Comments on: Getting A New Product Off The Ground: Part One

By: Christopher Bruno

Christopher Bruno — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:25:25 +0000

To everyone criticizing Patrick’s design skills….just wait. Patrick is doing it right…iterate, feedback, iterate. Before long, Appointment Reminder will be the #1 appointment app. Bingo Card Creator started out as an ugly swing app…look how successful it has become – and this is an app to make bingo cards!!

By: Getting A New Product Off The Ground: Part Two: MicroISV on a Shoestring

Getting A New Product Off The Ground: Part Two: MicroISV on a Shoestring — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:26:43 +0000

[…] Along with some other users from Hacker News, I’m doing my darndest to get Appointment Reminder into the hands of customers by the end of November. It looks like it is going to happen, too. (There was an early blog post about this here.) […]

By: Listen to 'Getting A New Product Off The Ground: Part One' narrated by professionals, from 'MicroISV on a Shoestring' - Hear a Blog

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 19:46:36 +0000

[…] There was overwhelming enthusiasm from people when I offered to blog about the development of Appointment Reminder, so I will be doing it during the month of November, prior to my planned release. (Tentatively planned for the end of the month, if it is ready in time.) Achieving Activation Energy Appointment Reminder has, theoretically speaking, been on […] Original post […]

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 03:34:48 +0000

Yeah Clay, I covered that back in Mayish. I’ll find the post for you after lunch.

By: Clay Nichols

Clay Nichols — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 00:03:42 +0000

Patrick,

What marketing research did you do before you started the app?
(Maybe it was in another blog post I missed)?

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 00:39:22 +0000

I deploy against the MRI (Matz Ruby Intepreter). JRuby is much faster at running Ruby code than the MRI is, but Ruby code is not a bottleneck for my service, at all. It is almost insulting how little work my Ruby code has to actually do.

By: Weekend Startup and Entrepreneurial Updates

Weekend Startup and Entrepreneurial Updates — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 21:05:59 +0000

[…] Getting a new product off the ground – MicroISV […]

By: Off By One # 8 | Off By One

Off By One # 8 | Off By One — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 14:02:36 +0000

[…] Getting A New Product Off The Ground: Part One: MicroISV on a Shoestring – Patrick McKenzie with the first part of a series detailing the build and launch of his new product. […]

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:39:47 +0000

Just another Enterprise Java guy here, who has been toying with a micro-isv idea for 2 years now. I started with Java and then tried Rails, still torn about which to use since some of the Rails stuff like REST and routes seems foreign.

I’ve read JRuby can run much faster (after startup) then comparable Rails deployments. And my history with running Tomcat and the likes makes that feel more comfortable to me. What do you deploy your Rails apps onto? What are your thoughts about JRuby?

Love the detailed post about your thought process on doing this product.

By: Jeremy Gray

Jeremy Gray — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 19:29:28 +0000

re: cutting ruthlessly – I have always enjoyed having a net negative effect on system lines of code for my consulting clients, but while working on my startup I have had to settle for having a negative effect on my initially-conceived set of features. Cut, cut, cut. I had a similar experience to yours regarding search, where I was looking at what the service truly needed for launch and even went so far as to cut _pagination_. It was just one of those things where when I looked at how the system was expected to be used it just wouldn’t be needed for a while, if ever, and so I cut it. Ahh, if feels so good to be so ruthless. :)

re: cutting audio uploads specifically – I suspect you might even find that you cut something your customers wouldn’t want to use anyway. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they would strongly prefer recording over the phone, as that is what they would be used to in many other situations and as the technical know-how involved is much, much lower. This has to be one of the best things about cutting everything you possibly can: in many cases you cut something you might not _ever_need. Heck, you might not even want it, or might even be harmed by it. Cut, cut, cut.

re: Compass – Every day that I work with Compass (and HAML and SASS) I find myself sold on it yet again.

re: Admin – You may or may not have looked at this already, but I have had a good time with Active Scaffold as a starting point for basic (and even not-so basic) admin tasks. It isn’t perfect, and certainly won’t do everything, but I am finding that it reduces my admin coding work to just those things which are truly unique to administering my specific offering. It might be worth a look-see.