
Appointment Reminder at 6 Months - revorad
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/04/15/appointment-reminder-update/
======
6ren
OK, so I gave AppSumo my email because I trust patio, and they said they
aren't spammers. Now they've sent me a welcome email, saying in part:

> We ONLY email you a few times a month about our exclusive deals for the best
> web applications.

There is no opt-out link. Going to my account on their website, there is no
way delete my account or unsubscribe. So here's what's going to happen: they
will email me. I will curse their name, mark it as spam (because that's what
it is), and gmail will learn that they are spammers. But I'm scratching my
head: why would they do such a thing? _EDIT_ I've now marked their welcome
message as spam, so hopefully that will save me the trouble of seeing their
emails in future.

In addition, I can't access the video - it says something about share/tweet,
but the buttons don't appear for me. I'm not even interested in doing this
thing - just interested in learning what the basic idea is, especially since
it's patio's.

Overall, I do not rate this experience highly. :/

~~~
davidw
> In addition, I can't access the video - it says something about share/tweet

Yeah, you have to spam your friends with it in order to get the video.

~~~
thekevan
You have to share it to get it for free. You are free to purchase it privately
after today.

~~~
davidw
Perhaps it's splitting hairs, but "have to" and "free" could be construed as
being at odds with one another, in some contexts.

All things considered, it's not that high a price to pay, but it does feel
like a bit of a bait and switch.

~~~
davidw
Further note: now it won't let me go back in and watch it again, it's asking
for money. Oh well, I had already started downloading it, so I'll just do
that.

------
acangiano
> Things looked much better in the morning. Surprisingly to me, I only lost
> two customers in the debacle, and one of them resubscribed after seeing how
> I handled it.

The occasional screw up is not the issue in most cases. It's how you deal with
it that matters. In my experience, a screw up can even have a net positive
effect if your response is so great that it induces your customer in a state
of admiration and renewed respect for your company.

~~~
gommm
Apologizing and behaving well in case of screw ups is surprisingly effective,
people are so used to dealing companies who try to hide their mistakes under
the rug, that it feels like a breath of fresh air to them.

It's the first and most valuable lesson I've discovered as a consultant. That
and admitting you don't know when you don't know something (it's a amazing the
number of people who'll bullshit an answer instead of just saying: "Sorry, I
don't know, I'll get back to you on that")...

------
tomjen3
I was really happy that you were so open about the revenue you got from
bingocardcreator, and while I totally respect your decision to not do so this
time, can I ask why?

Rereading your old blog posts proved to me that a lonely programmer could
build a business as a side project which was incredibly motivating at the
time.

~~~
patio11
I am a very chatty person by nature, but people can pay me to shut up.
Hypothetically imagine that white label deal had gone through. It would have
been NDAed as regards number of accounts, because that is reasonably
competitively sensitive for them. How useful is it, to anyone, for me to say
"AR just hit $1k. Whee!" when there is, in fact, an off-books client paying a
sizable multiple of that that I couldn't tell you about?

It is highly likely I will be unable to offer BCC-level transparency for AR,
for reasons like this. I'll try to say what I can, but you can _totally_ buy
my weak attachment to transparency with a five figure check.

------
tom_b
I'm particularly interested in learning more about how HN'ers with side
businesses have hacked the "High Touch Sales Processes" Patrick mentions.

I have some thoughts for a B2B project this year but worry that I vastly
underestimate the amount face-to-face selling that will be required to make it
viable. Any tips?

~~~
michaelbuckbee
You might want to consider a "department" strategy.

Structure your service as something that an individual department of a larger
company can get hold of without support from IT, approval from on high, or a
mess of purchase orders.

37Signals has talked about this in the past, a couple people within a big
company start using Basecamp for some one off thing they're working on, then a
few more people get added to the project so they get the departmental credit
card (used for buying office supplies) and sign up. A few months down the line
everyone in the group is using the service.

------
patio11
Feel free to ask questions about AR or the Appsumo deal if you want.

~~~
follower
No one's ever accused me of being a spendthrift--so take this with a grain of
salt--but I was disappointed in the "deal" actually.

