[HN Gopher] I got my first $50/mo customer
___________________________________________________________________
I got my first $50/mo customer
Author : Malfunction92
Score : 175 points
Date : 2020-05-06 18:53 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.alexwest.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.alexwest.co)
| jrrrr wrote:
| > GitGardener is at $151 MRR.
|
| TIL people are willing to pay for fake GitHub activity.
| blobbers wrote:
| At first I tried to misunderstand the GitGardener website. But
| no, I think this is what it is.
|
| Wow.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Why not if employers look for it?
| kevsim wrote:
| Because it's not particularly ethical? Doesn't seem less
| deceptive than lying on a CV to me.
| p2detar wrote:
| But is it what the market wants, though? If customers are
| paying, then I think the answer is obvious.
| sundbry wrote:
| you can also buy stolen credit card numbers on the
| darknet, the customers are paying.
| p2detar wrote:
| But I don't need it. If I really needed it, maybe I would
| buy it.
| sfkdjf9j3j wrote:
| Sorry, are you saying that it's a good thing to sell
| stolen credit cards because there is a market for them?
| p2detar wrote:
| Good? Is it a good thing to sell caffeine-laden energy
| drinks to kids & teenagers? Good and bad aren't the
| steering properties of the market. Demand is. Demand can
| also be artificially created, hence the github commits
| that potential employers are interested in seeing.
| sckn wrote:
| Of course, but it looks like a so politic. In modern world
| we have a "fake" life. We already happy on the internet. I
| didn't see sad post on social media.
| thisisbrians wrote:
| And Cyberleads sells emails lists (see my other comment). I
| don't think we should be condoning this guy's behavior..
| sundbry wrote:
| Congrats, GitGardener helps idiots like you commit hiring fraud.
| Go fuck yourself. Some of us actually spend our time digging into
| and actually contributing to open source projects we use.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Public existence of such tool proves that quick glance at
| commit graffiti tells you nothing. And that's a good thing,
| because otherwise solving of big problems that require several
| days to produce a single commit would be discounted.
|
| >hiring fraud
|
| Committing to junk repositories is fraud too?
| Cyclone_ wrote:
| Has anyone else looked at his GitGardener project and thought it
| seemed pretty shady? I'm not sure I understand why github would
| allow it.
| scandinavian wrote:
| It's also completely unnecessary. You can just create a repo
| and backdate commits to do it instantly.
|
| Like this for example:
|
| https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti
| emagdnim2100 wrote:
| Please left align this text!
| DVassallo wrote:
| Please don't left align this text because some stranger on HN
| told you so.
| ccmcarey wrote:
| When that stranger is giving good advice, however .. There's
| a reason large bodies of text are left aligned and not center
| aligned.
| julianlam wrote:
| I couldn't get through the blog post.
|
| Here's why.
|
| Nearly every thought is a separate paragraph.
|
| Throw in center alignment and it's enough to drive me batty.
|
| Decent blog post content, though.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| Do you know why?
|
| Let me let you in on a secret.
|
| People LIKE reading text formatted like this.
|
| No, they LOVE IT.
|
| It's so easy to read.
|
| So seductive. So .... enticing
|
| Every line like honey. So much sugar. It makes you want more
|
| And it's easy to write.
|
| Easy to read.
|
| Always feels like something is coming.
|
| Just.
|
| One.
|
| More.
|
| Line.
| misterhtmlcss wrote:
| In my mobile device it's just irritating how much padding
| he has. It's basically 3 words at a time. I'd need a
| phablet to get through this piece even though it's
| enjoyable righting.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| When switching to "Reader Mode" in your favourite browser, the
| text will be left aligned. :)
| purerandomness wrote:
| Firefox Reader Mode saves the day, again
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| Drop into the chrome dev console, go into the source and change
| the alignment it takes a second. Don't need to tolerate
| ridiculous formatting.
| djyaz1200 wrote:
| If any of that is profit you've surpased WeWork! Congrats! :)
| scooble wrote:
| There was a period (before Feb 2018) where 'more than twitter,
| less than facebook' was my standard answer to the question of
| how much profit my startup was making.
| DVassallo wrote:
| I came to a simple realization: Only intrinsic motivation lasts.
| Achieving external rewards and arbitrary goals feels nice for a
| while, but it always wears off quickly.
