Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (August 02, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (August 02, 2019)
- The three things I learned that made it possible to scale my business
- Facebook vs Instagram : Which one should you use for your business?
- I started my first store selling dog beds and dog collars...
- 5 Businesses Teenagers Can Do to Earn $10k+/year Part Time
- Online solo entrepreneurs! Tell us what do you do.
- 4 MONTH UPDATE - Left Engineering Job to Run Mobile Mechanic Business
- Where do these Ebay power sellers get their phones from?
- I created an online T-shirt business 5 days ago. $680 in sales already, am i lucky or did i hit the right Niche??
- Secured funding from Corporate VC, can I continue the same "round" of funding with other sources?
- Which is best? to beat competitors, to meet customer needs customers, to have the best ROI?
- How I Got My Story on the Largest Morning TV Show in the USA
- Multi family property
- Marketing and Sales
- How to formally end a verbal agreement
- NJ- Is it possible I can resell unopened packets of seeds at farmers markets
- My First Business: Website Development
- [Advice Wanted] I want to start a nonprofit to help homeless people get back on their feet.
- Choosing a product that is dominated by big players/department stores
- Advice on shipping items and packaging?
- When is it appropriate to crowdfund?
- Whats the largest demand for burst rate of energy on the ground and after some setup time? For example, does someone want to lift a city but lacks the energy, not saying its available, or would someone want to pump water or air at some chosen pressure not available? Just asking demand for burst rate
- Good practices for creating a web app in 2019
- Help with Touch Zero" Operating Model (OM) to Manage Cash
| Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (August 02, 2019) Posted: 02 Aug 2019 06:16 AM PDT Please use this thread to share any accomplishment you care to gloat about, and some lessons learned. This is a weekly thread to encourage new members to participate, and post their accomplishments, as well as give the veterans an opportunity to inspire the up-and-comers. Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| The three things I learned that made it possible to scale my business Posted: 02 Aug 2019 06:06 AM PDT I own a service business with 6 full time employees and 300 part time employees. We service 10,000 customers a year and bring in ~$3MM in revenue on a 20% margin. IMO these are the three keys to building a scalable business that can make money while you aren't working with customers. When we started doing these things well we had great results and were able to stop laboring and start managing and growing. #1 Charge more for your service Provide a great service on a quick timeline and you can justify charging a premium. Then you can afford better employees and you have the financial stability to take on the overhead needed to delegate and build a healthy company. It took me a while to realize that not every customer was for me. My service was for people who were willing to pay a little more for quality. The customers who wanted the lowest price weren't my customers. I had to cut the emotional tie I had to trying to win every customer at all costs. Its often better to convert less leads at a higher price. #2 Simplify the job so your employees can focus and thrive Don't have your employees do 10 jobs at once. They'll be weak at all of them. Take what you can off of their plate so they can focus on doing what they do best. Centralize your billing. Centralize your quoting. Have one employee do all of the estimating and another do all of the punch list items, for example. We had our drivers also unloading trucks, making invoices, making schedules and doing customer service. We took all of that off of their plate so they could focus on getting the 5 core tasks done the right way. It was a game changer. #3 Train resourceful employees and empower them to make decisions When they come to you with a question you have two options. Answer that question and solve that problem yourself or teach them how to solve the problem. When you make the investment in teaching the framework you use to make decisions two things happen - you learn which employees have potential and can be trusted and you create extensions of yourself. Hope this helps. If you want any examples or if you have questions I'm happy to elaborate below! If you like this kind of thing hang out with us over in r/sweatystartup! [link] [comments]  |
