
How we fed ourselves for a year & sold a startup...with only 300 lines of code - felixchan
Hello Hacker News,<p>I’ve been reading HN for a long time now and love the way the community shares thoughts with each other.  I haven’t done anything extraordinary or extremely successful, but I want to chip in to the community with this experience that I find pretty interesting.<p>A year ago, I moved to San Francisco from rural Missouri hoping to join the start-up world.  At the same time, I met a friend, Zac, who also just moved to the bay area around that time but had left his job to pursue something more interesting.  We decided to become partners and start hacking stuff together.<p>Since we were new to the city and we didn’t know any one, we decided to build a mobile app that lets people use their phone to read the profiles of others nearby.  It was supposed to help people “break the ice” and meet new people.  This was our first startup.  We coded the product in a week and pushed the product live.<p>Once live, we got like 5 users, since no one really knew about it.  To promote this product, we decided to target events, since we thought that events is where people would like to meet each other.  We locked ourselves in a room and asked this question over and over: “What is something valuable we can provide to event organizers so that they can promote our product?”<p>Zac finally came up with an idea.  He proposed that we could build a kiosk where attendees can type in their name, and a name badge would instantly print.  Then the attendees would be integrated into our mobile app as well.  At first, it sounded insanely dumb (what would my mom think if I told her that I moved 2000 miles away from home to print paper name badges?), and I laughed really hard.  But after thinking about it, it seemed “cool”, and we gave it a try.<p>In a day of work, we wrote the software in 300 lines of code and tested it.  We ordered a label printer from Dymo and hooked them up to a Dell Mini 10v netbook.  After that was done, we contacted an event organizer, convinced him that our system wasn’t going to fail, and asked if we could print name badges for him.<p>The event organizer let us try out our system, and that night turned out to be amazing.  People thought it was the coolest thing ever to type their name in a laptop and instantly have a name badge print out.  At the end of the night, we handed out lots of cards and got lots of people to try our mobile app.   It was the first time in my life that there was “buzz” around something I created.<p>We continued to hit events and print name badges.  We bought more printers and lots and lots of labels.  We bought a huge travel suitcase to hold everything, and we carried it everywhere to print name badges for events.<p>The experience was amazing.  Not only did we get a lot of people to try our mobile app, but all the attendees thought it was the “coolest” gadget ever.  I guess we essentially “engineered” our way into these $600 technology events for free.  Many event organizers gave us the front-seats sponsor booth, without charging us a dollar.  Some gave us free advertising banners at their events.  Most importantly, everyone walked around with our logo on their shirt.  We shook all their hands as they walked into the door. Advertising can’t get any better than that.  We quickly got our mobile app into the hands of our users, and talked to more than 500+ directly.<p>Unfortunately, after a month passed, we realized that our initial mobile app wasn’t working.  People didn’t want the product.  They didn’t want to read profiles about people around them.  The mobile app wasn’t useful.<p>Here’s the weird thing about start-ups: things just happen.  Although our mobile app failed miserably, our little name badge printing system became insanely popular. Event organizers were begging us to print badges for them every time they had an event.  They were referring us to their friends, and we were hitting events literally every day with our name badge printer.  To cater for each event, we forked our original software (which was completely hard coded and not well thought through) way too many times.<p>Just to name a few, we hit: TechCrunch events, Smash Summit, SF Music Tech, Future/Money Tech, ISA, Twitter events, FailCon/FailChat, TEDxSoma.  You can see some pictures here: http://imhello.posterous.com/ .<p>Eventually, we got so many requests that we couldn’t go to all the events anymore.  It was too much for us to handle.  That’s when it finally hit us right on the forehead. This is what it’s like to build a product someone wants.  Event organizers wanted to use our system.  They’ll email you, call you, beg you, and tell their friends about you.<p>Since we were too overbooked, we decided to charge and up our product.  We added EventBrite integration, customization, and polished it up a little.  For every event, we would make around $50-$300 dollars (depending on the size and labor).<p>Soon, this little name badge printing software  was now able to support me and my partner’s living expenses.  And in the end, we sold the product to a small company.  Although it was not an amazing multi-million dollar acquisition, it was an acquisition that gave us enough money to start another company.<p>The lesson we learned is that something so tiny as a “name badge printing machine” may seem silly and pointless at first, but it led to opportunities you can’t first predict.  In our case, it fed us and turned into a small acquisition.  We made lots of friends and great people while we were attending these events.  Even our $10 Logitech keyboard was touched by many great CEOs and celebrities who came through us to get their name badges.  We got completely free promotion and direct advertising.<p>I think that every startup has opportunities where they can be creative.  Every startup can build something on the side  and attach it to their product somehow.  My advice is that if you find something “cool”, even if it’s small or trivial at first, take it for a spin before dropping it in the trash can.  It might just spin into something that can help in the future.<p>After selling the name badge printing software, we decided to go back and pivot on our initial mobile app.  Our new company is called View.  View is a mobile app that “tells you what you need to know, wherever you are.”  We’re really excited about this app because it’s very useful to our daily life.<p>We’re about to launch beta very soon. If you’d like to try it, go to http://view.io<p>Make sure you click the link above instead of typing it through the browser, so we can know you were referred from Hacker News and can give priority access.<p>Thanks for reading my story!
Felix<p>P.S. View is not in the App Store yet, but if you’d like to try the iPhone app as a beta tester, shoot me an email and tell me your city/state in the subject line: felix@view.io.  We only have a limited number of invitations left, so I can’t guarantee that everyone can try it.
======
SwellJoe
I reached the end of this story and thought, "These guys have not fully
learned the lesson of product failure. Nor have they learned to recognize
product success."