First step (after getting past the gateway errors): (1) Encounter request for
email address with a "we don't spam" reassurance.

(2) "Sure you don't"--let's use mailinator. Receive the email, "hmmm, this
description sure meets my definition for spam"--I don't want to hear about
exclusive deals, I want to watch Patrick's advice:

"We ONLY email you a few times a month about our exclusive deals for the best
web applications."

(3) See video on the page, start it playing, wait for it to buffer, scroll
down--"hmmm, what's this about Twitter/FB"?

(4) Watch video (which for me, at least, had major audio sync issues).

(5) Realise the video isn't _the_ video but just an advertisement for the
actual video.

(6) Realise I'm being expected to spam my friends/colleagues in order to save
$99.

(7) As I value my social network at more than $99 and get annoyed whenever I
get spammed by others, close the open window.

(8) Write this comment.

Now, I readily admit, "you" (for whoever is in the financial win/lose
situation here) may be happy to not get my Tweet in exchange for content
but...

With the business of software video Patrick was in, I quite happily tweeted
about it and the content of my tweet got retweeted again by someone much more
socially connected than I. I did this because I thought it was good content,
that people would benefit from watching and because I like your work.

I happen to think that assuming the quality of this video was at least at the
level of that presentation there would've been many voluntary tweets about the
opportunity to watch it for free.

But a "tweet for deal" quid pro quo leaves a poor taste for me.

At the least if I was told up front "Hey, if you Tweet/FB this today, then
you'll get it for free. Otherwise, you can get access for $99" then I'd know
the deal wasn't for me.

FWIW. :)

~~~
patio11
You're entitled to your opinion.

People often ask me when I'm going to write an ebook for startups. I tell them
never. They ask me why, when HN would make such great customers. When I think
of great customers, I think "Pays five figure invoices on time and in full",
not "Dude, show me the stuff and then maybe, if I like it, I might tweet about
it."

That is not specifically aimed at you: I've been humming variants of the same
tune for years.

~~~
davidw
This is interesting. I was going back and forth with Amy Hoy on twitter the
other day about the trend (maybe I'm seeing one where there isn't) of doing a
successful product or two and then turning around and "selling how you did
it", which she's doing with a course, Rob Walling is doing with his
micropreneur academy, and 37signals does it with their books.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that (indeed, I'm very happy with
Rob's book and recommend it to people), but I'm also somehow glad to hear that
you see more money and prospects in products than turning around and selling
to people who want to emulate your success.

~~~
patio11
I think those are a couple different trajectories there. 37Signals/FogCreek
both have modestly successful sidelines attached to massively successful
software businesses. DHH is not going home at night thinking "Bwahaha, forget
Basecamp, another book and I'll have to rent Lichtenstein to park my fleet of
sports cars." Amy & Thomas have gone from consulting to info products to SaaS
(concurrent with info products/training) and I will eat my hat if the SaaS
doesn't eventually swallow the rest of their business because the economics of
it are just so freaking compelling. I don't have a good guesstimate of Rob's
numbers.

For my part, the trajectory was different: modestly successful product (and
ancillary blogging/community participation) lead to lucrative consulting
opportunities and gave me enough runway to do a SaaS which will probably
eventually swallow any availability for consulting (like it did for 37Signals,
FogCreek, etc).

~~~
davidw
Yeah, it's not a knock on what they're doing at all, just a bit of correlation
that I wondered about.

------
aquark
Thank you for sharing such an honest look at how things are going.

I'm have a side project that deals with organizing events, and as such also
has some awkward failure modes. Many customers leave preparations until the
last minute, and so when issues occur they are very time sensitive.

What might have been a 'Hey this doesn't work right' email a couple of weeks
beforehand becomes a much more urgent phone call the day of.

The problem is the potential loss and/or stress to the customer huge compared
to what they are paying for the service. 24/7 phone support isn't viable on a
$50 product.

Other than trying very hard to ensure there aren't any issues I don't have a
good solution to this yet!

I'd be interested in hear what sort of processes/automated testing do you have
in place to try and minimize the risk, particularly in dealing with an
external API like Twilio.

