BC STARTUPS

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Pat Walls
@thepatwalls 5 years, 9 months ago 1164 views

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I'm doing an AMA on @IndieHackers.

Drop some questions in there! Happy to answer anything, esp around building side projects with a full-time job :)

https://t.co/da4Ael9TnE

@IndieHackers My high level plans for Starter Story.

@IndieHackers On almost quitting

cc: @daviswbaer

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer How I find so many businesses to interview

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer On balancing different projects

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Why I'm working on Pigeon when it would be more rational to put all my time into Starter Story.

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer On the lifestyle change going from full time to free time overnight.

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Some thoughts about automation.

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Will a better boss (at your full time job) help you with your side project?

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Do you ever feel that the journey will be too long and painful, will it ever end?

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Starter Story revenue breakdown, and my thoughts on sponsors.

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer Is having a newsletter a big deal in reaching/growing your audience?

@IndieHackers @daviswbaer That's it! There are some more responses in there that I didn't screenshot.

https://t.co/da4Ael9TnE

Super fun and rewarding to write all these answers. What I love about this AMA is that it basically outlines a ton of blog posts and YouTube video ideas!

More from Pat Walls

Pat Walls
@thepatwalls

ANDDD IT'S DONE.

Clout Report: Crowdsourced data on hundreds of upcoming rappers.

We compiled a list of over one hundred upcoming rappers and used APIs and scrapers to get over 2,600 total data

Don't let the image fool you! Hear me out!

Features:

Sort, filter, and search by:

- Gender, age, location, record label, region
- SoundCloud follower data
- IG, twitter, and FB follower data
- YouTube subscriber data
- Spotify data

I think this is particularly useful/monetizable for:

💿 record labels looking for new talent
🥁 concert/entertainment venues that want to gauge the size of the audience of an artists
🎧 artists looking to collaborate with other artists
😎 finding artists "before it was cool"

We built this in 24 hours on stream!

Thanks so much to everyone who slaved away at googling for all of these usernames, ids, etc: @AlecOfJones @jnil @DigitalSparky @cameronrohani and sorry for everyone i cant name

Many ups and downs.

Per usual, there's always someone trolling the stream. We had dozens of people editing the google sheet when someone kept deleting data and columns...

Luckily Gsheets has revisions..

Pat Walls
@thepatwalls

Last month, 250k people visited https://t.co/nkcmLxbhzC, mostly from Google search.

Here are some things I've learned about SEO:

1. Second-and-third-order consequences

SEO is a "mind game" of second-and-third-order consequences. The work you do today will not yield results immediately.

Write an article, publish it, and then get no results. This makes you think you "did it wrong". Most people quit here.

Just go in with the expectation that you won't see results for six months after publish.

Instead of getting discouraged, just write more and publish more. By the time you published your 20th article, you might start finally seeing the results of your first.

2. SEO industry is mostly BS

Try to avoid SEO experts and industry nonsense, they are mostly distractions.

*Examples of distractions*: Google algorithm updates, schema markup, page speed, meta tags.

Do you think you’re smarter than Google’s algorithm? Maybe today, definitely not tomorrow.

Write and publish compelling content that answers the searcher’s query. That’s it!

@Moz:

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Pat Walls
@thepatwalls

1/ Starter Story September Results

💵 Revenue: $1,737.84
📈 Uniques: 20,205 (Sept)
✉️ Email Subscribers: 2,956

#openstartup

Read more 👇

2/ For all my new followers (will get to that in a sec) I do a revenue & traffic #openstartup report every month for my main side project https://t.co/nkcmLxsSra

I've been working on this project for nearly a full year.

3/ Biggest thing that happened this month was obviously the 24 hour startup!

I won't talk about it too much in this thread, but after that happened everything just blew up. I'm still trying to catch up on everything and keep my head above water.

4/ All of this craziness sparked a big decision for me.

I QUIT MY JOB! 😁😅

I know it sounds kind of crazy to quit your job over that, but as I was heading into my 1:1 with my manager it just felt like I had to do it. It felt like the right thing to do.