| Facebook vs Instagram : Which one should you use for your business? Posted: 02 Aug 2019 07:51 AM PDT Hey fellow entrepreneurs, I hope you guys are doing well. I am Nandhu. I am a digital marketer. When I started my venture, I used Facebook as a primary medium for promoting my clients' businesses. It was really worth it at that time. All of my clients' pages were growing steadily and we were getting a lot of user engagements for the posts we shared. But things were getting so miserable recently that I decided to stop using Facebook for clients unless they want to do paid ads. Why did I stop using Facebook for brand building? I stopped using Facebook for brand building simply because Facebook wanted me to PAY. What I mean by this is that Facebook recently tweaked its algorithms in a way that it decreased the organic reach of posts shared by business pages. You will begin to see more posts shared by your family and friends rather than business pages. It's good news for people who are annoyed seeing these businesses trying to get in their lives. It's definitely not good news for marketers like me who rely on this for a living. Now, if you want your business to get a good reach on Facebook, you need to boost the posts. So you should spend money for every post you share even if you have a lot of followers. Now, not only do my clients have to pay me but also they have to pay to FB for each post. This is when I started saying bye-bye to Facebook for my clients. I was using Instagram for my clients but I wasn't serious in optimizing or increasing followers. What I found is that my clients were getting more reach and engagements even though the accounts had fewer followers than Facebook. I also began to research more on hashtags and I found that if I used the right hashtags, it gave me a really good boost for my posts. Why should you go for Instagram? High Engagement Rates One thing I noticed about Instagram is the number of people engaging with my posts. It's really high compared to what I am getting on Facebook. Organic reach was also high on Instagram compared to Facebook. That prompted me to go for Instagram. Larger Follower Growth Follower growth was enormous with the right technique. Common techniques include follow-unfollow, mother-child, etc. You can find these techniques if you look it up on Google. I use follow-unfollow for smaller growth and mother-child for larger growth. It will entirely depend on your budget. When you do follow-unfollow method make sure you stay on your limits. Lots of Opportunities If you use the right hashtags, your photos can get greater reach which you can't expect on Facebook. Using the right hashtags for the right posts can get your content viral on Instagram. Instagram Stories These are something that you can use to get the most out of Instagram followers. The Instagram story reaches a lot of people and it's the best way to stay on your customers' mind. Share something fun happening in your office, don't always be too salesy to your Instagram followers. Tell them you guys have a life as well. Harness the Power of Visual Content Having photos that can tell a story is important for Instagram. A picture is worth a thousand words, right! Sharing photos regularly with your followers and telling them more about your business is the key to running a successful marketing campaign on Instagram. To run a successful Instagram business account, you need:
When should you use Facebook over Instagram? Your target audience is older people When you analyze the demographics of people active on Instagram, you will see that there are more teens than the adult. So it's more dependent on who you're targeting. If your product or service is suited to older people, then, go with Facebook with a little bit of advertising budget. Your business won't go well with only Instagram marketing for this. You want quick results If you want quick results, then you should try out Facebook advertising. Instagram ads are costly and aren't worth trying if you want some quick sells. Even Instagram shout-outs are worth more than Instagram ads in my opinion. You don't have much visual content Stay away from Instagram if you don't have many photos to share. You need photos that can stand out from the average content that is being shared. I prefer Facebook if you are sharing information with your followers. Conclusion: Use Facebook only for the above conditions. If you want to build a strong brand, use Instagram more than Facebook. [link] [comments]  |
| I started my first store selling dog beds and dog collars... Posted: 02 Aug 2019 02:46 PM PDT |
| 5 Businesses Teenagers Can Do to Earn $10k+/year Part Time Posted: 02 Aug 2019 01:01 PM PDT Video version if you'd rather. TL:DR at bottom. A lot of the time teenagers are discouraged from doing the hard businesses that actually earn decent money. I say don't listen to those people, if a 30 year old can start a business and make decent money, so can a 13 year old. These business ideas all rely on skills that can be learned online and earn money based on value you've created - so you don't have to put yourself out there for an hourly wage with these.
