ezl's comments

i wonder if the "lite" solution looks something like a chrome extension for gmail.

an auth layer that lives on top of an existing mailbox that just adds the "last touched by michael" or "assigned to sally" and "seen by X, Y,Z" gives me: (A) the security that the underlying layer will exist in a year (B) a light solution to some of the coordination problems

I salute you.

It was the first time I had ever heard of that concept, and since then I have felt that it really is the best way to create a fair market clearing price for all participants where the maker with a limited stock of product (taylor swift) and the buyers (fans) get to participate.

Edit: oops - I can't find the original article I referenced, but someone else posted this on the same concept which is now on the front page of HN: https://barnabas.me/blog/2022/11/selling-tickets-fairly/

I built this years ago, before the pandemic. While QR codes existed, pre-pandemic, it didn't really feel like something that was ever going to get mass adoption.

Maybe just in my circles.

Now, it seems weird to imagine that people wouldn't know. :)

Last summer I lost my wallet on a golf course, and twice at bars. I do a "wallet , keys, phone, airpods" check when I leave the house, but it wouldn't have caught those events for me.

This solution isn't failsafe, but for a few hours of work and almost no ongoing costs, it makes it POSSIBLE for people to get things back to me (and significantly increases the odds)

In a world where I have more time and energy for this, I would implement tipping systems, sell the actual stickers and iron on patches to users, try to partner with schools and PTAs so kids who lose their stuff can recover it, etc.

I lose stuff a lot. It started as a URL (https://www.lost-item.com/eric/) that I can put on a sticker on my stuff so that when people find my phone, wallet, credit card, keys they can contact me.

I preferred that over my phone number or email address because I didn't want to put anything that identifies me on the items, so a form on the internet acts as a barrier.

In general, I find that people are really nice about it. I've recovered my full wallet at least 3 times and my phone probably 5 times.

Yes, I am forgetful. If I were smarter, I would just not lose stuff. But because I'm not, I have that.

Hosted on github pages and uses firebase, so basically it costs me $1 a year + the domain registration fee. So after I recovered my cell phone just once, I basically figured it's been paid for for life.

Lifetime revenue from strangers on it is less than $100. Value of items recovered to myself, probably $3k.

It does about 20k/mo in revenue (we are not profitable).

It's been super fun and rewarding. It's much more like building a software / tech startup than I expected it to be.

I pay for it, and I have a custom domain (several maybe?) and use that in addition to the default free @___.33mail.com subdomain.

People often ask me about my custom domain and ask how they can do the same thing for themselves.

I explain it, and they are interested, but they never do it.

I think there's too much friction for non-technical people. Most people in my life have never registered a domain before. They don't know what an MX record is. Even for someone technical, it takes some effort.

If there was an onboarding flow for that paid plan that looked like: "make it easy for someone who has never registered a domain to get a custom domain set up with 33mail" I think that would be huge.

That experience might look like:

  1. Hello, user! Please pick a domain! ____
  2. Tell me where to forward all your emails: ____
  3. Enter your credit card number: ____
  4. Click "save"

  Tada! Now [email protected] 
  forwards to their email address!

I love your service. I want it to make 80k/mo. Y'all have provided me a lot of happiness. And I've been pleasantly surprised when I've gotten support email responses from y'all.

Please keep up the great work.

> None of the people who report to me should really be focused on the current quarter.

When I have a good quarterly conference call with Wall Street, people will stop me and say, “Congratulations on your quarter,” and I say, “Thank you,” but what I’m really thinking is that quarter was baked three years ago.

If you strip away the machine learning/computer/math part, the story is: After 88 first dates, Chris finds someone he thinks he wants to marry. (Article says from the first 55 1st dates -> 3 2nd dates -> 1 3rd date).

It seems possible that going on 88 random dates would lead to a similarly shaped funnel.

While "use math" sounds like smart strategy, many (most probably?) happily married people have not gone on 88 actual first dates.

We'll ultimately try multiple channels. Actually our first channel we're trying is wholesaling to coffee shops.

We are really treating it a bit more like a startup in the sense that we have opinions, are testing them, but will iterate and are open to changing course based on the feedback we receive from the market.

There are a few reasons why the initial thesis is to stay away from Door Dash/Grubhub.

(A) cost - since we're not at scale, our unit costs are... not great. With the Door Dash cut, we'll almost certainly be in negative unit cost territory.

(B) Door Dash / GrubHub are an on demand business. A customer goes online, picks an option, then we fulfill it within X minutes. Subscription and wholesale allow us to BATCH our output (and therefore labor and facility inputs). This makes cost management way easier for us up front.

So right now, we can get off the ground just hiring people 2 days a week, but that wouldn't work with the normal Door Dash model.

Once we have our basic costs covered by the predictable orders, it'll be a lot easier for us to add on demand options and it won't add incremental labor costs.

Tock To Go is probably an early option for us though due to allowing low costs and future pickup ordering (Hi Nick Kokonas, I love you!)

I grew up in Houston and had "kolaches" everywhere. It wasn't until Tom and I started working on this business that I even learned the word klobasnek/klobasniky.

I feel we're fighting an uphill battle already with kolache vs kolace vs kolacky vs kolach, etc

Additionally the polish vs the czech versions are slightly different. Here in Chicago, the Polish kolaczki is often quite flaky with a drier dough and more like a dough square folded in over a fruit filling.

In Texas a true/traditional Czech kolache is often a soft, pillowy sweet ROUND pastry with the fruit filling.

However, despite all that, in Texas, especially in Houston, "kolache" is often just used as a catchall, even if not super accurate. But there are 50 "kolache" shops in Houston and no "klobasnek" shops.

We did debate it for a while, but we opted for just going with the grain rather than trying to be more correct.

Admittedly, there's a little bit of cowardice in that, but we decided there were enough challenges ahead, so we didn't want to add that extra journey.

FWIW, if we can/do get to the stage where we are really able to do delivery subscriptions (that's definitely a goal), then we probably will use that language.

It's not that I think it's a good choice or even descriptive (Isn't really ANY food you buy basically X as a service? Yet bagel shops aren't calling themselves "bagel as a service" because... well... it's insane.)

But it probably will get people's attention in a hyperlocal social media ad, so it has utility to us as a business strategy.

I know it probably sucks a little bit, but our goal is to accrue many small advantages to drive a higher total probability of success.

:sob:

Just a few days ago I was reading an old thread on HN about "patio11's law" (The software economy is bigger than you think)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162651

The comments are great and they talk about these non-venture companies that are quietly churning out 10s of millions or maybe 100s of millions of dollars.

Some of these I just really want to exist, so let me know when you do execute so I can be your first customer too! :)