You made a product no one wanted, and in order to market it, you stumbled onto
a product that _lots_ of people wanted in a market where billions of dollars
are spent each year (we spend about 10 grand a year on conferences, and we're
a _tiny_ company with a tiny marketing budget). You've now ditched the product
people wanted, presumably selling it for a pittance, and went right back to a
similar mobile app to the one you couldn't convince anyone to use, despite
excellent marketing savvy.

It sounds like you guys are a great team, and I bet you'll make many great
products in the years to come. I hope you'll also figure out that when the
market speaks that loudly, it's a good idea to listen. I had the same problem
for many years; it took me three years, from the time we first wrote the code,
to realize that Virtualmin could be a great business.

~~~
alttab
I think a distinction between your argument and the OP's motivation is that it
isn't money he wants - its to work on something he loves doing.

It may have started with a mobile app, and he found some tangential success
with printing name badges at conferences. But nowhere in your response
addresses that maybe the OP didn't want to print name badges for a living. He
sold his company which he wasn't truly passionate about which enabled him to
do something he was passionate about. Sounds like a success story to me.

Not everyone's motivations are the same, and when that's the case we end up
with criticisms that aren't focused on the essence of what is being told.

~~~
mkramlich
You're both right. But SwellJoe's argument was basically, "A hundred thousand
dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? Ten million dollars!" The OP was
lucky enough to find a vein of gold underground, mined like 5% of it, then
stopped so they could go open a restaurant. They could've mined out the rest
of that vein and with the extra cash started ten restuarants and bought a
yacht, etc.

That said it's always hard to criticize success. It's like these guys just did
a gymnastics routine and got a 9.5 and then we harp that they should have
gotten a 10, while we sit here gobbling popcorn from the couch. :)

~~~
mmcdan
I honestly don't think that was his argument. His argument was more like: "You
started off with a cool idea that no one wanted, accidentally found something
people were willing to beg for, then got rid of what people wanted to work
more on the cool idea."

It would have been just as valid to stick with the idea people begged for/made
money and add features that made you happy. Wouldn't it have been valuable to
test/market View to thousands of customers with the need they were trying to
solve?

~~~
SwellJoe
I think his...oh, wait...I think _my_ argument isn't really any of that
(though they're interesting thought exercises).

I haven't suggested they should have stuck with label printing _or_ that they
should have sold it and started something new; my advice applies no matter
what path they chose. I suggested that I don't think they learned the lessons
that the market was willing to teach them.

In my wizened old age, I think back on similar situations in my own life,
where I missed the signs and missed opportunities that would have had very low
costs and very high pay outs. This is one of them for this team.

Since everyone wants me to have actually made recommendations for what they
should have done (rather than what lessons they should have learned, which is
all I covered to start with):

1\. When you have a business that takes off on a run like this, and you know
you're going to cash out and run; raise your prices. Raise them a _lot_.
Double them. If volume doesn't drop, double them again. Rinse and repeat until
you have found the point at which customers stop coming to you. Conferences
are huge cash cows. They have money; if you solve one of their problems in a
cool, social, way, they will pay for it. So, OP should have started charging
earlier and more (a lot more).

2\. Learn from failure. It sounds to me like they're back on the same sort of
project as the one they couldn't convince people to like to start with. If
they're passionate about social mobile apps, that's fine. But, you have to be
willing to listen when the market says "We do not want this."