TL:DR Reselling candy at school, making a YouTube channel, social media marketing, automation coding, and writing. [link] [comments]  |
| Online solo entrepreneurs! Tell us what do you do. Posted: 02 Aug 2019 01:05 AM PDT I do really enjoy working alone (i still delegate and have partners but online) and not be dependent from location and fixed working hours. Last time I did some freelancing in writing and translations. But i've got eventually stuck with getting clients. Some of my old methods doesn't work and i can't figure out what to do. So I'm wandering what are you guys doing to find some ideas to experiment on [link] [comments]  |
| 4 MONTH UPDATE - Left Engineering Job to Run Mobile Mechanic Business Posted: 02 Aug 2019 05:14 AM PDT I'd like to give everyone a general update on running my business full-time since leaving my cushy engineering job 4 months ago (March 27th, 2019). Shop labor rate: $90 per/hr (Diagnostic labor rate is $75 per/hr) Revenue: $16,435 ($4,108 Monthly) Marketing Expenses: $237 Shop Supplies/Part Expenses: $3,136 Fuel Expenses: $800 Other Expenses: $2,242 Net Profit: $10,020 ($2,505 Monthly) My original goal is to start hitting $10,000 revenue every month, however, I have yet to hit that number. My revenue numbers have been moving up slowly from $1,914 in April 2019 to $5,079 in July 2019. Something I haven't mention above is that I did some contracting work for another mobile mechanic company ($9,276 net profit since leaving my full-time job). I recently stopped contracting to focus on the business more! Additionally, me and my girlfriend had a baby on May 13th, and also a death in the family requiring me to fly back to my home town in July. Both of these required me to take some time off from the business. I have not been doing all too much with marketing besides posting on craigslist every couple of days. I find that the ROI is incredible with these ads, even though you need to weed through people who will want to haggle prices. Yesterday, I decided that I would start a YouTube channel focused around the business and will have several topics around cars, centered around repairing them. I posted my first video yesterday if anyone is curious to see what I came up with. That's about all i have for now, if anyone has questions or suggestions, I'd love to hear them down below! [link] [comments]  |
| Where do these Ebay power sellers get their phones from? Posted: 02 Aug 2019 02:29 PM PDT Smarter Phones and MyWit appear to be the leaders in the refurbished phone business and I always want to know where they get their devices. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2019 02:24 PM PDT I am currently a college student at FSU and am always thinking of new ways to make a side income. I love making shirts also spreading my way of style to others so decided to start designing shirts that i would wear and see if anyone else would want to buy them. SO i did, the website is www.getlaidrightaway.com . I know the shirts are a little edgy but thats what college fraternity kids like and wear out to the bars. I want to know what market i should target besides college kids and if any of you like the shirts personally! Any feedback helps. [link] [comments]  |
| Secured funding from Corporate VC, can I continue the same "round" of funding with other sources? Posted: 02 Aug 2019 01:40 PM PDT We are about to sign a deal with a CVC featuring funding through a convertible loan note but also some other terms like non competes, technical cooperation etc. If we raise more funding straight away can we call it the same "round" of funding? My assumption would be yes, as long as it's at the same valuation (taking the value cap of our CLN). But: Would it need to be the same term sheet? Ie including the non-compete and technical cooperation, which would be irrelevant to a normal VC. Would it also need to be through a CLN? Direct investment is preferable for us. [link] [comments]  |
| Which is best? to beat competitors, to meet customer needs customers, to have the best ROI? Posted: 02 Aug 2019 01:06 PM PDT What I've noticed when reading business books is they are intensely focussed on just one aspect per book. Customers or Competitors or Marketplace or Internal company. Not how to use all the parts. Of the books I read 'art of war' is the only one that had anything about winning strategy, and its a literal book of war. So to look at all the aspects and put them together as a strategy, what do you believe is best? Conventional thinking would be to compete against competitors + in all parts of business to use some metrics to meet goals (satisfy customers/beat competitors/be first on trend curves) + calculate ROI + compete for best customer satisfaction? [link] [comments]  |
