

My typical day running a startup - vaksel
http://blog.styleguidance.com/post/332896939/my-typical-day-running-a-startup

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mattwdelong
I don't mean to be hasty, but the background on that website almost gives me a
seizure. I would seriously consider changing it.

Am I the only one who had a hard time following text on this site?

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vaksel
Everything will be fixed in the redesign.

The goal of the original design was to just get something out there as quickly
as possible and to start building up the community/content. The sooner you
start, the sooner you finish.

You know the whole release early mantra.

This way there is no rush, and I can build something nice, since I now know
that the site is something people want to use.

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mseebach
> Everything will be fixed in the redesign.

Famous last words :)

Nice write-up, although in my eyes it has crash-and-burn written all over it,
esp. the eating part. Also, doesn't it get lonely?

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vaksel
hehe, yeah. Well the site is mostly built for SEO. So the traffic will keep
coming no matter how it looks.

To tell the truth I've always ate like that, since high school really. So it's
not really affecting me physically.

Doesn't get lonely part, I still talk to people through IM, twitter etc., and
get out on the weekends. + there is always HN.

Basically I just lose my weekday nights(compared to a regular job)

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wgj
Is this a Stack Exchange site, or just looks like one?

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vaksel
Yeah SE...with about 4000 lines of css, javascript and jquery

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mattwdelong
4000 lines?

I am curious as to what is different from the default SE install? What
functionality did you add?

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mattwdelong
It seems like it would almost be easier to clone the functionality of SE and
make additions to it NOT using javascript. To me, it seems like that much JS
would be a bitch to maintain, no?

Sorry, I couldn't reply to the comment below. Guess PG doesn't want threads to
continue off the page. ^^

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vaksel
I actually had the whole niche Q&A idea before(back when I heard about SO
launching), and based on my calculations it'd take me 1-1.5 years to build
something like SE on my own. Which just didn't make sense.

Yes it's easy to clone SE, there are like a dozen other solutions. But the
reason I like SE, is because it's a turn key solution. I don't have to worry
about servers or security. These have always been my achilles heel, and this
way someone else who actually knows what they are doing, can take care of
that.

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pclark
I did not associate your comments with that of a founder of a fashion startup

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vaksel
hehe I know, it kinda happened randomly.

Was originally doing a car related site, but it just didn't work out.

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thinkbohemian
@vaksel - those are some pretty good numbers. Do you have tips for getting
noticed? There's a good number of sites related to fashion, so to
differentiate yourself is quite a feat!

~~~
vaksel
It's basically all SEO and promotions.

Promotions are there to improve the SEO.

My promotion budget is $200/week. It's a permanent giveaway, I figure $10K a
year is a small price to pay to get hundreds of people to help grow the site.

In my promotions I focus on 3 things: 1) building traffic - points for
twittering/facebooking 2) link building - points for blogging about the site
3) building content - points for asking/answering questions.

#1 - gets new people interested in promotions to come participate, and
probably a few fashion people as well

#2 - gets new links to the site, which increases our inbound links, which gets
us better page rank, which gets us better search engine rankings

#3 - creates new content, which can then be found through Google

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thinkbohemian
Wow, Try cutting back a little.

The term "sleeping on it" didn't just come from no where. Most of my
breakthrough ideas come when i'm out with friends or doing something else. In
"Blink" Malcom Gladwell argues our subconscious is way better at solving
problems than our conscious.

~~~
vaksel
The thing is, it's like different parts of your brain working. Most of my day
activities, is just repetition, I just run through most of it on auto-pilot at
this point.

At night on the other hand, it's more thinking work.

So it's two different parts of your brain working.

I know what you mean about ideas. For that I just use mixergy. I hate to sound
like a fanboy, but listening to those interviews(and asking questions) is a
great way to stimulate the mind for me. A guest will say something
interesting, and then I go see if I can adapt that concept into my own site.

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fjabre
Time to get some help! No one should have to maintain that for very long.

~~~
vaksel
You always have to sacrifice early on. So I've pretty much written off this
first year completely.(at least Monday-Friday part)

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nolman22
life's too short dude, get a girlfriend and enjoy life a little bit.

~~~
vaksel
I'm actually trying to do both at the moment(try to go out at least once a
week). Seems to work ok so far.

The thing is that I'm prepared to make sacrifices to get what I want. To me
right now building a successful startup is more important than women.

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milkshakes
could you define "work" a bit more? i'd like it broken down into more fine
grained parts, as i'm curious what types of work you're doing at what time.

~~~
vaksel
More or less all the time I focus on asking good questions(those with keywords
that hit decent traffic #s and have little competition in the long tail), I
also make sure that any organic question gets answered within 10 minutes.

The others are more or less period wise...i.e. every 15 minutes check email,
twitter, facebook.

I also focus on SEO, which involves emailing smaller bloggers to see if
they'll write a quick blurb with a link. I try to get at least 3 links a day.

For the night coding period, it's mostly CSS, javascript and jquery.

Basically the goal right now is to build up traffic to a point where I can
show to the more mainstream Fashion related sites/magazines, that we have
decent traffic, in order to get coverage.

~~~
minouye
Since you seem to be a "dude", who are you relying on for domain/industry
knowledge?

Curious about this one since I'm also working on a fashion related project.

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vaksel
I started the site by hitting the female subreddit and getting a whole bunch
of them to help out on the site. That's where I get the first couple of active
users, who've stuck around and are answering most of the questions.

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Sukotto
How do you deal with the age of people's opinions? What's in fashion this
year, might be totally out by this time next year.

~~~
vaksel
users with lots of points get edit powers. So they can update things

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pclark
you don't really eat steak and/or eggs every day do you?

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vaksel
For breakfast eggs I eat M,W,F, it's just the egg whites(just following the
diet). And sandwiches are Tuesday and Thursday.

For dinner, steak I usually eat 3 times a week. + 3 days of turkey patties.
And 1 day of takeout.

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truebosko
good luck with that heart attack.

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vaksel
i work out every single day, + it's part of a diet for people fitter than I am
and was designed by a nutritionist.

I figure these guys know what they are talking about.

