How Hacker News motivated me to resign my job and launch my own startup (2011)

[colkassad]

You know, I always groan a bit when I read headlines like this. I decided to click through so I could satisfy my pathetic desire to scoff and ended up reading a great story. Very inspiring, and I hope the best for you guys.

[GFischer]

It's a great story (especially for us outside the U.S.).

It has already been discussed here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2340732

but it's nice to revisit an old success story :)

[j2bax]

I'd be interested to know what the overall costs and quality would be for a US startup to move to India for lower operation costs at least for the initial stages. Does anyone have experience with this?

Silicon Valley sounds great, but cost of living and cost of talent makes it seem out of reach at least for the near future.

[tarr11]

As a US/CA resident, i'm always stunned to see how low operating costs can be in India.

[tolliator]

I see you got getmefast to design your website, how much of that design is left in the current version, and how was the overall experience with that company? Thanks

[girishm]

We have changed much of the old site design developed by getmefast after we had the bandwidth and resources to have an inhouse team. Our experience was good enough to get started with a website. However for a start just getting some good templates from themeforest may do the job also for a lower cost till you can afford to hire a top notch team.

[whileonebegin]

Nice informative post. I also read your post, "How to incorporate a US Corporation from outside the USA". How is this legal? And how/who do you pay taxes?

[girishm]

The US company is a Delaware C Corp and is a legal business entity in the US and pays taxes like any other corporation.

[acgourley]

I also have hacker news to thank for my entrepreneurial career, I think. There isn't a good story there, I've just been reading it for about 6 years, right about when I was graduating college, and the cult of YC indoctrinated me. Edit: For clarification, year 1 and 2 of hacker news were extremely focused on PG, PG's writings, YC, etc. So when I saw I was indoctrinated it's because the site was nothing but that.

[zio99]

Was bitgym funded by YC? Really impressed by your business proposition and your bike hack: http://blog.bitgym.com/2012/03/our-first-lean-hypothesis/ After 23 blog posts in 2 years, I'm sure there's more where that came from. Would you mind sharing your backstory here? Or a 1 minute rundown via email aaron [at] brownieinmotion [dot] ca. I would be honoured to spotlight bitgym in my book: http://sellfy.com/p/9j2z A bit of background: http://startupframework.tumblr.com/post/29634915106/what-i-l... Thanks Alex!

[sidcool]

Congratulations for launching. Welcome to hell! :) And wish you luck.

[GFischer]

They launched a year ago, the title should say (2011) :)

And they've already raised 10 millon dollars, and a few fights with ZenDesk too :P

[K2h]

I learned about the search at the bottom of the page. I have been here 6 months and been so excited with everything I never made it to the bottom to find it.

[vignesh_vs_in]

me too never saw it, but i have pinned hnsearch tab :P

[dinkumthinkum]

This is a good, well written, specific story of a startup. Nice job guys. :)

- Just realized this is from quite while ago.

[january14n]

Good luck! and welcome to the new world!

[indianass]

moron indian hairy dark ass. motivate indian ass

[mbchandar]

inspiring girish

[ebbv]

What a funny coincidence, I was just looking at freshdesk yesterday. I really want to place our support software (Kayako), but there just aren't good options out there.

Unfortunately SaaS doesn't work for us, but I wish these guys the best. Looks like they're on the right track and have the right priorities.

[dinkumthinkum]

Interesting, what is the issue with SaaS?

[combataircraft]

I recommend you to use Zendesk; http://zendesk.com