| How I Got My Story on the Largest Morning TV Show in the USA Posted: 02 Aug 2019 08:47 AM PDT TLDR: I did some original research, sent out a press release about it, and the story ended up on the "Live with Regis and Kelly" morning television show, at the time the largest national morning show in the country. Oh yeah, it also ran in over 100 newspapers, too, including USA Today. Take Away Lesson: The Media NEEDS stories. Give them what they need and you will receive free coverage of your product/service - Hey Reddit Entrepreneurs – Quite a few people liked a response I made to a post recently, so I thought I'd share a fuller version of the story. Here you go: As an entrepreneur, I have many different areas of work. A few years back I started a "Data and Analysis for Marketing" service for ad agencies and other marketing groups. I wanted to receive some publicity, so I thought about what special things I could come up with that might be "newsworthy." Since the business was about data, I figured it should have something to do with that. After thinking for a few days, I decided to take the U.S. Census Data and use it to come up with a list of "Top 10 Cities in Which to Find a Single, Rich Man." I did the analysis, set up a bunch of related files on my website (top 10 list, a list of the ranking of all U.S. cities, biographic information, information about my services, etc.), and sent out a press release via prweb.com. I waited a couple of days… and nothing happened. The release had been read by quite a few people on the service (they track that information), but there did not seem to be any coverage. At the end of the third day, I was driving home through a scenic portion of Connecticut after speaking at a conference. I checked my voice mail. There was a message from a reporter at the New York Daily News. He wanted to ask me a couple of questions about my story. The cell phone reception stunk (thanks, Sprint) so I could not get a connection to return the call until I returned to my office. By then, the folks at the Daily News had gone home. I figured I had missed my chance, at least immediately. I was wrong. The next morning, I was preparing to leave on a trip to Boston. The phone rang. It was KSFO radio in San Francisco. "Hey, we're calling about your 'Top 10 Rich Man' story and we'd like to put you on the air in 15 minutes if we could," said the voice on the phone. "Ok, sure!" I answered. Fifteen minutes later, I was talking via AM radio to tens of thousands of people in the Bay Area of San Francisco. The hosts asked me about the methodology I used to create the list. They asked why I thought the Bay Area made the list. It was an enjoyable interview, and I am certain the hosts were happy with the segment. We ended the segment and I hung up the phone. The phone rang again. It was a production assistant from the show The View on ABC television. "We wanted to confirm a few things in regard to your story," he said. "Ok!" I replied. The production assistant mentioned the article in the Daily News. After the call, I figured I should see if I could find the article. I ran down to my nearest newsstand and bought a copy of the Daily News. I flipped through the pages trying to find the paragraph or two about my story. I could not find it. Confused, I literally went back to the front page and said, "Ok, it's not on the front page." Then I turned the page to scan inside. "Ok, it's not on page two inside…" Page 3 had a picture of Gisele Bündchen wearing a snake, plus some other huge article. That certainly was not our couple of paragraphs. Then, my subconscious said something like "ahem!" to me. That is when I noticed my name on the page. It turned out that the entire page three of the New York Daily News (except for the photo of Gisele) was about my "Top 10 Places to Find a Rich Man"! That was crazy. I went back to my office. I wanted to track press mentions, mainly to be able to use them for my own marketing purposes, so I emailed some colleagues and said, "Hey, if you happen to see mentions of this, please let me know." A couple of hours later one of them emailed me back. "You might not believe this, but you were just on Regis," he said. Apparently to fill time—the media has hours of airtime they need to fill every day—some shows read from newspapers and comment on the stories. Well, my "story" was prominently placed in a major New York newspaper, so Regis Philbin read and commented about my survey and me. CNN Radio, stations in Texas, San Francisco, Wisconsin, Pittsburgh—and a couple of others I do not remember—interviewed me. An Associated Press writer wrote a story about the list and put it on the AP wire. One hundred newspapers across the country featured my list—and it was covered by numerous radio stations throughout the U.S. My website traffic sharply increased. In a couple of days I probably had ten to twenty thousand visitors. I received a ton of press clippings. For about two weeks people I knew treated me very differently. Suddenly I was famous. I knew it was a "15 minute" type of thing, but it sure was strange. I even received a multiple-page letter in the mail from a woman complaining that her city should not be on the list because the men in her town were awful. How much business did I receive from the publicity? None—at least not directly. I did send out a couple of proposals to people who contacted me from the story, but I did not make any money directly off the publicity. However, the press clippings definitely helped convince other prospects who came along later. Being in major news outlets does wonders for your credibility. If I were to do the same thing today, I would do one thing different. I would have the full list of all U.S. cities and where they ranked available on my website but behind a PayPal button. You send me $4.99 or maybe $9.99 via PayPal, and you can then instantly download the list. It would be an easy way to make some spending money. Tips for Reddit/Entrepreneurs: Emailing people and asking media people to cover your business won't work. You need to provide a story for them. In some cases you do the work for them – practically writing the article or blog post yourself. They cut/paste and give you the exposure you want. A press release is one good route, a press kit with a press release is even better. If you liked the above, you'll love the book from which it came. Here is the book that it came from No, it is not a get rich quick book. No, there is no thousand dollar course for sale. Just a book of all the good advice I could gather, including the story above. Questions are welcome. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2019 12:24 PM PDT I'm new to investing and was thinking about purchasing a multi family unit for my first investment. It is $200,000 and I have enough to put 20 percent down. I also plan on using a property manager. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2019 12:23 PM PDT What are the core differences between a marketing strategy and a sales strategy? What are the fundamentals of both [link] [comments]  |
| How to formally end a verbal agreement Posted: 02 Aug 2019 12:21 PM PDT A few years ago I performed some services for a client by creating some physical devices to allow them to perform a service. We ordered minimum quantities of supplies (on their dime) that exceeded the number of devices we verbally agreed I'd create. After they paid me in full for the project they never followed up to retrieve their materials. Now the company is pressuring me to create devices using the remaining parts that I've had in storage for the past few years, claiming that I am on the hook to deliver several more completed devices. I am confident they understand this was outside the scope of our verbal deal, but since there was no written agreement I kinda see where they're coming from in terms of trying to convince me I agreed to things I know for certain I never did. I've agreed to send them the extra supplies they paid for. This will allow them to create more copies of my work, and I'm not thrilled about that but I want them out of my life. As part of that I want to create an agreement that states a few things:
What kind of agreement am I looking for? Are there free services I can use to create the agreement that could reasonably hold up in court? The stakes are fairly low here, but I just want a clean exit from this relationship. Any advice would be great. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| NJ- Is it possible I can resell unopened packets of seeds at farmers markets Posted: 02 Aug 2019 12:18 PM PDT Hello all, I don't know if this is the right subreddit to post to but, I want to start selling my vegetable kits at farmers markets, and inside the kits are some seeds. What is the legisltation in New Jersey if I were to use unopened packets of common reputable brands within my kit, or even if I separate the seeds from said packets and distribute them into smaller baggies? Do I require licenses to do such a thing? [link] [comments]  |
| My First Business: Website Development Posted: 02 Aug 2019 11:29 AM PDT Hey guys, I'm a cs student, and I been enamored by starting a business for so long. I have been reading, learning, and observing it for so long. So basically, I'm gonna start a website development business w html, css, js and stuff like word press. I am not looking to it for money, but for experience first and foremost. I was just wondering, for all the people here, what were your thoughts and worries when starting your first business, and what advice would you have for people like me starting out? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| [Advice Wanted] I want to start a nonprofit to help homeless people get back on their feet. Posted: 01 Aug 2019 04:50 PM PDT Here's some background. I'm 18, and I'm about to leave my hometown to head off to college. That said, I've been doing some dreaming. After being very involved with my church's outreach activities, I started to wonder. One of the programs my church does is picking up homeless people from around the city and give them free food, laundry service, free clothes if needed, and showers. However, my only problem with this is that we're only able to satisfy their short-term felt needs, rather than their long-term ones. Therefore, I started to ask myself, what can I do to aid help those who are in a rough spot and genuinely want to get back on their feet? I've been getting more into finances recently, learning about Roth IRAs and investments, etc. (I know, that's just the tip of the iceberg. I'm still learning.) Ultimately, my goal is to purchase properties for rent (regular renting or Airbnb) and then use the profit to (1) first pay off the mortgages of those properties, and (2) purchase one or two more properties that I could use to shelter a homeless person or two, give them food and clothing, pay for utilities on for those properties, and provide free consultation and assistance for getting them a job. The thing is, I know achieving something like this requires a lot of support and a lot of smart moves. Being as young as I am, I am not rich, and probably won't be for a while, but this is something I'm really passionate about. I don't want this to simply be a dream and in forty years feel bad that I did nothing to chase it. What advice do you have? TIA. [link] [comments]  |
