
I’m starting an internet company and detailing the entire process - johnomarkid
https://medium.com/@johnomarkid/im-starting-an-internet-company-and-detailing-the-entire-process-9a9c23f7dc24
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nhumrich
Am I the only one who thought this article was going to be about an ISP
startup because of the title, and was disappointed when it wasn't?

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d--b
My thought process:

    
    
        Internet company?
        What is this? 1998?
        OH it must be an ISP!
        Nope. It's a chat for your website...
        Wait, isn't there a million of these already?
        * sigh *

~~~
stymaar
> Wait, isn't there a million of these already?

If there is a million of them, there must be business here, and if an
entrepreneur thinks he can do it better than his average competitor, he should
definetly go ahead.

A company doesn't need to be revolutionary to be a success-story. Distruptive
ideas are exceptionally scarce and they represent a microscopic share of the
economy as a whole.

~~~
d--b
Of course this is totally fine. I'm responding to the comment that it is
disappointing that this wasn't an ISP.

I thought: here's a guy who sees that there is an opportunity to create an ISP
that will be privacy focused, and he's going to details all the steps along
the way. That'd be quite exciting.

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iamphilrae
Great idea but you may want to rethink the name. PowWowNow is a well know (at
least in the U.K.) conference call provider. May prove a big issue for you
since you're in a similar field. Looking forward to the weekly updates.

~~~
bflesch
I'm always baffled by the naivity of people when deciding on company names.
The challenge is not to spend dollars on finding a new name that is as cool as
possible, but the challenge is to find a name:

\- that is not used in that context anywhere else, therefore

\- free of potential legal liability towards other brands, and

\- for which you can build up a brand over time.

How come otherwise competent engineers end up with these kinds of suboptimal
startup/project names over and over again?

For Powwow you have other companies, all domains are taken, and you will have
to fight wikipedia to rank for this term in any top spot. Same with otto, the
car company. Otto is popular first name, name of one of the largest European
pre-amazon retailers, etc.

Such a waste of money and time to start with a second-hand brand.

(sorry if this comes across as snarky, I really like the project.)

~~~
johnomarkid
You used Otto as an example. It was acquired by Uber for $680M. Doesn't that
mean company names might be less important than you think?

I purchased powwowjs.com (js because it's a javascript embedded app) for $40
after spending 15 minutes thinking about a name I liked. I'd rather spend my
time and money building a product that is not yet validated. If the name needs
to change, that's totally fine and a lot less time consuming than my current
task at hand.

~~~
wtvanhest
This is the right approach imo. You could call it jhgjgddsdghkkl. As long as
the product is awesome, people will figure it out.

~~~
bflesch
I remember the first time reading about ifttt as a non-native speaker :)

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EGreg
_" The contradiction is that growth isn’t the only thing we want. We want to
build a company that promotes remote work. We want to try new ways to motivate
employees that don’t revolve around stock options with unknown value. And we
want the ability to not grow when circumstances call for it."_

Then use the model outlined in [https://qbix.com/blog](https://qbix.com/blog)
right now :)

Perhaps thinking of people as employees is outdated. Let's face it, these days
the typical company or corporation doesn't care about its employees nearly as
much as the product they produce. That's why your grandfather was a company
man who worked 40 years with one firm, and today people flit from place to
place.

It's also why people make less than they did then. Automation and outsourcing
has reduced demand for human labor. Today (Real GDP / Population) is 10x more
than in 1950s - so each person is 10x more productive on average - yet back
then one regular man could pay for an entire household in the suburbs. Today
both parents work, stick their kids in glorified daycare (public school) and
still can barely make ends meet.

Perhaps the compensation model should be more project based.

Perhaps we should have single payer basic healthcare, food etc.
unconditionally for everyone.

People live lives. Companies build products.

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jblok
> We want to try new ways to motivate employees that don’t revolve around
> stock options with unknown value.

How about salaries?

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johnomarkid
Industry level salaries are important. In addition to that, how do you create
an environment that people want to work in for the next 10 years? I think
remote work is a big incentive. Maybe capping work hours at 40/week. That
makes people happy. Maybe profit sharing. There are incentives that are more
tangible than stock options.

~~~
inetknght
Cap on personal income as a ratio of number of employees (so you don't end up
with Wal-Mart-like policies where the bulk of your "employees" make minimum
wage and require government assistance just to live, while people at the top
make millions) would be great.

Combine that being profitable (after base salaries) and fair profit sharing
(eg, across all employees and contractors) and you will have people flocking
to your company in droves.

~~~
pc86
Why would contractors get profit sharing? They're already paid higher rates
after accounting for benefits, risks, and taxes. If you undervalue yourself as
a software dev contractor and bill 25-30 hours a week you can make a quarter
million dollars a year gross.

I get where you're going with the WM example, and that's a fair one, but
probably not comparable to a tech company like this. Nobody is going to be
working for $10/hr or less unless it's fair for their standard of living.
Likewise, industry level pay is important and if a good CFO commands $2
million a year but you can only offer $1.1 because you have a bunch of people
making $50k, you're not going to get a good CFO, _or_ your hiring pool is
going to be artificially limited to those who don't need or care about the
money.

~~~
inetknght
I would consider contract jobs only because of more pay. But the lack of
stability is a concern.

Profit sharing with contractors because... imagine Uber where drivers are
poorly paid contractors while Uber reaps silly amounts of profits.

I fully understand that people can dictate what price they _want_. But that
doesn't make that price fair, does it? Show a reason that $2M is necessitated
instead of... say... $250K base salary and bonuses "up to" $2M based on
performance. So if the company hires you and you don't bring profits
(remember, profits are shared now) in line with whatever's necessary to pay
you that $2M, then are you really worth your $2M asking price?

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npguy
There is an enterprise software company named powwow as well. You might run
into issues with your name.

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cbisnett
You might have to fight John McAfee for the name ;)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowWow_(chat_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowWow_\(chat_program\))

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pc86
I'm not sure why a Slack group is a bad idea. I'm in a half dozen or so, and
every time I open Slack I see the icons for all these services. I am _much_
more likely to visit the website of one of my Slack groups than I am, say, one
of the Facebook groups I'm in. I'm not even in Slack every day while I spend
an embarrassing amount of time on Facebook.

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wwalser
An alternative title for the post could be "I'm going to compete with two of
the most dominant tech companies in the world and blog about it."

I've heard that Slack isn't really interested in supporting paid Slack
communities in a meaningful way (all of the money is in enterprise chat). So I
could see a company that's truly focused winning that battle. Facebook on the
other hand seems pretty invested in private groups.

Naturally, I wish John the best of luck. Building a company is hard in and of
itself, he's choosing to take on a particularly difficult version of that
challenge. I hope he doesn't plan to bootstrap a community chat application.

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mintplant
Would you mind detailing the process of actually _starting_ the company, ie
incorporation? What are the costs involved, recurring or otherwise? Did you
hire a lawyer, or use a service like LegalZoom?

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johnomarkid
Yes. The week 1 update goes into that. [http://johnomar.com/powwow-progress-
week-1/](http://johnomar.com/powwow-progress-week-1/)

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doozler
Looking forward to the updates! Will you provide any technical information
about the tech stack used, servers, scaling etc?

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johnomarkid
Yup, for sure. In the week 1 update I actually briefly talk about the stack.
But future updates will go more in depth with things like db query profiles.
[http://johnomar.com/powwow-progress-week-1/](http://johnomar.com/powwow-
progress-week-1/)

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simonswords82
Are you raising any money for this venture or bootstrapping?

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johnomarkid
Bootstrapping for now.

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swagv1
Never before in the history of the Internetz

