I’m starting an internet company and detailing the entire process

[nhumrich]

Am I the only one who thought this article was going to be about an ISP startup because of the title, and was disappointed when it wasn't?

[d--b]

My thought process:

    Internet company?
    What is this? 1998?
    OH it must be an ISP!
    Nope. It's a chat for your website...
    Wait, isn't there a million of these already?
    * sigh *

[iamphilrae]

Great idea but you may want to rethink the name. PowWowNow is a well know (at least in the U.K.) conference call provider. May prove a big issue for you since you're in a similar field. Looking forward to the weekly updates.

[bflesch]

I'm always baffled by the naivity of people when deciding on company names. The challenge is not to spend dollars on finding a new name that is as cool as possible, but the challenge is to find a name:

- that is not used in that context anywhere else, therefore

- free of potential legal liability towards other brands, and

- for which you can build up a brand over time.

How come otherwise competent engineers end up with these kinds of suboptimal startup/project names over and over again?

For Powwow you have other companies, all domains are taken, and you will have to fight wikipedia to rank for this term in any top spot. Same with otto, the car company. Otto is popular first name, name of one of the largest European pre-amazon retailers, etc.

Such a waste of money and time to start with a second-hand brand.

(sorry if this comes across as snarky, I really like the project.)

[johnomarkid]

Thanks, didn't know that. If the name becomes a problem I am completely open to changing it.

[EGreg]

"The contradiction is that growth isn’t the only thing we want. We want to build a company that promotes remote work. We want to try new ways to motivate employees that don’t revolve around stock options with unknown value. And we want the ability to not grow when circumstances call for it."

Then use the model outlined in https://qbix.com/blog right now :)

Perhaps thinking of people as employees is outdated. Let's face it, these days the typical company or corporation doesn't care about its employees nearly as much as the product they produce. That's why your grandfather was a company man who worked 40 years with one firm, and today people flit from place to place.

It's also why people make less than they did then. Automation and outsourcing has reduced demand for human labor. Today (Real GDP / Population) is 10x more than in 1950s - so each person is 10x more productive on average - yet back then one regular man could pay for an entire household in the suburbs. Today both parents work, stick their kids in glorified daycare (public school) and still can barely make ends meet.

Perhaps the compensation model should be more project based.

Perhaps we should have single payer basic healthcare, food etc. unconditionally for everyone.

People live lives. Companies build products.

[jblok]

> We want to try new ways to motivate employees that don’t revolve around stock options with unknown value.

How about salaries?

[johnomarkid]

Industry level salaries are important. In addition to that, how do you create an environment that people want to work in for the next 10 years? I think remote work is a big incentive. Maybe capping work hours at 40/week. That makes people happy. Maybe profit sharing. There are incentives that are more tangible than stock options.

[npguy]

There is an enterprise software company named powwow as well. You might run into issues with your name.

[cbisnett]

You might have to fight John McAfee for the name ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowWow_(chat_program)

[pc86]

I'm not sure why a Slack group is a bad idea. I'm in a half dozen or so, and every time I open Slack I see the icons for all these services. I am much more likely to visit the website of one of my Slack groups than I am, say, one of the Facebook groups I'm in. I'm not even in Slack every day while I spend an embarrassing amount of time on Facebook.

[wwalser]

An alternative title for the post could be "I'm going to compete with two of the most dominant tech companies in the world and blog about it."

I've heard that Slack isn't really interested in supporting paid Slack communities in a meaningful way (all of the money is in enterprise chat). So I could see a company that's truly focused winning that battle. Facebook on the other hand seems pretty invested in private groups.

Naturally, I wish John the best of luck. Building a company is hard in and of itself, he's choosing to take on a particularly difficult version of that challenge. I hope he doesn't plan to bootstrap a community chat application.

[mintplant]

Would you mind detailing the process of actually starting the company, ie incorporation? What are the costs involved, recurring or otherwise? Did you hire a lawyer, or use a service like LegalZoom?

[johnomarkid]

Yes. The week 1 update goes into that. http://johnomar.com/powwow-progress-week-1/

[doozler]

Looking forward to the updates! Will you provide any technical information about the tech stack used, servers, scaling etc?

[johnomarkid]

Yup, for sure. In the week 1 update I actually briefly talk about the stack. But future updates will go more in depth with things like db query profiles. http://johnomar.com/powwow-progress-week-1/

[simonswords82]

Are you raising any money for this venture or bootstrapping?

[johnomarkid]

Bootstrapping for now.

[swagv1]

Never before in the history of the Internetz