

How I built a business in a weekend (Or, the benefits of shared workspaces) - arshadgc
http://arshadchowdhury.com/740-how-i-built-a-business-in-a-weekend/

======
bambax
> _Once at the meeting, you tell everyone attending to text the word “PTA” to
> 917-746-0007. You’ll immediately get their numbers_ and emails _added to
> your list at RollCallMe.com_

How do you do that? How do you get someone's email from a text she sent?

~~~
dpritchett
_After texting the codeword to the number, RollCallMe sends a polite text
asking for an email as well.

When I tested it the text was "Thanks! You can reach me at ##########. Could
you please reply with your email so we can add it to our list?"_

[http://arshadchowdhury.com/740-how-i-built-a-business-in-
a-w...](http://arshadchowdhury.com/740-how-i-built-a-business-in-a-
weekend/#comment-472359425)

------
aaronfalloon
You don't build a business in a weekend.

~~~
arshadgc
You're right in that it's not a profitable business yet. It's only a business
in that we offer a service and we charge for it. We definitely don't do that
profitably yet! We've built a minimum viable product that we'll use as a basis
to explore and define demand.

~~~
aaronfalloon
That's cool, what you've built in such a short time is great and I wouldn't
take away from the achievement... I'd just change the post title :-).

------
cmalpeli
I think you are all missing the point of the post. Merits of the business
aside - the point was about the benefits of working in a shared workspace; how
it fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange.

------
robfig
Is texting really easier for people than hand writing on a sheet of dead tree?
Kids these days..

Personally I would much prefer writing over texting a random number (with a
follow-up text for my email), but I guess an advantage is that it avoids
queues at the sign-in sheet.

~~~
debacle
Maybe the problem was with the example? One application I could see for this
is maybe being at a conference and entering into a drawing. Instead of filling
out a paper form or standing at a kiosk or having to go to a web page and type
in some auth code, you just have to send a single text message and you're
done.

I can see some applications, and knowing the cost of the administrative
portion of promotions, making it easier to be an expert at it definitely has
monetary value.

~~~
lazerwalker
I've been to many (tech-focused, admittedly) conferences that handle this
through RFID tags or simple barcodes embedded in the conference badges, the
advantage to that system being that attendees don't have to do anything more
complicated than hold up their badge to a badge-scanning attendant.

I feel like there's a fantastic use case for the parent's project; I'm not
quite sure what it is yet.

------
aes256
Perhaps I'm missing something really basic here, but if all the 'troops' have
to do is text a given codeword to a number, how do you get both their phone
number _and_ their email address?

Where are you getting the email addresses from?

~~~
austingulati
I tested it out and this is what it says:

"Thanks! You can reach me at [my number]. Could you please reply with your
email so we can add it to our list?"

~~~
robinjfisher
The marketing page really needs to be changed to make it clear that it doesn't
automatically gather email addresses.

I can see the benefits of the pitch that people only need to text the codeword
but you could presumably extend the service to offer greater parsing of
message content e.g. people can text the codeword, name and email and you
parse them out rather than ask people to reply again with their email address.

~~~
arshadgc
We started off asking people to send their email along with the code word but
that was really confusing. However, we only ask people for their emails once;
from then on RollCallMe remembers the email. - Arshad

------
dhimes
Very interesting project. It shows well the value of collaborators and having
people in one place. It's also a very well written piece. aes256
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3733968>) and robinjfisher
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3733913>) asked a key technical
question, so I'll give a little feedback on the linked page itself:

typo: _Dogpatch Labs by no means normal. It’s a small, tight community of tech
entrepreneurs who love to help eachother_

"eachother" should be two words

I doubt it: _Everything was done within 30 square feet_

A bit picky here, but you may as well get it right: 30 square feet is a tiny
area for a workspace: for example, a room (closet, really) measuring 5ft by
6ft would have an area of 30 square feet. I doubt that's what you meant. You
probably meant that everybody was within 30 ft of everybody else, or something
of this nature.

~~~
arshadgc
Thanks, Dhimes. I'll update the language to be more accurate. How
embarrassing! - Arshad

------
robinjfisher
Looks interesting.

I can certainly see the benefits for conference organisers. I also think it
might be popular for restaurants/bars who normally obtain business cards (to
add to mailing list) for entry into monthly prize draws.

How are you obtaining a person's email address from a text message?

------
paulhauggis
So you built your business entirely relying on third-party services. Not only
is this dangerous (if they change their rates one day, you will need to
scramble), but, your business has virtually no barrier to entry.

Now that you wrote an article on it, there will be other people that will
build a similar business in a weekend and compete with you.

~~~
Ecio78
_So you built your business entirely relying on third-party services. Not only
is this dangerous (if they change their rates one day, you will need to
scramble), but, your business has virtually no barrier to entry._

..as tons of other startups do, and actually the only external services they
use are Twilio and Stripe, others cited are just opensource
frameworks/technologies (RoR, Bootstrap).

~~~
paulhauggis
".as tons of other startups do, and actually the only external services they
use are Twilio and Stripe, others cited are just opensource
frameworks/technologies (RoR, Bootstrap)."

..and they are disposable. Most startups I see I know won't be around in 2
years.

~~~
Ecio78
_.and they are disposable. Most startups I see I know won't be around in 2
years._

they won't be around not because of the external services they've used but
because they wont find the right business model. It's like saying that every
ecommerce around will fail because they're using and external payment
processor like Paypal. Maybe some of them can fail because of a Paypal "horror
story" (account blocked etc..) but most of them will fail because they are not
profitable.

I partially agree with you that relying on external services could be a risk,
but in this case they've chosen services for some part that are not so easy to
implement internally, and for that they've picked two new but highly growing
services.

------
andrewljohnson
Nice hack, Arshad! I remember you when you were still a student selling naps
:)

~~~
arshadgc
Thanks, Andrew!

------
cheez
This is not a business yet.

