Disqus - Latest Comments for swatermasysk

Re: 33 Amazing SaaS tools that Power KickoffLabs

Scott Watermasysk — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 08:52:44 -0000

I think this was the last interview/podcast I was on: http://bootstrapped.fm/boot...

Re: 33 Amazing SaaS tools that Power KickoffLabs

Scott Watermasysk — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 08:48:22 -0000

No hipchat yet. With just the two of us, regular IM + email works fine.

We have used oDesk to hire some contractors, but at this time all development is done by Josh and I.

Re: 33 Amazing SaaS tools that Power KickoffLabs

Scott Watermasysk — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 16:23:07 -0000

For landing pages, we are using both KickoffLabs or custom built pages in the marketing site. It generally depends on the goal (sign up for a mailing list vs sign up for product trial).

Re: Stay Away From Moonshot Ideas

Scott Watermasysk — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 10:24:26 -0000

@twitter-6967822 My own issues with "shooting for the moon" is too many great ideas get past over because they are not going to be "big enough". For me, the goal wasn't necessarily to start my own company, but to have the freedom to live my life on my own terms. The size company/market/etc I have targeted is letting me to do that.

Re: Joining Znode

Scott Watermasysk — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 10:20:04 -0000

Good luck and smart move to do what's best for the family.

Re: Defining Success and Failure

Scott Watermasysk — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 07:15:39 -0000

There is a lot of opportunity in the $5K to $20K a month range. That is the point I have trying to drive home to people in regards to bootstrapping over the last couple of years (the focus on bootstrapping is a bit off...hoping to fix that as well).

One of the keys to this type of revenue level is subscriptions. Even with the best marketing/connections/etc it is hard to chase down $10K in new revenue each month (and I have to imagine, personally exhausting).

Is there anything outside of themes which could be sold as a subscription service? Is there a way to change your current offering into some type of monthly subscription?

Re: My Archive Subdomain

Scott Watermasysk — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:53:43 -0000

I have started down this route as well. However, I do think it is OK to delete content that I do not feel stands the test of time.

Re: There is No Work/Life Balance

Scott Watermasysk — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:27:56 -0000

Good lucking getting your life back under control. I admire the commitment, but I think you have to ask yourself is it all really worth it if you are not able to actually enjoy it.

Re: Serving Assets From S3 on Heroku

Scott Watermasysk — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 21:07:38 -0000

Doesn't this work flow mean there is a brief moment when your assets are missing or out of sync with your app?

Re: Redis Is The Most Important Tool In My Toolbelt

Scott Watermasysk — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:37:32 -0000

Good catch. Thanks!

Re: Redis Is The Most Important Tool In My Toolbelt

Scott Watermasysk — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:12:46 -0000

Agreed. With the exception of Redis, I have really backed off of the whole NoSQL thing.

I use a simple set_once method as well:

def set_once_and_expire(key, seconds) store.expire(key,seconds) if store.setnx(key,0)end

It would be great to see this be a native function (although I guess you could do it with scripting at well).

Re: Stop asking “But how will they make money?”

Scott Watermasysk — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:20:35 -0000

You can't be serious with this post.

Yes, assuming you are next Facebook or Twitter (and I think you could make a strong argument that not even Twitter applies) you can figure your business model out later.

For the rest of would be businesses, not planning a business model is an absolutely ridiculous suggestion. In addition, the fact the profits from advertising continue to shrink makes this even crazier.

Re: http://blog.scottw.com/post/20838828850

Scott Watermasysk — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:13:33 -0000

Thanks for the info. I updated the post.

Re: Perfect Pricing Part Deux — More money from fewer sales

Scott Watermasysk — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:04:18 -0000

Great post! Too many people/companies/etc sell themselves short in the rush to get big. We have taken a similar approach in our business and have really focused on delivering a high level of value and service to each of our customers.

This in turn, has helped us continue to grow and still keep costs in check.

P.S. and for those wondering, Jarrod's book is fabulous as well.

Re: Crap, where did I put that file? - Scott Watermasysk

Scott Watermasysk — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:49:31 -0000

I would love handle stumbleupon/etc. But apart from hard coding specific urls, I don't see how to do it (yet).