And, let's add a bonus third point:

3\. Leverage past successes to enable future successes. As you note, it sounds
like View could have been launched as a cool feature of the label business,
getting it into the hands of all of those CEOs and investors that passed
through their system. It started as a marketing ploy, and it would have been
an effective one for the new product...I don't know that it makes the new
product any more awesome or wanted by people, but it is still a valid avenue
for marketing the product to thought leaders.

------
wccrawford
The exaggerations in titles are really starting to bother me.

Yes, you started with 300 lines of code... But then you modified it several
times for different conferences, and enhanced it a lot when you really become
popular. Only after that did you sell it.

~~~
zbowling
The actual number lines actually hovered around that until we sold. It was
fork soup because we hardcoded everything for each event (I love git so much
for making that so easy). For every event, we always seen it as just one more
event for promotion so we didn't want to make everything configurable. Simple
and easy to test basically.

Towards the very end we rewrote everything, made it configurable, integrated
all past features, and made a UI designer for designing labels (instead of
hardcoding the layouts) and then we sold.

~~~
axod
Never has the measure of 'lines of code' been less relevant to anything
though.

~~~
Swannie
Yup, every fork = +300 LOC! :P

------
dmor
As one of the early event organizers to use imhello just want to say we love
you guys, and still want to have you back -- until I read this I thought you'd
fallen off the face of the Earth. You guys helped us with badges at out City
Hall event (where Tim O'Reilly spoke) and also with an event at Twilio HQ. I'm
really happy to hear you're back, and my one piece of advice is that once you
have that initial traction and buzz don't let it die.

As an event organizer, I felt like you guys were doing for free what I
normally had to pay someone to do - manning the front door. It was very
valuable, having you there and putting your logo on our badges felt like 100%
win-win. Good luck with view.io

~~~
ultrasaurus
So was their success mostly based on the non-scalable aspect? (namely that
organizers were happy to get an excited person to work the door for free)

Or is there a hidden scalable app in there for sending out people to do
conference name tags in exchange for advertising in front of certain
audiences?

------
ck2
Wait, those were simple black-and-white "HELLO MY NAME IS" badges printed on a
mailing label?

Event organizers paid how much for this?

At first I though maybe this was the 1990's but then I read netbooks.

Very confused. How dumb/lazy/cheap are conference organizers?

~~~
jarin
Very. Well, actually I would say that they're extraordinarily busy and would
rather just throw money at people to do things so they don't have to worry
about it.

Having set up wifi networks for big conferences (under contract) and written
conference software (under contract), I can say that literally everything is a
pain point for them.

------
bjonathan
"Make sure you click the link above instead of typing it through the browser,
so we can know you were referred from Hacker News and can give priority
access." (even if I think this point is bullshit): There is a clickable link
to View : <http://view.io>

------
jbscpa
Great work.

I keep remembering that in my little community a business that just sold for
>$100 million started out making steak fingers and selling them to
restaurants.

Steak fingers.

$100 million.

nothing is impossible.

~~~
keeptrying
Whats the name of this business?

~~~
jbscpa
[http://enidnews.com/localnews/x231066283/Advance-Pierre-
Food...](http://enidnews.com/localnews/x231066283/Advance-Pierre-Foods-
officially-close-on-merger-of-Enid-Ohio-companies)

------
cpr
You probably ought to plan on Apple stealing your thunder with iOS 5.0, which
purportedly includes <http://siri.com/>, a voice-activated app that appears to
cover what you're doing exactly.

------
6ren
This is the best longform copywriting I have ever seen! I'm happy to be
advertised to in this way. I especially like the "priority access" part.

The View app does look amazing - seems to basically be local
advertising/information _signage_ on your phone, as Philip K Dick
predicted/feared, but (hopefully) more useful than typical ads (can you find
ways to keep it that way?)

Suggestions: the example messages are _great_ , but show them a little longer,
maybe proportional to their length (I couldn't quite read some of them); and
maybe somehow make your tag more concrete and specific (maybe 'what you need
to know _about_ where you are' - danger signs, like your "tow zone" one sum it
up). Maybe something about "signs"?