|
| Now I don't have goals anymore. My idea of personal growth is to
| keep rearranging my life so that I'm doing fewer things I'd
| rather not be doing.
|
| No goals. Just anti-goals.
| jlevers wrote:
| Is it not possible to be intrinsically motivated to achieve
| your goals? I get what you're saying, but I feel like there's a
| middle ground.
| nine_k wrote:
| Then motivation is intrinsic, what remains outside is a
| measurement tool you use.
| mattbuilds wrote:
| In this video by Brandon Sanderson [0] he talks a little bit
| about goals and I follow something similar. At one point he
| talks about setting goals that are actually in your control. So
| you wouldn't set a goal like "become a famous author" (although
| he says that would be nice). Instead you set something you can
| control like "get better with each book you write". Then you
| break those goals down into tasks.
|
| I think he says something like "if I was 100 and looked back
| and wrote 100 unpublished novels, would I be happy with that?".
| I think using something like that as a guide for setting goals
| is good because it keeps you pointed in the right direction and
| makes the goals things you can actually control.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/oH9sJrAVeC0
| thisisbrians wrote:
| I think "be a famous author" is a goal, and "get better with
| each book" is a strategy. In my view: the goal is a target,
| and the strategy is an action in attempt of reaching it.
| mattbuilds wrote:
| But the goal isn't to be a famous author, it's to write
| quality books. It's a different mindset. Becoming a famous
| author is something that is out of your control. Instead of
| focusing on the outcome, which you can't control, you focus
| on the thing you can. Doing quality work for something you
| enjoy. Sure, selling the book and it doing incredibly well
| would be nice, but honestly there is too much luck
| involved. It's obviously something you would think about
| when you are writing, and like, but it shouldn't be why you
| write.
|
| I don't write software side projects because I think they
| will turn out to be the next big thing or make me famous
| and rich, I do them because I get enjoyment out of writing
| code that solves a problem (usually my own).
| smoyer wrote:
| This article would be WAY better in paragraphs that each
| contained one of the sub-themes of the article as a whole. He
| starts by talking about tweeting and it looks and feels like the
| article was written as tweets too.
| DHPersonal wrote:
| His Twitter posts are formatted in a similar way, so I think
| it's just his writing style. https://twitter.com/alexsideris_
| drx wrote:
| I kinda liked it, it got me to read the article. Nothing wrong
| with adding some personal style to your writing.
|
| OP, congrats on hitting your MRR goal!
| rchiba wrote:
| Boo to all of the people on this thread who are hating on what
| you've built. Why can't you build a business selling emails, or
| automatically posting to GitHub?
|
| If you hate getting spam emails, hit "spam" and get that domain
| blacklisted, it creates a natural balance where the quality of
| cold outreach grows. And I doubt real hiring decisions are being
| made from git commit history badges.
|
| Kudos for going out there and adding value to the people that are
| paying for your products.
| viklove wrote:
| Because "automatically posting to GitHub" is the exact kind of
| bullshit that a society driven by capitalism comes up with.
| Employees lying to employers lying to investors lying to
| customers, all so they can make themselves slightly richer. No
| value is being created, no progress is being made -- it's all
| just a house of cards.
|
| Then there are people like you praising it, and just because
| the goal of capitalism -- to amass as much wealth as you can --
| is being met. Even though it's a complete fucking waste of
| human potential.
|
| Makes life seem pointless.
| jldugger wrote:
| > I tried many things. Reddit. Facebook Groups. Quora. LinkedIn.
| Direct Sales. Twitter. ... On the 21st of April, completely
| unexpectedly, a tweet of mine blew up big time.
|
| "Fortunate favors the prepared." The highly random nature of
| internet karma should probably be more well publicized by now. If
| ten years ago, I gave myself all the blog posts I'd write over
| the next ten years, I would not have predicted correctly which
| ones would be most popular. Not that I write for the pageviews,
| or even write all that often. If you think of it as a multiarmed
| bandit problem, you kinda have to publish without a goal in mind
| in order to have enough arms to pull to find and iterate on the
| few good ones. This is why IMO, it helps to have a few input
| goals as well as outcomes.