5/ I had planned to grow SS for 6 more months and then quit, but then the 24 hour startup happened and it felt like it was the right moment to quit.

Pat Walls
@thepatwalls

How I auto-share ~120 blog posts to Reddit every month, reached 35k karma, and gotten millions of views.

And why I love building automation so much!

A thread!

I have hit the top of Reddit hundreds of times.

Through all of the love and hate that I get on the platform, I think I've found that it's here to stay.

After years of posting on Reddit, I've slowly built an automated system that is now 100% hands off.

This is my Starter Story backend, where I save the content of my stories in a markdown format.

This is great for Reddit because Reddit is also in a markdown format!

While I edit and publish starter stories, I set the "reddit title" in advance.

This is so I don't really ever have to think about it again. Once that's set, the system knows it should post this one to reddit, and that should be the title.

I also create a "Reddit intro" and "outro"

Although the content of the blog post is stored in my database, I still should introduce myself in the Reddit post.

I use other variables in my database to construct this.

Pat Walls
@thepatwalls

And here they are...

THE WINNERS OF THE 24 HOUR STARTUP CHALLENGE

Remember, this money is just fun. If you launched a product (or even attempted a launch) - you did something worth MUCH more than $1,000.

#24hrstartup

The winners 👇

#10

Lattes For Change - Skip a latte and save a life.

https://t.co/M75RAirZzs

@frantzfries built a platform where you can see how skipping your morning latte could do for the world.

A great product for a great cause.

Congrats Chris on winning $250!

#9

Instaland - Create amazing landing pages for your followers.

https://t.co/5KkveJTAsy

A team project! @bpmct and @BaileyPumfleet built a tool for social media influencers to create simple "swipe up" landing pages for followers.

Really impressive for 24 hours. Congrats!

#8

SayHenlo - Chat without distractions

https://t.co/og0B7gmkW6

Built by @DaltonEdwards, it's a platform for combatting conversation overload. This product was also coded exclusively from an iPad 😲

Dalton is a beast. I'm so excited he placed in the top 10.

#7

CoderStory - Learn to code from developers across the globe!

https://t.co/86Ay6nF4AY

Built by @jesswallaceuk, the project is focused on highlighting the experience of developers and people learning to code.

I wish this existed when I learned to code! Congrats on $250!!

More from Startups

Trista Kempa
@tristajaye

For those of you asking me if I bought my wework equity—I did not. But, not because I didn’t choose to buy it. Despite joining the company very early on, I was not offered options. Here’s a thread about what happened and my feelings about it now. /1

I joined wework in 2011 as the ~17th employee when we had 4 buildings. I was 23, naive, and didn’t know what equity or options were—I certainly didn’t know how much it could impact my financial future. When I, and the first hundred or so joined the team, /2

equity options weren’t a part of the deal and I thought nothing of it. As the company grew and we brought in more funding, the executive team decided it was time to allocate equity to its employees. It was mid-2013, about 4 years after the company started. /3

We had ~120 employees and I had been there for ~2 years. I don’t know much about what went on behind the scenes to determine who would get equity and how much, or quite frankly, why they did it at all. /4

In the process, they did a couple of things: First, the way in which they chose to allocate equity, to whom, how much, etc. was… interesting. I’ll get into that more soon. Second, for the people who were given equity options, wework made the choice *not* to backdate. /5

Jordan O'Connor
@unindie

Another month flew by. Here's your @closettools September stats!

MRR: $13475.49 (+6.90%)
Organic: 4633 (+7.47%)
Trials: 237 (+21.54%)
New Customers: 146 (+5.0%)

If you're just getting started Indie-hacking, this thread is for you.

I'll tell you how to get here.

THREAD 🔥👇

Market 💹

The market you chose is the most important facet of your Indiehacker journey. It doesn't have to be the best market, it just has to be right for the thing you want to build.

Pick a market that is growing, has needs that are paid for, and has demand for your product.