~~~
felixchan
thanks for the suggestions :)

------
borski
After signup, there is a syntax issue:

    
    
      To try our initial beta on Feb 31, invite 2 friends that live nearby:
    

Feb. 31 doesn't exist. :)

Also, the watermarks don't show up in Firefox; I almost assumed I needed to
know the "secret codes" to get an invite.

~~~
MichaelGG
"Feb. 31 doesn't exist."

Maybe they are using MySQL? <http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html#1_14>

~~~
soulclap
One of my previous jobs was coding software for banks that handles financial
transactions. And I am not entirely sure any more if it was Feb 30th or 31st
but one day the product manager came to my office and asked me to change the
validation routine in the library that handles the date-related calculations
and consider Feb 31st as a valid date.

Can't exactly remember what it was about but I think some banks or other
banking applications are acting like there is a 31st or 30th February for some
kind of calculation. (Rather off-topic but if I ever 'share' this with the
whole world, it seemed like now is the time!)

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
When I wrote billing systems for telecoms, Feb 31st was a valid date... after
a fashion. Billing cycles were stored as a cycle period "monthly",
"quarterly", etc, with a "bill day" offset which was a number 1-31. If your
"bill day" was the 31st then in February you would be billed on the last day
of the month along with the customers with bill days 28-30. It was rare to do
actual time calculations treating the bill day as an actual date, but not
considered particularly strange.

And there you have it, at least for one small corner of the software world.

------
tlack
Did you not see enough money in the event market to continue trying to build
products in that space? View.io seems to be a bit of a departure from that.

~~~
cpeterso
Plus I could easily imagine a View.io-like app directed to event planners and
attendees that leverages the badge printing service: an event-specific "mobile
app that 'tells you what you need to know, wherever you are' could be useful
for people networking (like their original business plan), visitors new to the
conference city, or promotions of related events/services.

When you have to turn away interested, paying customers, it's time to increase
your rates and leverage that relationship to sell them more products and
services.

~~~
isurge
There are quite a few of these already. The biggest difference(and most
useful) is the level of integration between the event management and
registration software and the app.

------
gcheong
I thought most badges are simply printed from the event registration data and
I would have certainly expected the events you listed to have had badges
already upon arrival, so I'm curious as to why they didn't have the badges
printed already. But it's certainly a great story of how something they
developed in order to promote what they thought was their main product ended
up becoming the main product.

~~~
neurotech1
At TC Disrupt 2010, a very organized and well resourced event, I personally
printed dozens of badges that didn't get printed from event pre-registration.

~~~
bdclimber14
I was there doing the same. Amazed me. Sean is my name if we've met.

------
YooLi
For the people wanting to know what the badge-printing setup looked like, I
think these pictures show it:

<http://imhello.posterous.com/>

~~~
MortenK
Love the hacker at pic 6 of 13

------
corin_
FYI, the signup form on view.io doesn't show the placeholder text in Firefox,
I had to view source to see what it was meant to display. Fine on Chrome.

------
chipocabra
What boggles my mind is that tech events in San Francisco don't print name
badge automatically on admission. 0_0

I live in South Africa and pretty much any trade show or event I have gone to
in the last 4 years have had name badges printed at the door on admission. Or
am I missing something here?

------
ujeezy
Is yours the product used at SHDHs? I (and others) were very impressed with it
:)

~~~
seiji
Nope: <https://github.com/novas0x2a/devhouse>

~~~
zbowling
wow. neat! could of been useful. The version we used was C#.. First was a WPF
app and the second as Silverlight app. The rewrite was a web version with a
WPF frontend client.

~~~
jf
We would have loved for you to use our code too!

------
Vivtek
What a great story! "This is what it's like to build a product someone wants."

------
rexf
From the landing page, view.io sounds like an useful product. As someone new
to NYC, I'm always looking for relevant upcoming events. In a city like NYC,
there _has_ to be events of interest, but they are hard to find. This sounds
like what view.io addresses.