------
Sukotto
Thanks for posting this update on how things are going with AR.

    
    
      my second software business, Appointment Reminder.  
      I can’t be as open with it as I am with Bingo Card 
      Creator (you can literally see my sales stats for 
      that one)
    

Why not? Do you have contractual obligations (with Twillo for example) that
stops you from sharing that? Some lingering NDA or non-compete with one of
former day jobs?

I realize that you don't owe us anything and that we're lucky to have seen as
much of your businesses as you've already shared. I'm just curious at your use
of "I can't" as opposed to "I choose to keep that part private"

~~~
ximeng
Already asked below

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450521>

------
famoreira
I'm interested in seeing the full video but after tweeting I got redirected to
the same page (with the intro video).

Anyone else had problems?

------
random42
@Patio11, What changes in the design/architecture of AR did you make/ plan to
make to avoid such thing happening in future?

~~~
patio11
I am working on a very in depth guide to Twilio development, which covers
this. Short version: unborked division of responsibilities between web app,
cron jobs, and queues. I now check for validity prior to execution in addition
to before insertion. I also have a few new failsafes, including automatic rate
limiting that would have stopped the DOS if it were possible to schedule it
now.

------
noahkagan
If anyone has trouble accessing the video email me Noah@AppSumo and I'll take
care of you.

------
ww520
Patrick has always been a source of inspiration for me, since the days of BOS.
He has been so open in providing insightful info and data. Keep up with the
great work!

------
petewailes
Admittedly, it's a hard question to handle, as these events are invariably by
definition, out of context problems that you probably can't conceive, but...

What processes/procedures have you put in place as a result of this to ensure
that next time it happens (because with the best will in the world, things run
more smoothly?

~~~
patio11
See other post with regards to technical measures. With regards to process, I
got (yet another) lesson in why improvising during disaster recovery is a bad
idea. I should have - I'm about to sound like a salaryman - followed the
effing checklist that I wrote when I was awake and unhurried instead of
compounding the problem by trying to mitigate it while stressed and under
severe time pressure. This would have resulted in the crash having eaten 15
reminders, which would have resulted i probably no missed appointments (system
fubared, no humans affected) and me comping one customer a week's service.
Instead, I managed to upgrade it from severity: mild to severity: apocalyptic.

------
MortenK
Any idea when / if you will be able to offer the service to countries other
than US and Canada?

~~~
patio11
I'm blocking on Twilio to offer that. They have not publicly announced
timelines for when their first class service will be available where. I would
love to support the major markets where economically practical to do so.

------
gadders
Appointment reminder looks like a pretty cool service. I could definitely see
something like this working in the UK for small businesses.

Just another thought that occurred to me - could you also use this for DR/call
tree type notifications? Just a thought.

------
gopi
I am sorry, maybe you explained this in a previous post - Why do you have a
dayjob?

~~~
patio11
This is my day job. (I make most of my money from bingo cards, supplemented
with the odd consulting gig. That underwrites development on AR and all my
other assorted wasting time on the Internet activities.)

Prior to April 2010, I worked at a Japanese megacorp. There were a few reasons
for that. A sample: I owed my bosses for sticking their necks out for me, it
makes visa issues easier (next renewal going to be... interesting), I lacked
confidence that I could do this full-time prior to having part-timed it to the
point where it was already successful, etc.

~~~
statictype
I take it your current visa is an employment visa?

In which case, I assume, strictly speaking, you're not supposed to run your
own business on it?

Or is there a single type of visa that covers employment and business?

~~~
patio11
There are a couple of options for that: spousal visas and permanent residence
would be unrestricted.

I'm on an engineering status of residence (what Americans would call a visa).
In a few months I get to do a song and dance describing why it is in Japan's
interest that the examining clerk find that careful application of the
relevant regulations requires that my status of residence be renewed. There's
a plan B and C, obviously, but it isn't costing me sleep at night.

------
kongqiu
Loved the content creation video, Patrick. Showing how simple yet powerful
this can be was was just the shot in the arm/kick in the @rse I needed. Thank
you for sharing!