Product 👚

Start with your MVP and iterate slowly and intentionally. Introduce features at a good clip, but don't sacrifice quality.

Do your testing. Ship excellence. Write your documentation. Design with the user in mind.

Your customers will trust you.

Ideas 💡

It's true, ideas are worth nothing. Execution is all that matters.

However, your product idea(s) should solve problems.

It should make your customers more money, save them time, or both.

Make things that give them more of what they care about.

Patience 🧘‍♂️

It has taken me 3 years to learn the skills I needed to make this product (business). And another 1.5 years to get the product to the revenue it's at now.

This is a long-term game. Build valuable skills. Put your head down and execute.

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Ryan Kaufman
@growth_student

How Morning Brew grew to 2.5M subscribers in 5 years ☕

Here are the early growth tactics used to reach 20M+ revenue in 2021

A thread👇👇

1) In 2015, Founders Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief started the Morning Brew, an email newsletter with the purpose of making business news more interesting for young people. Students wanted something to keep them informed in a more engaging and fun way

2) They noticed students felt the need to follow business news but found current media dry and difficult to read.

Current outlets like the Wall Street Journal lacked the high level roundup that most young people needed to quickly stay informed and not put them to sleep

3) Strategy 1: Pure hustle
At 20 years old, Alex created a PDF newsletter (originally called the Market Corner) and sent it to 45 friends and family. They then got their first 300 subscribers by putting out flyers and speaking at lectures to fellow students at Michigan University

4) They spoke at 50 business classes/clubs explaining what they’re doing, the problem they solve, and that it’s free to join. Students gladly joined and word of mouth spread fast. After 4 months the list grew to 1000 people, eventually reaching 1M in 2019. 15% from word of mouth

Jason Coleman
@jason_coleman

My interview with @Mixergy is live. Check it out here: https://t.co/fvxio9FArN

It's great. We cover 15 years of business.

I like getting tactical on podcasts. I know Andrew likes it too. I missed some spots. So here are 5 tips I wish I shared during the interview.

🧵👇

1) During recessions, get close to the money.

I talk a bit about what business was like in 2008. Besides some personal struggles, 2008 was also a time when individuals and businesses were clamping down on spending. So what can you do if you are freelancing through that?

Get close to the money. People will be cutting spending on things that seem superfluous, but any tools, service, or consulting that ties directly to the company's bottom line will be the last to go.

This was part of what encouraged us to focus on membership sites.

I remember some clients we built websites for, even friendly clients (maybe family members ;), saying to me "The website is nice, but it didn't really bring us business."

!!!

We weren't tracking it. The membership sites we helped launched had reporting built in showing $$$.

2) When going up against established competition, don't compete with them head on. Focus your marketing efforts on features and in spaces they aren't addressing.

There were already a couple established membership plugins for WP when PMPro launched.

Traf
@traf

A few things I've learned this year from building a small, profitable internet business from zero to $100k ARR in 8 months.

Ride the wave:

People often ask what we do for marketing, and I don't really have a good answer. You don't have to push your product as hard if you're building for a vocal community of passionate people within a growing market. They'll do most of your marketing for you.

Scratch your own itch:

If you don't experience the problem you've set out to solve, you’ll have a slight disconnect between what your problem actually is, who’s experiencing it, and how to reach them. I’ll probably never do another user test in my life.

Get specific:

The web hosting space may be crowded, but the web hosting space for Notion is not. I used to think a niche would limit the total size of my business, but If we capture 1% of all Notion users, we'd be making at least $720k/month—far beyond what's enough for me.

Use side projects as marketing:

Some of our record signup days came from one of my side projects. The only mention of it was a link to it in the footer of the page. Your side projects don't have to be clearly correlated in order to still correlate.

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Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1

SRI KALAHASTI KSHETRAM, CHITTOOR (AP)
#bharatmandir

Panchbhootasthalam representing vayu element, also called Dakshin Kailasha.
As per Shiva’s boon, Vayu is incarnated here as Shiva and worshipped as Kalahasteeswara.
The kshetram is also associated with Rahu and Ketu.

