suzyperplexus's comments

suzyperplexus | 9 years ago | on: Getting to your first 100 customers

Really like how she just spreadsheets it and lays it out for everyone

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2015)

SF-Based Company: Heavybit seeks a FT onsite event manager with 5+ years experience to help design and plan developer community events and rally the community. If you've got a background in tech event management, developer evangelism and/or community building we're looking for you. We can do H1-B transfers + Greencard transfers.

About Heavybit: Started by Heroku founder James Lindenbaum, we're a 9 month program for developer co's like RainforestQA, KeenIO and Iron.io.

Job Listing: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/60157128?trk=biz-overvie...

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Startups fighting over the word 'zen'

It surprises me that the company is moving forward with this, when they're so known for being cool in other areas like community programs. http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2014/02/28/twitter-tax-break-be...

It just seems like they're so clearly the most well known "Zen" brand out there. And if this whole thing is about branding, then why not focus on the defensibility of the product rather than the name? Am I being naive here?

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Performance and Opportunities of HTTP 2.0

Just posted the slideshare for this here: http://www.slideshare.net/heavybit/heavybit-presents-ilya-gr...

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Move Fast, Don't Break Your API

Amber also did this as a presentation at Heavybit if you're interested in seeing it http://www.heavybit.com/library/developer-technical/video/20...

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: White Male “Allies” Have Little to Say About Fixing Sexist Tech Culture

I suppose this sort of thing sadly isn't surprising but I'd hate for it to overshadow the good and important things coming out of the Grace Hopper Conference. Hoping more of that comes to light.

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Show HN: Open source clone of Heavybit Library player in Meteor

This is awesome! It took us a while to build this and we've still got a number of upcoming features we're working on. Thanks for this!

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Cloudant's Journey from Y Combinator to IBM Acquisition

So yesterday was YC demo day. Interested to hear if other YC founders and alum have learned similar things?

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Open Source Business Models

So I wrote at the risk of being a self-promotional jerk. Here's the blog post: http://blog.heavybit.com/blog/2014/7/21/video-release-former...

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Things we learnt designing 'Register to vote'

I love the gov.uk people. Their design principles doc is still bookmarked for me https://www.gov.uk/design-principles

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: What does it take for a developer to be a successful founder?

My 2 cents: Honestly, you don't have to solve for all your weaknesses. You can find a cofounder and advisors that help you fill in the gaps. It's of course smart to have a rudimentary understanding of go-to-market strategy, but I think one thing you should definitely develop is a diverse network. If you're surrounding yourself with smart people who excel in a variety of fields (not just web development) then you're probably more likely to be able to tap into their knowledge when you need it.

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Heroku PM (Amazon, PayPal Alum) Matt Soldo on "Selling More with Math"

Fair enough. I think sometimes it's the obvious things that people forget. Like people think pricing and product marketing is freaking magic, when really it's often just simple math. Got anything better you think would be relevant to this thread?

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

I suppose you need to ask, "What is the point of promotion?" If you're just trying to get to a particular niche audience and you know they're on a particular channel, then go there and start interacting. Defining marketing isn't going to get people to look at your product and producing your messaging in a perfect bubble is a surefire way to keep you in obscurity. I suppose my tactic is creating a shortlist of 1000 ideal customers, reading what they read, figuring out their needs, and then after all that research -- approaching them humbly with a request to demo.

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Study participants typically did not enjoy spending 15 minutes by themselves

I guess one way to test what might have happened in this study is to time yourself for 15 min and see what you'd do. In my experience, being alone with my thoughts and meditating or just sitting there is useful, but not particularly pleasant. Silence is often where people have to find and deal with all the shitty truths about themselves.

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do you know when to quit your startup?

I've regretted leaving a startup at the time I did. I was miserable, but probably could've stuck in there for 10 months if I'd seen the liquidity event that was coming.

In my experience, most early founders don't quit because they're discouraged by lack of traction. That's why advisors and investors quit.

Founders quit because of a difference of opinion around product vision and because relationships are just plain broken. One of my colleagues put it this way, "If you look at the people around you and feel sad because you're helping people you hate (who you used to like) win, that's when you need to quit."

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Jul 15 Deadline: Code for America's Fellowship Application

I used to work here. And even though I left, I've still got a huge amount of respect for the people in the org. Fellows get access to some incredible speakers (people like Ken Norton, Tim O'Reilly and Aneesh Chopra) and they get to tackle really hard problems -- like Food Stamps and economic development. It's cheesy, but I really feel like the fellows are doing something noble for US cities.

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Video: Spend Money to Reduce Customer Churn from Redpoint's Tomasz Tunguz

I highly recommend his blog as well http://tomtunguz.com. Apparently he processes his data points in R before laying out all his recommendations. Pretty awesome.

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Tell HN: I want out

I think there are days I've felt this and other days when I've been that asshole pushing everyone forward. My own advice is to take a breath, block out 1-2 hours everyday with some sort of fake meeting you've made up for yourself to be alone, and give yourself a day a week for a makers day free from meetings.

If you still feel like you need to leave, then do it. People can likely tell when you're not happy. If you're convincing enough to get them all onboard , your shitty attitude is also probably pretty convincing in making them jump ship. Assuming that you still want this to succeed, exit gracefully if you have to.

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: How did you get your app featured by Apple?

In 2010, Faber Novel did a study on marketing your app to get into the app store. So much of it seemed to revolve around timing of launch:http://www.slideshare.net/misteroo/how-to-market-your-app.

I also summarized it in a quick article: http://readwrite.com/2010/02/17/iphone-appstore-ranking-algo...

Newer answers welcome. Sorry, I haven't kept up with this as much as I should.

suzyperplexus | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: When a startup supplies a computer, do you own it?

I agree that the company owns the laptop, but also that they own any inventions ever mentioned, worked on, or accessed from it. If you're working on your own projects, make sure you offer a list of inventions dating the creation of any intellectual property you don't want your company to claim rights to.