|
| AFAICT, content marketing is basically posting good stuff and
| hoping some of the traffic rubs off on your sales funnel. Like
| that Sparkfun rotary cell phone from way back when, though
| obviously it helps when you sell the parts to your ironic nobody-
| would-buy-this product online.
|
| > I smashed my infamous $500 MRR goal. It was a huge mental
| barrier for me. The sad thing is that once again I was tricked. I
| was chasing this goal for more than two years, and now it means
| nothing to me. It's dead. Cold. Meaningless. Like it was never
| there in the first place.
|
| Elsewhere on his site Alex describes his goals as 'humble' but
| that may be part of the psychological problem here; even he
| believes they're not the same as even modest success. $500 MRR
| feels meaningless because it _is_. Why does 500 MRR matter? If
| you borrow the OKR framework, perhaps he would reframe the
| Objective (goal) as 'build a business capable of sustaining my
| preferred lifestyle', and then the MRR target would have meaning
| as a key result?
|
| The Objective/Key-Result framework provide two major benefits:
|
| First, it gives you the means to tie your metrics to something
| meaningful, and the ability to fact check your assumptions. Make
| more money isn't necessarily meaningful, but 'quit my day job' or
| 'send my kid to art school' can be. Perhaps the $500 MRR goal
| feels meaningless because the lifestyle goal _is_ the real
| Objective, but the $500 MRR Key Result is insufficient to meet
| it.
|
| The second thing it does is provide a process for breaking Big
| Problems into smaller ones. You'll probably need multiple
| strategies to reach any important Objective, and the KRs help you
| break them into smaller steps. Which themselves can be treated as
| Objectives with their own KRs. Using
| https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/business-of-saas#the-fundame...
| as a guide for how to break down the 'big number' can help, but
| there is no predictive formula for maximizing it.
| encoderer wrote:
| There is sentiment that goals are bullshit and somewhat
| destructive. My take is, it comes down to setting the right
| goals.
|
| I've bootstrapped a moderately successful SaaS and have enjoyed
| many revenue milestones along the way but those were milestones
| not goals. The goals are _lifestyle_ based. Things like "I want
| to never have another traditional job" or "I want to be debt
| free" are much more powerful than "I want to hit $2000 MRR".
|
| That said, look, building and selling things is amazing and I
| suggest everybody do it. If you only have a little time, build
| small things and sell them cheaply. But there is a self
| empowerment that comes from creating your own income that has an
| impact far beyond the actual dollars themselves.
|
| Congrats Alex, good goal or not, it's a notable achievement.
| ccktlmazeltov wrote:
| Interesting, reading this I was thinking that I would have
| indeed set different goals. I would have strived to create a
| good app for me first, and to make sure that people can use it
| and that they find it useful too. That would have been my goal.
| Not a 50$/month customer.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > there is a self empowerment that comes from creating your own
| income
|
| This is something that's rarely said (or snidely dismissed as
| "lifestyle business") but is so very important.
|
| Realizing that you are not completely reliant on someone to
| employ you, that you can derive income from multiple streams
| and then _actually_ seeing it happen is an incredible feeling.
| close04 wrote:
| > you are not completely reliant on someone to employ you
|
| I don't think that's where the feeling of empowerment comes
| from. Instead of doing a good job to impress your boss you do
| a good job to impress your customers. That feeling, I
| believe, comes from the fact that generating your own revenue
| stream makes you a "one man team". You pulled all the right
| strings, you pushed the right buttons, you spoke to the all
| right people. You took your idea from back of the napkin
| drawing to actual functioning and successful business. You
| don't get to do that as an employee.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I'll agree that what I wrote was essentially the executive
| summary. I think we're saying the same thing in different
| ways.
| jfkebwjsbx wrote:
| It is more regarding to impress your own customers than
| bosses (or customers of your boss). The former is about
| something you did right. The second is (in many cases)
| about asking for a raise. The last is mostly showing what a
| team (or even others) have done.
|
| By the way, most jobs are not about impressing bosses. You
| can make a career just doing your work. The right people
| will notice, specially in small companies.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I am always reminded of David Foster Wallace who wrote a
| successful novel while still in his early twenties, and before
| even finishing his MFA. He had to recalibrate his entire life
| expectation wise when he achieved his goal in his 20s and found
| it empty. Where do you go when you are just 'starting out' in
| life but have already grabbed this thing that was supposed to
| complete you, and it doesn't change anything.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| As much as I enjoy DFW's way with words (and I do mean that in
| a complimentary manner), I think his approach mostly serves as
| a warning as to what can happen when you get too deeply stuck
| in your own head with no pressure release valve to viewpoints
| other than your own.
