smclaughlin's comments

Congrats on the first customer!

So overall I recommend taking the approach of being there to support and understand your customers 100% to see why the love you and your product. DO NOT try and charge additional money for high touch support - you will benefit more from it at this early stage than your customers will. Later when you have a lot of volume, you can come up with a separate plan. Get your first customers from your personal network - you don't know enough to pour money into paid marketing. You don't even know the right target market yet (I assume).

Learn as much as you can, and build as many 1-1 connections with your actual or potential customers to understand your market and pivot accordingly.

Beyond that - I have some basic stuff for your website that you might want to consider. I don't know your target market but at the very least it will help more quickly show the value of your product. You can then refine later to make it more focused on specific problems that law firms, libraries, students, or whatever it turns out to be have.

Some notes on your website:

1. Change your title from "Tired of reading terribly scanned PDFs?" to "Fix and Transcribe PDFs in Seconds". This will match with your "proof" by showing a demo video that's less than 5s long.

2. Your product is doing a lot of helpful things automatically - but I honestly don't know what they are because they flash as the subheading. Remove this and add as a table on the right 1/2 of the page below the heading.

3. Make your demo video shorter to only show the valuable pieces: show ugly PDF, upload PDF, convert, download PDF, show pretty PDF. Show the user the video before they click on it - or better yet remove the audio and play automatically in the background. Make this the left 1/2 of the page below the heading.

4. Consider shortening time to value when using the product e.g. automatically downloading the fixed PDF after converting so you could make your demo video just "drag PDF into browser, automatically download and open fixed PDF and show I can now copy text".

5. Consider changing the interaction on the before and after comparison to be a mouse over so it is obvious - as otherwise the black arrows on the black text are hard to discern. Or automatically move the slider left and right to make the comparison obvious.

6. Combine your "Features" and Pricing" pages with the home page. Don't make me click to discover the value. Instead of calling this "Awesome Features", try selling the value here. "Transcribes and Fixes 15 Common PDF Problems in Seconds".

7. Put a signup box below at the very bottom of the home page. Rename "My Files" for logged out users to "Sign In" and float to the right on the navigation bar.

8. Reinforce the value you're creating by showing the following on the pricing table: Process 500 PDFs / Month, Instantly transcribe, Fix 15+ common PDF problems, 24/7 Support (you have one customer - you can give world class support here, don't try to segment based on this yet). Reconsider document retention - I don't think anyone will care about this as most people and companies won't use you as a document repo. Just as a utility.

100% yes. WFH is meaningfully “flattening the world”.

US labor market preferences have forced employers to offer WFH options. There is only upside to an employer expanding their candidate pool internationally.

Most folks I know are starting with LatAm as there is no meaningful timezone difference to contend with.

This won’t be issue while the global demand for software engineers stays high, bolstered by monopoly businesses paying “whatever it takes”.

But when demand softens: get ready to compete on a level playing field with the best of the best from around the world.

I say that because I think this round of outsourcing is driven by a flight to quality - not cost cutting. Imagine what happens when companies offer US wages to someone in a less wealthy country. They’ll get the top 0.1% of the labor market.

Many companies were dragged kicking & screaming into WFH. But now even the laggards in remote work have developed a culture and processes to make it possible to begin offshoring their operations.

So much of “normal” depends what _your_ objective is.

If you are very career driven, work at a startup, or would like to generate additional opportunities for your own advancement - 60hrs a week might be normal.

In my own experience, you stop measuring work by hours at that point, and convert to measurement by results (which, if you are ambitious, leads to more hours actually worked).

If you want to work fewer hours because you don’t want to prioritize your work or career (to spend time with friends or family, other passions, etc), that’s fine. There are probably folks with that mindset who would view 30 hours as normal.

Personally, I am at my office working 12hrs a day 5 days a week. Then about 10 hours on Sunday.

But that’s because my objective at this phase of my life is to build a winning business and maximize the value of our equity.

Your objective is probably different from mine, but hopefully not different from those you are working with.

If you don’t understand why people love Slack, then you don’t understand what usable enterprise software means or why people love it.

Imagine how many people never used a chat app in a business context before. Maybe this is hard, as you can’t imagine who they could be — or you don’t remember a time _before_ the ubiquity of chat apps in the workplace. But trust me those people are a majority of the workforce.

Now imagine you are an enterprise user who has no control over how they work, and they’re told to use “something new to increase productivity”. They sigh because it is probably bullshit and they’re being forced to use it by the “decision maker”.

But lo and behold, Slack is actually useful and usable! Because in large part the value of any chat app is how well it is adopted by one’s (relatively non techy) teammates!

Slack is a masterclass in commercializing enterprise software through ease of adoption and use. The core tech is completely undifferentiated, but the understanding of enterprise environments and workplace psychology is second to maybe only Microsoft.

The Côte & Ciel Isar Rucksack. Perfect for daily carry and short trips. The laptop compartment can fit a 15in Macbook Pro and the main compartment can hold a couple changes of clothes and toiletries. Still looks brand new after a couple years of use.

https://www.coteetciel.com/en-US/isar-backpack-black-melange...

Office Depot's WorkPro Quantum 9000. Available for ~$300. More adjustable than the Ikea Markus and, in my opinion, significantly more comfortable. Has held up very well to daily use for 3+ years so far.

Thank god the internet has white knights like you around.

That's an interesting perspective. I disagree. I think if someone is tweeting about suicidal intentions then it follows that they are not concerned about the privacy of those intentions.

Nice. I know the author. He is a gentleman and a scholar.

Another Charleston native here, I think you're spot on. 300,000+ people are without water, yet the media's focus is still on the drama surrounding Chris Christie's traffic jam.