That said, this trend with spamming friends to receive an invite (thanks to
UseHipster, LaunchRock, etc) is frustrating. Yes, it may increase your launch
e-mail list, but it's an extra step that deters certain users (I gave up after
being told to tell x friends to sign up).

~~~
zacharycohn
It may deter you, but for every person it doesn't deter they get 5 more people
to sign up.

------
baddox
Rural Missouri, eh? That's where I've been my whole life, and I too have
always wanted to move to San Francisco or a similar population center. Cool
that you're pulling it off.

------
kevinelliott
The story was fascinating. What is most interesting to me is that several
people here on HN are dumbfounded by how such a simple service was in such
demand. That seems to be the trend these days: do something simple, that
everyone needs, and you can be a success. Complicated ideas don't seem to fair
well (there is a lot of resistance to it anyway). If people need to try and
figure out what you're offering, you've already lost most people.

Looking forward to the release of View!

------
emit_time_n3rgy
Thanks4sharing. In NYC's Google office(s), when you walk-up to the front desk
there's a system to enter your name (or anything for that matter) and it
prints out a sticker-badge. And I've used a scale programmed to spit out
sticker labels with prices depending on the weight of the product code
entered. Perhaps an add-on to the event badges would be color coding them
based on some other attribute voluntarily entered into the system (not weight
:)

------
imperialdrive
I'm surprised some people are giving you a hard time in the comments section.
I found great value in reading your story. Thank you for sharing. Peace.

------
guinaps
This makes me feel even more confident about my recent decision of ditching
bloated and too ambitious "next big thing" ideas in favor of small, practical
ideas that help people's lives somehow. And the latter ones are much easier to
iterate through than the former, especially when you convince yourself that
many of your "silly" small ideas may actually be pretty interesting if well
executed.

Thanks for sharing your story!

~~~
felixchan
Thanks, glad the story was helpful :)

------
isurge
Over the last ten+ years we have built a registration system very similar to
cevent. Cevent got 50 million in funding and well it's just hard to compete
with that. We plan on open sourcing the majority of the system soon(we started
testing the installer yesterday - failed badly on godaddy). What I picked up
from this article was that you had 'buzz' any ideas on how I can create buzz
for this project?

------
solarix
Very interesting story! Thanks for sharing.

------
agnesberthelot
I think this is an amazing story. You guys are flexible and ready to change.
You saw a new opportunity and you grabbed it and it worked out great. I think
in the whole process, you gained something that are more valuable than money
... the experience and the connection. Great job ... and thanks for sharing.

------
alain94040
Agreed. Printing name badges for a meetup (like the co-founders meetup for
instance - 150 people) is actually 50% of the whole effort of putting such an
event together. What a pain! I can see why event organizers would call you so
you solved their headache!

------
mapster
You are on the right track. Badges was not your thing. Coding great apps is.
So glad you are back on track, not giving up. Maybe this time around build a
badge app - in other words, find a need and build great software to address
it. And ask to be paid :)

~~~
felixchan
Thanks for the encouragement, appreciate it.

------
julianz
Interesting. I typed in my local equivalent of a zip code (four digits
beginning with a zero) and it accepted it. So either you guys are planning on
going global right away, or your validation's not all that flash?

------
mdink
Why did you sell? Besides the offer, were you sick of the business?

------
mhartl
_Make sure you click the link above instead of typing it through the browser,
so we can know you were referred from Hacker News and can give priority
access._

URLs in submissions aren't linked.

------
jdabney
I just signed up for the beta and it told me that I can use it on February
31st if I sign up two friends. I think someone should take a look at how the
dates are being calculated.

------
endlessvoid94
Great story. re: view.io, I closed my registration window, so I lost the link
to send to my friends. Is there no way to get it back?

~~~
felixchan
Hi there, send me an email and I can get you the invite code back:
felix@view.io. Thanks!

------
eaxitect
Fascinating, but I've added up points on the fact that, you threw away a
proven product and fell on an already dead-end project?

------
tzm
Wait... rural Missouri? I'm originally from Joplin (SW Mo). Glad to see you
made the jump.

~~~
felixchan
I'm from the rural areas of St. Louis. Yep, made the jump, hanging there, and
loving it!

~~~
dfnkt
I'm from rural Missouri as well, about 3 hours away from St Louis though.

------
moioci
I'd really like to see a link to a privacy policy before entering my email and
ZIP code.

------
aforty
I love stories like these! Thanks for sharing!

------
bayshorecove
wow. very inspiring. This proves how life really make its turns huh? :) Great
job guys, and the app looks cool.

------
Noojie
Wow, awesome story! Good luck with view!

------
suyash
How much was the deal for? Great job

------
mapster
oh, I thought by the title maybe Tim Ferris was suckering me in for more
baloney.

------
rblion
Inspiring resolve. great story

------
roodboi
nice work, gents.

------
pitdesi
Question: how do we "click the above link?" It shows up as text for me, which
I cut and pasted into the address bar (you won't know I came from HN) Am I
missing something?

~~~
felixchan
oh shoot--hmm , HN doesn't allow links from the page. So you're going to have
to paste it in the bar or if the link works, click this: <http://view.io>

------
fleitz
Working link: <http://view.io>

------
zeynel1
So what is the name of the company who bought the label business?

------
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