Re: 301 Redirect in a Rails Route | Intridea Blog

Scott Watermasysk — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 13:43:03 -0000

I am a fan of Rack Rewrite for these types of things. Feels better to keep all of this logic/need in a single location.

See: https://github.com/jtrupian...

Re: Crap, where did I put that file? - Scott Watermasysk

Scott Watermasysk — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:24:27 -0000

Agreed on the practice and made the change. Thanks for the suggestion.

Re: Static Files using Sinatra::Base on Heroku - Scott Watermasysk

Scott Watermasysk — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:00:11 -0000

Thanks for the tip. I forgot about that and make the same mistake again last night.

Re: Deploying Octopress to Heroku with a custom buildpack - JasonGarber.com

Scott Watermasysk — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:08:24 -0000

Thanks for sharing these steps.

For me, I had to add the buildpack by directly setting a config var. Otherwise, it wouldn't catch.

I also had a weird issue where it said daemon gem could not be found. I nuked my gem and re-added them and it seemed to resolve the issue. This feels like an issue with cedar and the bundler RC but I haven't dug any deeper.

Thanks,
-Scott

Re: Resegment If You Aren’t In The Top Three

Scott Watermasysk — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:40:16 -0000

A couple of points:

1. I am not saying there is anything wrong with being the biggest/owning the market. I simply think you are better off focusing on building something someone will actually pay you for instead of trying to figure out how you can big for the sake of being big. The surest way to being the biggest is happy customers and time.

2. The Foundry group (and Brad) appear to be really smart...I hope they are not simply looking at your market position. :)3. You know of Patrick McKenzie because he speaks, interviews, and writes about Startups. I don't know Patrick personally, but my money says his bingo-card business makes close to zero money directly from the these activities. He certainly makes money from them...and if he ever wanted to raise money this would make it much easier for him than the average startup. His Bingo card business makes money because it is a great product and he is great at SEO. 4. Any startup making decisions based solely on getting funding is doomed (with or without money). I hate that when I say don't focus on being big for the sake of beging big the first response is "how will you get funding....or sounds like a life style business".

OK, that was more than a couple. :)

Re: Resegment If You Aren’t In The Top Three

Scott Watermasysk — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:53:28 -0000

I think this part of the 22 immutable laws of marketing....if you can't be number 1 in your market, create a new market. :)

Another way to think about it....really understand what you need from the market to succeed. Can you offer a great service at a great premium? Startups way over think owning the market and/or being the market leader. You don't need to lead any market....you need to (at some point) earn more revenue than it takes to run the business. Being the biggest certainly helps....but it does little if anything to ensure long term success.

When you take off the "size for the sake of size" blinders, the startup world becomes an even more amazing sea of opportunity.

Re: The 15% Tax Rate

Scott Watermasysk — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:47:12 -0000

I would certainly welcome anything that makes the system easier to understand. Everyone should know if I make $X I get to keep $Y. Anything else simply makes things more complicated than they need to be. So a flat or known/clear scale would be great.

I would also like to see this carried over to business taxes as well. It is very disheartening to hear that I my start up, KickoffLabs, will pay more in taxes than someone like GE (even worse that GE brags about working the system to not pay taxes).

Re: Startup Rules of the Road

Scott Watermasysk — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:46:58 -0000

Disclaimer: I am the co-founder of KickoffLabs

Great write up. However, it does kind of lead people to just jumping in. $50K or even $5K for what? Even the best product in world will go no where if you cannot reach actual customers.

To keep the money in check and avoid some of the risk, you can start with a (viral) launch service like KickoffLabs (http://www.kickofflabs.com).
Using a service like ours, you can quickly and easily put your idea out there and see if you can reach potential customers. This also helps if you are like me and have 5, 10, 20 ideas in your head and need to help figure out which one to start with....and we also make the email marketing part very easy. :)

Thanks,Scott

Re: The single most important marketing tool for your startup

Scott Watermasysk — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:51:28 -0000

Is that a comment or question? :)

We are open to experimentation, so if you are the kind of person who can help us with advertising, please get in touch.

Re: Maximizing capacity utilization as a startup premise

Scott Watermasysk — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:40:40 -0000

I love the thought overall...but it feels like too many startups are focused "success at scale" and miss the opportunity to wow real customers, make a profit, and stay in business for the long haul.