hang around in each community you post in for a while. Then, if you haven't already, start a blog. Start writing about your app, carpooling, and other things that you want to be known for. Here are some well-known blogs that are great for learning how to market your products: http://www.kalzumeus.com/ http://nathanbarry.com/ http://brennandunn.com/ - This one is focused more on freelancers, but Brennan provides really helpful advice that applies to almost all situations

It's hard to answer that question because so much depends on your specific circumstances but I'll try. I'm assuming you're able to do your own programming because $1000 won't get you very far if you need to hire developers. Find an area where you think you can provide something of value. It could be a hobby or a problem in your community. Figure out how to solve it and have a go. Get feedback early and keep an open mind try lots of things and understand what's working and why. If you don't already know patio11's Bingo Card Creator story, then probably the best advice you will find is on his website: http://www.kalzumeus.com/ Read the earlier ones on how to prioritize your time and validate your work (the more recent posts are more geared towards SEO and marketing). Also Eric Rees's blog about the Minimal Viable Product approach: http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/ But you've been on HN for a while, so you probably already know all that?

) Read every single business-related post at patio11's blog [1]. That is great advice for any startup (due to the quality of the content), but for a startup selling to educators? Unmissable. In case you are unaware, patio11 is extremely popular on HN (for varied and valid reasons), and he runs a website which sells bingo cards to teachers. ) Agreed re: adverts - as a user, I would be annoyed that I am paying for your site and still seeing ads. ) Try outsourcing the creation of new material - the more subjects you cover, the better. There are many freelance where you can find teachers in various subjects, and your wife can act as "quality control". ) Use Adwords to bring more people to your site ) If you are specifically targeting Dutch schools, maybe creating a Hyves app will help? (Unless that is your employer :D ) [1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/ ) Perhaps try to attend some startup groups in the Netherlands? I live in Amsterdam, I should try and find one too... maar mijn Nederlands is niet geod.

I do ... one of the nice things about HN is the quality of its human filter! But to address the cumulative comments made by 10smom below, here's the snippet from her profile - "I am a Female, self funded, Startup Entrepreneur". From what I've seen lurking around here for a year or so, you're best bet is to ask for feedback on your start-up. You'll either get accolades or at least constructive criticism but I strongly doubt you'll get into an argument like this one. If you're thick-skinned enough to be an entrepreneur, I'm sure you can forget about this thread ... let's just start over as though we'd never met you. And if you're worthy of karma, people will realize that over time and you'll get it. I started following patio11 a long time before he was a rising karma star, but if you read his comments here and his blog at http://www.kalzumeus.com, you'll realize why he has (and deserves) so much respect. Pleased to meet you 10smom!

> Any input on the concept? For a first foray into business, I'd recommend against building something that requires network effects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect For every Facebook or Yelp, there's hundreds of network-effects-based sites that never gain any steam, and they don't see anything from it. Also, what you're talking about is notoriously hard to get money out of. For a first business, sell something to people. Take Hacker News' own Patrick McKenzie* (patio11) - he sells Bingo Card Creating Software. His blog is here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/ He sells things to people. If he tries something, he knows right away if it's working - he gets bingo card sales. If no one bought his bingo cards, he would know it's not working and he'd have closed his site. You learn a lot about business by selling things to people, and it's got the most clear and insightful feedback.

I highly recommend you read this classic post from Patrick McKenzie: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ > You are not defined by your chosen software stack: I recently asked via Twitter what young engineers wanted to know about careers. Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study. It doesn’t matter. There you go. This is especially true now, since coding agents make it possible to work with any stack.