| thisisbrians wrote:
| So, I checked out Cyberleads[1], and...this dude is just
| literally (and brazenly) selling a list of startup executives'
| emails without their permission or consent. Not sure if that's
| even legal, but it's definitely scummy, and I hate when I get
| cold (and frequently, also technically SPAM) emails like the ones
| this guys is enabling.
|
| Here's a direct quote from the site[1]: Every
| day, we scour the web and find every single startup that just
| raised money. We collect information about these companies, like
| revenue, size, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, CEO information,
| emails, and much more. We then further investigate,
| and verify manually every entry on the list. Every single
| data point is checked, every single email is verified.
| Manually. By a human.
|
| 1. https://www.getcyberleads.com/
|
| Edit: added quotes.
| rsweeney21 wrote:
| There are hundreds of companies, many of them quite large, that
| do this. ZoomInfo, DiscoverOrg, Hoovers, Data.com, Clearbit,
| UpLead, etc.
|
| Like it or not, sending unsolicited email is how millions of
| sales professionals make a living. Before email it was
| unsolicited mail, voice mail, or phone calls. Outbound sales is
| an essential part of the world we live in.
|
| Honestly, I'm surprised that this is news to you.
| leephillips wrote:
| He didn't say it was new to him, he said it was scummy, and
| he's right. Spam is a scourge, whether it is in the form of
| email, phone calls, or people knocking on my door. "Outbound
| sales" steals people's time, attention, disk space, and
| electricity. It may be an unavoidable (certainly not
| "essential") part of our world, but the people who do it are
| making our world worse.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| If you call the local bike shop amd try to sell rocket
| engines,then yes,it is useless. However,there are plenty of
| good business matching to be done that way. Not all are
| bad.
| leephillips wrote:
| Sorry, they are. They are all bad. The bike shop many not
| be in the market for rocket engines, but they do use
| wrenches, and pencils, and valve covers. Imagine their
| phone rings every five minutes, throughout the work day,
| with people trying to sell these useful things to the
| bike shop. It's not any better just because the things
| are useful. If it's me, I'm not going to buy from a cold
| caller, ever. I already have suppliers. If I need a new
| supplier, I'm going to find one. You are making the world
| worse.
| alexsideris wrote:
| Hey there, Alex here. I completely understand where you are
| coming from.
|
| I'm not an expert on laws, GDPR, when consent is needed, by
| whom, etc.
|
| This is a side project that just started gaining a little bit
| of traction, and I'll certainly look into all the above.
|
| However, the emails I add are publicly available, found on the
| internet. Not from some leaked database.
|
| I also have prices high in order to keep spammers away and have
| a small handful of customers. I only have about twenty, and
| they are targeting different kind of startups.
| Magnets wrote:
| Work email addresses are considered personal data under GDPR
|
| https://www.cognitivelaw.co.uk/gdpr-issues-do-work-emails-
| co...
| Quanttek wrote:
| However, b2b marking may be allowed under the GDPR. Form
| your link:
|
| > Recital 47 of the GDPR states that "The processing of
| personal data for direct marketing purposes may be regarded
| as carried out for a legitimate interest". However, if you
| intend to rely on legitimate interest rather than consent,
| you will need to apply the following three-part test:
|
| > 1. The purpose test: Are you processing personal data in
| pursuit of a legitimate interest?
|
| > 2. The necessity test: Is the processing proportionate to
| achieving your aims?
|
| > 3. The balancing test: Is your legitimate interest
| overridden by the rights of the person whose data you're
| processing?
| cosmodisk wrote:
| This is the correct answer for B2B emails in Europe.
| Sebguer wrote:
| Only on HackerNews would "I'm not an expert on laws" be an
| acceptable answer to this sort of thing, much less the idea
| that you should check on relevant laws only after shipping a
| product.
| vageli wrote:
| > I'm not an expert on laws, GDPR, when consent is needed, by
| whom, etc.
|
| > This is a side project that just started gaining a little
| bit of traction, and I'll certainly look into all the above.
