
Building a startup in public: from first line of code to frontpage of Reddit - dwynings
https://levels.io/hoodmaps/
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dopeboy
I love the "don't give a F let me broadcast all of it" mentality here. This is
amazing. Starting a project much less a business has a lot of ups and downs.
Putting a camera on top of you for all of it probably works wonders on morale.

~~~
swiley
I went through a 2 year period where I put every one of my experiments and
side projects on github and tried to update at least one every other day or
so.

Knowing that other people could see when I stopped motivated me a lot. The
whole thing made me a better programmer too.

~~~
dopeboy
That's really interesting. Can you expound on this a little more? I've never
done it but am thinking about it so that's why I ask.

Were you self conscious? How'd it make you a better programmer? Did you talk
out what you were doing?

~~~
swiley
Yes I was self conscious, that's what encouraged me to keep fixing things so
people would see me working rather than slacking off (it's similar to the IM
client busy/away indicator at work.)

It made me a better programmer simply because I was doing it more, so I kept
encountering problems and having to solve them. I learned why more experienced
programmers do things and don't do things, I got better at using GDB and
started using valgrind etc.

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arnioxux
I would be so paranoid of leaking information if I had to do twitch live
coding. For example how do you handle copying and pasting api secrets? Or just
pure privacy stuff like not showing other domains you own in namecheap (which
he doesn't seem to care about in: [https://youtu.be/Tq1uoC-
lxy8?t=528](https://youtu.be/Tq1uoC-lxy8?t=528))

~~~
pieterhg
I'm the writer of the post and yes I did expose my Google API keys actually! I
didn't notice until they told me on Twitch chat. Had to revoke them quickly :0

The worst that could happen is that people see I watch porn. But everyone
does, I wouldn't be that embarassed. Slightly blushing though.

I don't have much sensitive data on my laptop. I mean passwords are blocked
off. So what can people see?

OBS (the streaming app) does let you limit the window to stream. I did use
Incognito for most of the streams. I did also make a separate Twitch login on
my OSX but it was such a pain to re-login to stream that I never used it.

There's definitely a risk here but yeah it's a trade off.

~~~
metafunctor
Funny, I'd say my Google API keys are a way, way, way bigger secret than the
fact that I sometimes watch porn. Most people do, so it's not a big surprise
that I might. I wouldn't much care if people saw me naked. It's just my flesh.
Everyone has a body. It's easy to find pictures of naked bodies, and pictures
of mine probably wouldn't be very interesting. But my API keys, they are
unique and important.

That said, for random private-ish accounts I use Chrome user profiles. Safari
does not have them.

Are you American?

~~~
programLyrique
According to the blog post, he is from Amsterdam.

~~~
pieterhg
Yes, I'm Dutch. But yes, I can't say I'm much embarrassed about much anymore.
Being transparent on the internet helps with that :)

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dirtyaura
Gotta love your attitude: live coding, guerilla marketing, how you dealt with
4chan spammers, shipping quickly... Excellent write-up.

Ads seems the most natural business model if you get it big enough. hotels,
flights, car rental, all have pretty ok revenue potential through affiliate
deals.

However, before you get to that scale, try out selling it as a widget (or
something like that, or a spin off product based on the crowd sourced data) to
tourist offices of cities themselves. It wouldn't be huge business but I think
with right pricing, some customization and support work for integration etc,
you could make it 10-50k per deal and scale the workload pretty easily.

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orthoganol
I remember when this guy was the moderator of the very large, r/digitalnomads,
where his digital nomad products were copiously promoted. Most people didn't
know this (I didn't), until I guess an inevitable backlash one day. I can only
tip my hat, he is a hustler (not a bad thing), and it's rare to see such
marketing acumen in a programmer.

~~~
dopeboy
The first thing that jumped out at me when I was reading this was: "wow, this
guy is devoting as much if not more energy to marketing the product as he is
to building it"

Definitely a lesson a lot of the HN crowd (myself included) could take.

~~~
orthoganol
I had to lookup the name because I just remember his "Go Fucking Do It", which
is one of the more ridiculous, low-effort, ingenious ways of making money from
foolish first worlders enticed by a pretty landing page. "Set a goal, stake
your money to it, and if you fail, you give your money to me; me, not a
charity, and all of it to me, so you will have higher 'incentive' to succeed".
The way it was spun as a "smart, incentivized way to accomplish your goals"
was absurd, but I suppose enviable by other standards.

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dvt
Pretty cool. Saw this when it was trending on reddit. It probably fits a
similar niche as Urban Dictionary (which makes ~$50k a day IIRC). It's going
to be interesting to see if and how Hoodmaps ends up being monetized.

~~~
jackgolding
Any write ups about Urban Dicitionary's $$$?