| Choosing a product that is dominated by big players/department stores Posted: 02 Aug 2019 10:32 AM PDT Just a curious question to see if anyone has launched a product where the big players have presence but not a huge variety?. For example, just for argument's sake let's say socks. If all of the large competitors rank in Google for "socks", but you're a shop that does more variety and specialise in the area with content etc, do you think there's a chance? I just wonder because I've had an idea I've been sitting on for a while but the presence of the bigger department stores might make it difficult. I don't see any specialist stores for this product, but that worries me a little. I'm going to do more research. All of the big department stores including Amazon rank for the product , but I would be relying on paid search, social and SEO for sales. I would also be looking to launch it on Amazon too. Part of me thinks it must be possible as there's been a number of success stories I've seen on entrepreneur ride along - sunglasses, watches etc where success has been made, and department stores and big players probably owned these areas too at some point. I just wanted to get thoughts. Also wanted to hear anyone who might have tried and failed for any insight [link] [comments]  |
| Advice on shipping items and packaging? Posted: 02 Aug 2019 10:25 AM PDT Some awesome customers want to buy items from me, but I have no idea how to start shipping. Where should I start? What do I need to start shipping things? Do I need some industrial label printer, or can I use a regular printer with regular paper and clear packing tape? Where do I get package envelopes? Is there a way to slow customers to track their item? So many questions haha. [link] [comments]  |
| When is it appropriate to crowdfund? Posted: 02 Aug 2019 10:19 AM PDT At the moment I'm working on some custom dog shoes that I'm trying to bring to market. I'm at my second prototype iteration and was feeling good about moving towards production but after testing on some dogs I realized I need to adjust their dimensions and shape, which might be expensive. I'm a 20 year old student with fairly low capital so I'm looking to crowdfund them at some point. I'm running an instagram and have a website that I promote but they're both low traffic but I have spoken to people about the product. What I'm stuck between is: Do I start my Kickstarter campaign now, while my prototype is still being worked on, or start when I'm closer to being finished? Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2019 01:50 PM PDT I dont have alot of money or energy, but its often not hard to trade one form for many more of another that happen to all act at once for example. It seems theres alot of things that dont get done cuz of low available burst rate. I am not aware of which things theres demand for. [link] [comments]  |
| Good practices for creating a web app in 2019 Posted: 02 Aug 2019 09:49 AM PDT So this week, I created an app called StudioPlur. If anyone wants to see it, you can check it out at the bottom of this post. With every project, I learn a ton, and this one is no exception. So for this article, I am going to go over some of the more interesting parts of creating a simple app. Hopefully, this will help some of you understand the tools and best practices in software development these days. Directory Structure and Deployment First, let's talk about directory structure, and how I deployed. I wanted to build an application that was "serverless" in that it only used AWS microservices for backend calls. This "backend" is sustainable because most of AWS microservices are free if you stay under certain limits. If the project really takes off enough, then I'll gladly pay AWS. But assuming it stays small, AWS offers a pretty hands free way of maintaining the site. Directory Structure So when I was running the application locally, I setup a typical app.js node server, and I separated out my files into the following directories:
When I started, I just had a _docs folder that had a Product Requirements Document, a static wireframe that I built in Elementor, and a little schematic describing the architecture. Then I slowly started building out html pages, javascript functions, and css. Javascript functions that were used by the backend were placed in the "_scripts" folder, and all the other resources were put in the _static folder. The _static folder has four subfolders:
Deployment This little application was deployed to AWS, and files went all over the place. To start _pages were just static pages, so those got sent to an S3 bucket for web hosting, and eventual edge deployment through Cloudfront. Next, _script files were zipped and sent to Lambda. The "_data" files were organized by uploaded images and dynamic data. The uploaded images were sent to a separate s3 bucket, and the dynamic data was sent to DynamoDB . Finally, the "App.js" server was ripped apart and rewritten using "API Gateway." Once everything was working, everything needed to be made private. Then, I took a day or two struggling with IAM policies and figuring out how the individual services were granted permission over each other. Although this was all difficult, I can see how it is supposed to be organized in hindsight.