The Kshetram is named after 3 devotees of Shiva- a snake, spider and elephant who worshipped a lingam in the forest. Elephant did jal abhishek with water from its trunk, spider protected it from dust by weaving a web on it and snake adorned it with his jewel.
@GunduHuDuGa

Once, the web and jewel got washed away when elephant sprayed water on the lingam. Angered snake entered elephant’s trunk and bit him but died in the process. The agitated elephant trampled the spider accidentally. Shiva gave moksha to all three.

Hence the name-Sri for Spider, kaal for snake n hasti for elephant.

Shiv bhakt Kanappa is said to have plucked his own eye to put it on the lingam here when he saw blood oozing from the eye on the lingam
This place is the ultimate location for Rahu Kethu Sarpa Dosha Nivarana.

Abigail See
@abigail_e_see

Can we control the output of neural generation systems?
Can we build a better chatbot using this control?
And what makes a good conversation anyway?

Check out the blog post for our NAACL paper:

https://t.co/UAAUxSeA0L

#AI #NLProc #DeepLearning #ConversationalAI @facebookai

This post got a little delayed since the paper's publication, but the intervening time has given me an opportunity to reflect.

So this post has some extra thoughts regarding more recent NLG developments - e.g., pretrained models like GPT(2), and the suitability of beam search.

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$Dani\xeblle Stotijn$

Daniëlle Stotijn
@DDay35962863

NESARA / GESARA explained for all who are not aware.

"The End of Poverty, The End of Debt, The Beginning of a New Golden Age!"

No Poverty, No Hunger, No Debt, Only Global Prosperity and Peace for ALL

NESARA will merge with GESARA

N = National (US)
G = Global

$Kitze @ \U0001f1e9\U0001f1ea\ufe0f$

Kitze @ 🇩🇪️...
@thekitze

To people who are under the impression that you can get rich quickly by working on an app, here are the stats for https://t.co/az8F12pf02

📈 ~12000 vistis
☑️ 109 transactions
💰 353€ profit (285 after tax)

I have spent 1.5 months on this app. You can make more $ in 2 days.

🤷‍♂️

I'm still happy that I launched a paid app bcs it involved extra work:

- backend for processing payments (+ permissions, webhooks, etc)
- integration with payment processor
- UI for license activation in Electron
- machine activation limit
- autoupdates
- mailgun emails

etc.

These things seemed super scary at first. I always thought it was way too much work and something would break. But I'm glad I persisted. So far the only problem I have is that mailgun is not delivering the license keys to certain domains like https://t.co/6Bqn0FUYXo etc. 👌

omg I just realized that me . com is an Apple domain, of course something wouldn't work with these dicks

$\U0001d40d\U0001d41e\U0001d421\U0001d41a \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3$

𝐍𝐞𝐡𝐚 🇮🇳...
@Neh_hope_faith

THREAD: What is Golden Crescent and Golden Triangle and how it impacts India?

Golden Crescent region of South Asia - comprises of Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan - which is a principal global site for opium production and distribution.

Golden Triangle is the area where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet at the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers. The Golden Triangle is called so because of the triangular shape formed by the locations of New Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan on a map.

India is wedged bw world’s 2 largest areas of illicit opium production, Golden Crescent & Golden Triangle, that has made Indian borders vulnerable to drug trafficking. It flows from 2 fronts, NW & NE, that possesses dual concern - violation of border & threat to national security

- Golden Crescent is world’s leading opium and cannabis producing region since 1983.

- Its proximity to Indo-Pak border has worsened the trafficking of hashish and heroin into Indian soil

- Trafficking happens through the border states of J&K, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

- Golden Triangle is leading opium producing region of the South-east Asia, also an ancient narcotics supply route to North America & Europe.

- Myanmar-Northeast nexus is recognized by NCB as the root of heroin & chemical drugs

- Myanmar produces 80% of heroin produced in world