|
| You are selling a product without even knowing the legality
| of doing so?
| strgcmc wrote:
| A small suggestion then: why not re-apply the same
| fundamental technologies and techniques, but to targeting
| public figures who are perhaps deserving of a little more
| scrutiny and contact than they're getting?
|
| Rather than facilitating cold-calls to startup
| founders/leaders (which, let's face it, is generally a waste
| of their time and which they probably don't deserve that kind
| of punishment), why not expose the emails/contact-info of
| executives for bad actors in the marketplace, companies that
| have recently been sued or charged with crimes or civil
| complaints (by the SEC/FCC/etc.), companies that have had
| exposes written about them, etc.?
|
| I'm not saying this will be a more profitable service or
| anything btw; in fact I'm quite certain it will have much
| less profit opportunity. But maybe this is something you can
| do to buy back some goodwill, to counterbalance the profit-
| seeking and cold-call/spam enabling side of this project.
| AQuantized wrote:
| Are you basically advocating facilitating the spamming of a
| certain section of "morally bad" individuals? I'm not sure
| this is the kind of advice that will lead to a less
| controversial business.
| artursapek wrote:
| And "Git Gardener" is just spamming GitHub to make yourself
| look busy. I detect a pattern here.
| bigtones wrote:
| There are many many companies that sell email addresses and
| phone numbers and even cell numbers of executives - it's a huge
| business. Google "B2B contact database" for a list but
| DiscoverOrg, ZoomInfo and UpLead come to mind.
| beervirus wrote:
| "lots of people do it" != "it's ok"
| artificial wrote:
| True. Copyright infringement is done on a massive global
| scale by search engines and everyone uses those.
| beervirus wrote:
| Is indexing content and providing search results actually
| considered copyright infringement in any jurisdiction?
| beardedscotsman wrote:
| Yes, look at Google publishing news snippets in France
| MattGaiser wrote:
| You must now create a $75 a month service for people like
| yourself who want to know when an email of theirs has been
| burned. Use his list to sell yours.
| thisisbrians wrote:
| Yo, I would pay for that.
|
| </s>
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| My list of list of list inclusion trumps your second order
| list. I use my work emails sometimes for conference
| registrations, those always get burned and I get spam mail
| immediately. Conf registrations are the worst.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Use temporary email alias? That's what I have been doing.
| kugelblitz wrote:
| I use my own domain and have a catch-all. I usually enter
| the domain name as the identifier. I.e. here it would be
| news.ycombinator.com@mydomain.test
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I sometimes do the same. It's weird to me that some
| places immediately sell your email and other orgs do not.
| Like a graph database conference seemed to lead to a lot
| of new spam.
| Bnshsysjab wrote:
| It's not some conference, it's some asshole who has the
| ability to implement that kind of behaviour. I bet loads
| of people working at that graph conference didn't agree
| but either didn't know or didn't have a say in the
| activity.
| thisisbrians wrote:
| If you use Google Mail (and the email field in the form
| lets you) you can do <youremail>+<whatever tag you
| want>@gmail.com to track stuff like this.
| Bnshsysjab wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you can insert or strip periods '.' in
| gmails too
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Spammers aren't dumb -- this gets stripped.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Next logical step would be having
| <youremail>+<secretKey>@gmail.com as the real email and
| <justyouremail>@gmail.com as spam box.
| sneak wrote:
| https://anonaddy.me
|
| I use this service a lot.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| That is a great idea. I really want my email hosted some
| place and that I could write my own "post arrival" simple
| business logic.
| vageli wrote:
| > That is a great idea. I really want my email hosted
| some place and that I could write my own "post arrival"
| simple business logic.
|
| You can do this in gmail with filters, unless I'm missing
| something about the use case.
| jfkebwjsbx wrote:
| It works for common spam, but it does not really work for
| curated lists because they can remove it.
|
| (I think it is also an RFC standard, not just gmail, but
| don't quote me on this).
| kcolford wrote:
| Not an RFC standard but it is a "de facto" standard.
| Everyone implements it, the config line for it is just
| commented out on postfix, super easy to use.
| ivanfon wrote:
| The other project, GitGardener[1] is... not necessarily
| sketchy, but it's obviously designed to make your Github look
| "better" than it really is (not that the contribution chart
| matters for anything, but that seems like what the service is
| trying to convey).
|
| 1: https://www.gitgardener.com/
| qu4ku wrote:
| I'm not gonna lie. From the perspective of somebody that
| commits every day with purpose, this is even more scammy then
| selling email spam-list. This invalidates my hard work.
| gjs278 wrote:
| your hard work should be finished products not npm module
| spam of the next left-pad
| NullPrefix wrote:
| They should add a feature that releases daily
| outworlder wrote:
| I had a previous employer that started counting commits.
| Doesn't matter what you do, if you had to spend you whole day
| interacting directly with a customer(or even at that customer
| location trying to figure out some issue), nothing mattered.
| Only the number of commits. Not even the commit size
| mattered.
|
| So I started doing tiny commits to counter that.
|
| I would gladly use this thing as a f* you before leaving.
| [deleted]
| gonzal00t wrote:
| It's pretty gross that someone is trying to monetize this.
| There's actually FOSS version that draws pixel art in your
| contribution history: https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti
| It's pretty funny, though it doesn't look like its actively
| maintained anymore. To quote from one of the issue threads:
|
| _What better way to demonstrate that the commit graph is a
| not an indicator of a profile 's importance? Hopefully
| someone who sees gitifi style art in the graph will
| immediately realize that they should take it with a grain of
| salt, and instead read the code._
| [deleted]
| axguscbklp wrote:
| I wonder how many people in this thread are upset by Cyberleads
| selling people's emails and GitGardener making people's Githubs
| look better... but at the same time commit piracy all the time
| and make all sorts of excuses for it.
| balls187 wrote:
| I'm curious what law do you think is being violated (I'm in the
| US?)
| LunaSea wrote:
| In the EU it's against E-Privacy
| gjs278 wrote:
| good thing nobody cares what the eu thinks
| thisisbrians wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but the FTC definitely regulates how
| emails can be sent (SPAM laws). I'm not sure if the act of
| creating a list and selling it without the consent of the
| emailees is regulated, however.
| baddox wrote:
| The CAN-SPAM Act doesn't generally prohibit unsolicited
| marketing emails, but rather it has various restrictions on
| the behavior and content of those emails. It's probably
| less restrictive than most tech-savvy people think. L
|
| That said, there is a restriction against sending messages
| to harvested emails, although I'm not sure how that's
| defined or what legal precedents there are regarding that.
| jansan wrote:
| Anecdote: After I released my fist software in 2002 I received an
| order by fax. Unfortunately my HP Office Jet had an error and
| refused to print the fax, so I called HP customer service. They
| told me to shut the device off and on again. I told them that
| this is not an option, because there is an order worth real money
| inside the device's memory. So the great guy at the other end of
| the line told me to take out the cardridge and give it a good
| wash and rub. I placed it back in and the Office Jet started
| printing the order. It was a 1000$ order by Lehman Brothers! I am
| still telling my friends that this was the final straw that broke
| Lehman Brother`s neck several years later :)
| ozim wrote:
| He was not powerless, he was putting work for 2 years until he
| got lucky. People hope they will stick in week or two into
| something and will get lucky.
| blobbers wrote:
| Cultivating an email list and writing a program to generate
| fake git commits?
| alexsideris wrote:
| Hey everyone, Alex here.
|
| I was caught a bit by surprise to be honest, as I did not post
| the article myself.
|
| The article is very sloppy and it shows, so sorry for putting you
| through that! I also left-aligned the text as people requested.
|
| I'm happy that people enjoyed it and can relate :)
| beervirus wrote:
| GitGardener appears to be for letting job applicants trick
| employers into thinking that have legit projects on git, while
| Cyberleads enables spammers to shit into the inboxes of startup
| execs.
|
| Congrats.
| swyx wrote:
| well said about the goals. goals make you feel like a failure if
| you don't meet them, and leave you wanting when you do, and worst
| of all, don't tell you how to reach them! Systems over goals
| every time.
|
| regarding your luck, you may be aware of the 4 kinds of luck
| (https://medium.com/@ameet/the-four-kinds-of-luck-ea729970d71...)
| - by putting your reps in, you exposed yourself to type 2 luck,
| luck that just happens randomly, but it happens because you did
| something. good for you!
| tshanmu wrote:
| gitgardener is downright unethical as well?
| krm01 wrote:
| When we started our subscription design firm for Software
| companies, I used to share milestones publicly (mostly on Reddit
| back then). We grew to 5 figures a month in the first year. Like
| OP, I realized that the goals (and those milestones) were
| extremely short flashes of fun that didnt last longer than maybe
| a few minutes. It wasn't after I stopped sharing business
| milestones and just focussed on daily improvement that things
| felt so much better. Not only that, it helped the business grow
| better as a result.
| bosie wrote:
| how do you decide to pivot on a feature/goal if you focus only
| on the daily improvements? how do you connect the daily
| improvements to something bigger?
| krm01 wrote:
| So the the insight was: Instead of focussing 80% of the time
| on the big goal and 20% on what's right in front of me, I
| flipped that around. So yes there are longterm goals and
| stuff we work towards, but instead of every day hoping you're
| there, you set the goal and then focus on much smaller
| incremental steps on a daily basis. These incremental steps,
| in a way, become goals, that give you continuous feedback and
| satisfaction (instead of 1 big high, followed up with a deep
| low)
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| This is going to sound weird but there's this great interview
| with Seinfeld and Obama where they talk about the "answer" to
| "why do you keep doing this stuff when you're so successful and
| have 'made it'"?
|
| Which I think is the real question OP is asking: "Why if I've hit
| this goal do I keep doing this? Why does it feel so
| unsatisfying?"
|
| I've linked to the spot in the interview but the answer is to
| really enjoy the work and the process.
|
| I feel this myself (as someone with a decent sized SAAS), that I
| still really enjoy helping people, answering support emails,
| getting on calls with them. It feels more satisfying than
| arbitrary revenue goals.
|
| https://youtu.be/UM-Q_zpuJGU?t=884
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Weird Q: Do their heads look too big for their bodies in these
| shots to anyone else? Is it camera work? Super slimming suits?
| Reedx wrote:
| Yeah, and the two are linked. Seinfeld's focus on the process
| and craft meant he got exceptionally good at it. The money was
| a byproduct, not the goal. The motivation was intrinsic and
| about improving his craft. To which there is no end. So he
| continues.
|
| This discussion with Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Louis CK and Ricky
| Gervais is worth watching for anyone interested in that aspect
| of comedy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKY6BGcx37k
| hckr_news wrote:
| This talk always reminds me of this,
| https://youtu.be/il1sgQUtYs8
| maest wrote:
| Be wary of survivorship bias.
|
| Not everyone that focuses on the process makes lots of money.
| However, some of the people that make lots of money do it as
| a byproduct of focusing on the process.
|
| We're all familiar with the stereotype of the dev who's
| obsessed with polishing their code that nobody is using.
| dirtydroog wrote:
| Is this an ad for a company masquerading as a story about how
| marketing finally worked for said company?
| [deleted]
| kodachi wrote:
| (offtopic/meta)
|
| > Me and my girlfriend wanted to watch a movie on Netflix (...)I
| watched the film on Netflix.
|
| I'm starting to notice this pattern a lot both in person and on
| the internet. How long until Netflix becomes a verb? It doesn't
| add to the story, but somehow people feel compelled to advertise
| the service they use.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Saying it's on Netflix indicates that they didn't go out and
| see the movie in a theater.
| viklove wrote:
| It's already a verb, ever heard "Netflix & chill"?
| mywacaday wrote:
| Congrats Alex, any chance of a cheaper tier for Cyberleads, maybe
| limiting it a single country?
| maram wrote:
| > From now on, I have no goals. Nothing. I don't care about
| anything. I don't care about followers. I don't care about
| revenue. I don't care about anything. I just want to enjoy my
| every day life. Enjoy the process.
|
| Nothing brings joy to entrepreneurs more than the "process of
| building" and crafting products.
|
| Your paragraph reminded me of Steve Jobs reply to Kara Swisher
| when she asked for his thoughts on surpassing Microsoft in market
| valuation.
|
| He said: "It doesn't matter. It's not what's important. It's not
| what makes you come in the morning. Not why any of our customers
| buy our products. It's good to keep that in mind and remember
| what we are doing and why"
|
| 01:02 https://youtu.be/i5f8bqYYwps
| FailMore wrote:
| I totally agree :)
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Please ensure <a> tags (you know, links!) actually work on your
| webpages. I hate copying and pasting on iOS...
|
| On a brighter note, I appreciate your writing style; short,
| sweet, and clear.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| I like this. I like the writing style, I like the humility and
| the openness, and I like the recognition that chasing goals is
| ultimately an exercise in futility. You spend almost all your
| time unhappy because you're not yet at your goal, and then as
| soon as you achieve it, you're unhappy because you're not at the
| next arbitrary goal. It's madness, but it's basically the way
| almost all of us live.
|
| I've been spending more time meditating and reading about
| mindfulness recently, and it's helped me become aware of just how
| infrequently I'm truly happy and present. I can be in the most
| idyllic setting and situation, and part of my brain is wondering
| how I can improve it, or what I can do to feel that way all the
| time, etc.
|
| Why is it so difficult to turn off the past- and future-oriented
| parts of my brain and just _be_? To just enjoy _this_?
| dhuin wrote:
| Pretty much the human condition. Seneca was writing about it in
| the first century, Buddhists were talking about it from the
| inception of their religion.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| _What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving
| with which they labor under the sun? All their days their
| work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not
| rest. This too is meaningless. A person can do nothing better
| than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own
| toil._
|
| From Ecclesiastes, one of the few parts of the Christian
| scriptures that still interests me.
| julianeon wrote:
| I was thinking I like the blog format, actually: more like
| Tweets than like 'My Manifesto About Software, Life, the
| Universe, and Everything: Volume I of MDXXIII.' It just has an
| inherent digestibility and modesty that makes it really
| appealing.
|
| Also it makes me think I may try this tweet-style writing also,
| and modify my CSS to look more like his, because I like it a
| lot.
| seanwilson wrote:
| Sounds similar to this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
|
| "The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the
| observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively
| stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative
| events or life changes."
| KerryJones wrote:
| Thanks for this -- I continuously get reminded that many of our
| behaviors have actually been studied and it's worth knowing
| them to forward our direction in life. This is a good one
| seanwilson wrote:
| Yeah, it's a great feeling when you find an existing name for
| a concept you've partially observed yourself, where sometimes
| you're sure there must be a name for it already...is there a
| name for that? It's also great because now you can read up on
| it and usually find a whole branch of related stuff you never
| knew existed.
| graedus wrote:
| This is a concept that matches my lived experience, and I find
| it's very useful to keep in mind.
| pearjuice wrote:
| I just checked one of the author's projects and it's a service to
| automatically feign activity on GitHub to... make the activity
| grid on your profile look active. Is this some sort of post-
| ironic jab at the SaaS industry I'm not getting or people
| actually pay for it unironically?
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I think the point is that it creates positive feedback and that
| helps people remain motivated. One of the reasons I give my
| team for trying to break up a large task into smaller subtasks
| is the enjoyment of completing _something_ and closing out that
| task. It makes the overall goal seem like something achievable.
| pearjuice wrote:
| How is faking GitHub activity positive feedback? That's like
| a service which retweets random tweets to look active on
| Twitter.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Are we sure that this gitgardener stuff is even allowed by the
| GitHub ToS? I mean no offense to the OP of course, but clearly
| some people are clogging the site already by creating entirely
| fake users, with zilch useful contributions to FLOSS or the dev
| community. I don't think GH would look kindly on this sort of
| activity.
| donmatito wrote:
| At one point, I was helping a great speaker build her first
| conference, which was a smashing success. When we turned on the
| ticketing platform on, orders started pouring in
|
| In parallel, I was building my first side project, or more
| precisely I was starting to add pricing for the first time to a
| side project
|
| As a result I had, at the same time, a stream of several
| thousands of euros, and MY FIRST 19EUR from something I BUILT
| MYSELF
|
| I was incredibly more proud of the latter. There is a sense of
| pride, of accomplishment, in thinking that you've built something
| useful enough for someone to open their wallet for you
|
| Good job on your part and keep sailing!
| lostinroutine wrote:
| Not sure if that's outdated but the home page says:
| I have a goal I'm working towards. Mine is to achieve financial
| independence in 2020. ... I've reached $800 MRR so
| far. My goal is to reach $2k MRR.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-05-06 23:00 UTC)