Most of the testing happens at the s3 and Lambda level, but eventually you need to test the whole sprawling mess. Responsive Design Designing a web app so it is viewable on a phone is a must these days. The basics are:
4.Test the technology on a live phone first! I tried making the technology for StudioPlur work on a desktop first, and then ported it to a phone. Big mistake! Javascript libraries work completely differently on the iPhone in Safari than in Chrome on a desktop. This was a big fail for me. In the future I plan to push as much of the "work" of an app to the backend as possible, so I can control the environment, and make sure the software works well at my endpoints. However, for those little javascript fixes that can be done completely on the frontend, this code is pretty cool: function isMobileDevice() { return (typeof window.orientation !== "undefined") || (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('IEMobile') !== -1); }; Using GIT to Store stable code For this project, I meticulously took notes on all of the configurations that were necessary to get AWS microservices working. That was great! Whenever I needed to rebuild an s3 bucket, change an API resource, or even rebuild a Cognito Identity pool, I could go back to my notes and figure out the necessary steps to do things from scratch. However, because I was using AWS microservices, I figured I wouldn't need to use GIT as much. So what is git? Per their website, Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git allows you to save a "change log" of previous versions of your project. If/When you get a certain group of files to work well together locally, you can make a "git commit" and save that state of your app for future reference. In previous projects, I think I was using git merely as a way to save my work (by pushing to a cloud repository and deploying on heroku). This is good in theory, but in practice, as a solo coder, I rarely need to pull resources from the cloud. In this project, I didn't use GIT at all, which was a mistake in retrospect. How Can Git Help? I'll quickly explain. The StudioPlur project lets you take a picture, and put a colorful grid overlay on your photo. I was using a simple javascript library ('dom-to-image') to flatten the image, and then sell it back to the user. Upon a little testing, I realized that the library didn't work on an iPhone with Safari. No problem, I downloaded another library that worked for the iPhone setup ('html-to-canvas'). Well this worked at first, but it was rotating the image because of this crazy "exif" metadata that iPhones add to photos when they take pictures. I fixed the exif problem by rotating the images with css classes, but then I couldn't get the html-to-canvas code to work anymore, so I gave up. If I had been storing different working setups of the project as commits. Then I could have annotated my notes in a separate document with the "hashes" and have access to that working code. When I hit a dead-end with a mix of libraries, I could weigh the pros and cons of each library and then decide which is more important. I could also revert to a working commit at any time for reference. As of now, I am stuck with the head commit of the master branch because I wasn't taking great notes, and using strong commits. Keeping a record of all of the files that were copied over to AWS at any given time could also have been useful. But I haven't fully decided that would be worth the time and effort. Oh, I almost forgot. You can find StudioPlur at www.studioplur.com! You can read this article, and other articles like it at: https://www.clearcutip.com/2019/08/01/how-to-create-an-app-in-2019/ [link] [comments]  |
| Help with Touch Zero" Operating Model (OM) to Manage Cash Posted: 02 Aug 2019 09:46 AM PDT Hi all, I read some time ago in the below link, that Bill Boebel is the CEO & founder of Pingboard was using a Touch Zero" Operating Model to Manage Cash https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/31/a-better-way-to-fund-saas-companies/ Basically with this OM they define a "touch zero date", that is the date at which the company reaches $0 in the bank account and at that same exact moment reach profitability, meaning they don't go out of business or need to raise more money. My question is, how do I build that OM for my SaaS company? Do you know where can I find a template that I can then adapt to my company? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Entrepreneur. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment