
Tell HN: I'm launching in 30 days. No matter what. Hold me to it - kabuks
First off, I'm sincerely grateful to this community. You blow me away with your generosity and honesty. I don't remember how I stumbled on HN but my life is better off because of it, and certainly my business.<p>I've been working on a web app for over a year now. It's more than a web app, it's a business I truly believe in, and have given all my heart and effort into. I've lived off our savings, and I've been procrastinating launching trying to get things perfect.<p>That's over now. I'm committing to launch in 30 days no matter what.<p>And I'm telling you this because I know that it will help keep me accountable.<p>Thanks for reading!<p>Edit: I guess we just launched. I was looking for a kick in the ass and I got it. Thanks!
Here it is: http://rm.bettermeans.com/
======
kloncks
Quickly make a form on your website to gather our email addresses. Email all
of us in a month and we'll make great beta users for you.

Do this very quickly so that you can get as many email addresses as possible
from the many people that will see you on the home page. You're the top story
right now.

~~~
kabuks
Here's the form. If you're interested in getting an email when I launch
<http://bettermeans.org/front/?page_id=408>

------
edo
You're on the frontpage of HN, where is your landing page that explains what
your app is about and captures our e-mail adresses? You don't have long before
you lose your frontpage position!

~~~
kabuks
We don't yet have a landing page. Bettermeans is an open democratic project
management tool.

It allows people to work together on a project with a meritocratic governance
as opposed to command and control.

~~~
webwright
Stop coding and spend 1-3 days on your launch plan, brainstorm some marketing
and PR ideas, cook up some inspiring screenshots, etc. Not having a landing
page now is REALLY FREAKIN' SCARY.

~~~
kabuks
Ok, here's what we cobbled up in the last hour
<http://rm.bettermeans.com/home/show?page=index>

~~~
StavrosK
This is what I get: <http://imgur.com/dbLty.png>

Opera on Ubuntu

~~~
kabuks
Fixed. Thanks.

------
Mc_Big_G
_I've been working on a web app for over a year now._

 _...I've been procrastinating launching trying to get things perfect._

If you're the only one who has used the site, you'll see both of these as
mistakes in about 37 days. Just launch.

~~~
kabuks
I totally agree. These are both mistakes. Which is why I posted this so that I
have a fire under my ass. I know that being witnessed by people I respect is a
motivator for me. I wish I did this 6 months ago.

------
kabuks
Ok, here it is: <http://rm.bettermeans.com>

Guess I didn't need 30 days! This is totally overwhelming. Thank you everyone.
Please be generous with your feedback.

~~~
shaunxcode
Hey there is a typo on front page: "Using BetterMenas" I assume should be
"Using BetterMeans".

~~~
kabuks
Thanks. Fixed it.

------
illumin8
Now that you got our attention, why don't you tell us about your product?

------
zyang
is this it? <http://rm.bettermeans.com/projects/bm>

~~~
DanielRibeiro
Interesting. Looks a bit like pivotal tracker. See for yourself:

<http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/482#>

<http://rm.bettermeans.com/projects/bm/dashboard>

~~~
jtheory
Well, there's that one background image ("dropzone_repeating_pattern.png" in
both; I'm not sure of the original source for this image). But otherwise it
seems like a sort of standard JS-GUI interface, and not all that much exact
overlap in functionality beyond commonalities you'd see in anything that
tracks tasks through stages.

FWIW, it looks like BetterMeans is using JQuery-UI and PivotalTracker is using
YUI, and I don't notice any commonalities in their source with a quick
review... so it may well just be mostly that bg image (which they may have
both gotten from a common & free source).

Dunno if you see a smoking gun somewhere, but I haven't thus far.

------
jcapote
This sounds like a web site idea in it self. "Announce" launches with firm
commitments to a beta user community, and everyday you can go see what was
supposed to "launch" that day, and give feedback. It'll put the pressure of
public failure on the founder where it normally wouldn't exist (as is the case
here).

------
shawn13
This sounds and looks exactly like a more modern version of a worker
cooperative (I am a member in a worker co-op). The laws around co-ops tend to
be very 19th century but this is really what they are all about -- are you
plugged in to the worker co-op community? There would be many interested
users, potential grants and investment, etc.

~~~
kabuks
That's the idea.

What would a worker coop look like if it was designed with the internet in
mind. And what if the governance was baked into the project mgmt tool.

Here's a detailed doc explaining what we're trying todo:
<http://bettermeans.org/front/?page_id=306>

It's a long read, and we need to make it shorter, but you're spot on.

No, I'm not plugged in to the worker co-op community. Loop me in.

This is the governance model we've come up with:
<http://bettermeans.org/front/?page_id=312>

------
vishaldpatel
Since this is a democratic model of governing a company, is there a way to
create a coalition to slowly overthrow the governing members and take over the
treasury and ownership of the project? How would this then affect the actual
ownership of BetterMeans - are all current members also equal shareholders?

~~~
kabuks
This video explains exactly how the governance works:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdcAxGGRafc>

Yes. It would be totally possible to overtthrow the governing members of
bettermeans.

However, shares are not tied to your membership. Ownership is based on
contribution, and cannot be taken away from you. Just wether or not your votes
are binding.

This video explains our model in detail:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdcAxGGRafc>

As does this doc: <http://bettermeans.org/front/?page_id=312>

------
delano
I'll email you on August 28th and if you aren't launching that weekend, I'll
be very diappointed!

------
lutorm
Just a question: If you haven't launched, how can you claim to a "most popular
plan"? Seems dishonest...

~~~
alain94040
I wouldn't worry about that. "Most popular plan" is marketing-speak for "we
think that's the plan most people want". Even if you have 0 users, I wouldn't
be shocked.

Do not try to be 100% technically accurate. That leads to long, unreadable
text. It's ok to rely on your reader's imagination to convey a message.

~~~
lutorm
I guess that's why I'm not in marketing... ;-) I would prefer a statement that
conveys that it's an opinion and not empirical fact.

~~~
djb_hackernews
They have 1 customer, themselves. They prefer that plan, so it's the most
popular.

------
ryanjmo
Can you launch any sooner? How about tomorrow?

~~~
kabuks
Ummm. It seems like I just inadvertently launched!

~~~
dustydean
That's the spirit. :-) You just launched. Congratulations!

~~~
kabuks
Thanks. The problem is I don't have any supporting text, and folks are really
confused about what we're doing!

Maybe there is such a thing as too early of a launch.

------
alain94040
Hey BetterMeans... Alain here. I sure hope you will launch soon. You still owe
me coffee :-)

To everyone: Shereef is cooking something great. Make sure he ships in 30
days!

~~~
kabuks
Hey Alain! Thanks for the kind words, and for all your support in this
process. Here we go :)

------
kristofferR
Looks like a awesome webapp that I'm probably going to try out when it's
ready!

Note that the images on the sales page are HORRIBLY compressed. Drop JPG for
illustrative images and screenshots, start using PNG instead.

------
kyro
Just wanted to wish you all the best. Nice to see some fellow Egyptians
stirring things up!

~~~
kabuks
So you're the other Egyptian in the Bay Area. Thanks!

------
poundy
Don't forget to tell your loved ones, your friends, family, etc that you are
working on the launch in 30 days. This way they know that you are not to be
bothered, etc. I picked this up from this link here
[http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/how-to-get-your-side-
proj...](http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/how-to-get-your-side-project-
launched/)

------
eagleal
Congrats on launching! I would append this css (for the footer)

    
    
      #top-footer .footer-logo {left:-21px;}
      #top-footer h3 {background:none;padding-left:0;} 
    

There is no reason to use bullets (dots) when you use inline lists (#top-
footer h3). #top-footer .footer-logo is not aligned with the paragraph below
it.

~~~
kabuks
Done. Thanks!

------
Prospect
I'm late to the party but I have been looking for something exactly like this.
To make a tool like this to work, I would need to get the team on board, so
I'll probably wait a bit for the initial bugs to get worked out, But we'll be
a customer...just do regular email updates so I know when to jump in.

~~~
kabuks
Will do. Thanks for the encouraging words.

------
AndyKelley
Your features page should be very well done and professional because it's how
people will decide whether or not to sign up. Here are a couple issues:

spelling error:

The home screen of your project is the first page your will see. It shows an
overview of your team’s work with:

"Your" should be "you"

Also use PNG instead of JPEG for the screenshots. It's a big deal.

~~~
kabuks
Thank you Andy. I'm ignorant about why PNG is better. Can you teach me?

~~~
ElliotH
PNG is lossless compression so you won't get the artifacts you do with JPEG.
(e.g the noise around the text at the top of your first screenshot)

EDIT Better explanation:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#Compa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#Comparison_with_JPEG)

------
canterburry
Ehm...what is it and what do I use it for? I just see posts from people,
something called workstreams and reading the text in the description on the
right just makes me want to shoot myself out of boredom. Oh...and how the heck
do I get credits because I see some people are already loaded.

~~~
kabuks
This governance model explains who an open enterprise works.

<http://bettermeans.org/front/?page_id=312>

Would love your feedback

~~~
9oliYQjP
The first thing that jumped out to me is "why should I care?". What's wrong
with the "command and control" model? I don't know what the problem is which
this tool is trying to solve.

~~~
sprout
If anti-authoritarianism isn't in your blood I'd say you aren't the target
market.

------
vkdelta
Mabrook! Good work. Few cosmetic issues on main page. Remove "!" in "read
more!" button. Does not look professional. There are some minor language
errors on the main page which need to corrected.

On pricing page(<http://rm.bettermeans.com/front/pricing.html>) please change
to 'take a tour' from 'watch the tour'. Surprisingly it there was only one
video after clicking the button. I was expecting multiple videos to highlight
features of your product. Include Safari 5 on browser list.

Made a good decision by announcing it to the public. Hopefully, it will make
up and running smoothly soon.

------
empire29
Interesting. I think you need something that succinctly explains exactly what
bettermeans is and why its something a company would want to use. It took me
awhile to get a feel for what the product really does, and how.

~~~
Blunt
agreed! "If a traditional company was a network architecture, it would be
client-server. We’re building a platform for peer-to-peer companies that are
more agile, resilient, and innovative."

You say an awful lot of what you do but no where could I find the "HOW" and I,
personally, hate high-level BS talk.

Get to the point and put verbs in your sentences that say how you do these
things.

------
Prospect
An idea for the future might be to somehow tie in with sites like elance or
have your own outsourcing program. It'd be nice to be able to manage the
internal projects and outsourced projects in one place.

------
roryokane
The video “Better Means, Changing the World of Work” on the home page of your
website has an incorrect aspect ratio. Everything is slightly horizontally
stretched, so the text is wider than normal, all of the people look slightly
fat, the proportions of people’s heads change when they tilt them, the
Wikipedia logo isn’t circular as it should be, etc. You should fix that; it
looks unprofessional.

~~~
kabuks
Thank you. Should be fixed now.

------
ericingram
As long as "open democratic" doesn't mean anti free-market (as it seems to in
the political world), great job on the quick launch :)

~~~
kabuks
Nope. Not anti free-market. Just pro transparency, and meritocracy.

~~~
ericingram
Great, merit based compensation could be a powerful way to run a company. I
sincerely agree with your belief that purpose-driven enterprises are more
successful, especially when that purpose is to produce a fantastic product.

I read a bit of your "open enterprise manifesto" (which is way too long to
read in my opinion, but that may not be your goal), and found conflict with
this statement:

"We made our government democratic, and our corporations everything but..."

Actually, we made our government a Republic, with a set of laws and
inalienable rights. The process for changing those laws was made democratic,
but the system was created as a Republic to protect the rights of individuals
from the arbitrary force of government.

I don't understand why so many people focus on the "greed" and "corruption"
inherent in "top-down" corporations, but ignore the greed and corruption
inherent in centralized government. Those who operate the government are no
different than those who operate corporations. They're all human.

If you can't trust corporations, then you DEFINITELY can't trust government,
because they are all run by humans of the same nature.

~~~
kabuks
I agree with what you're saying. The system of government is definitely far
from perfect.

The reference to it in our manifesto is that we at least see the _value_ of
democracy in our attempt to govern ourselves politically, but have made very
few strides in that in our attempts to govern our businesses.

I would trust our government much more if it ran all its work transparently on
bettermeans, and allowed me to vote, discuss, and comment freely.

Also, "greed" and "corruption" are IMHO _not_ a function of human nature, but
a function of poor governance systems that we find ourselves in.

Our entire model is based on an inherit trust in our nature. That given the
right circumstances, and a fair, transparent, accountable system we can rise
above "greed" and "corruption"

We wrote a post about it here: <http://bettermeans.org/front/?p=565>

~~~
ericingram
You may well be right about the idea that greed and corruption are not natural
to humans, you've obviously done a lot more thinking about that side of it
than I have and your logic is reasonable.

I really like the application you built. I need some more convincing on the
model and how it would work, without reading the entire manifesto, do you have
a document that explains it in much shorter form?

Great job on the design, it LOOKS like you spent about a year on it :)

------
resdirector
How does this app scale to really big projects and team sizes? Is it for the
1-3 team size? Or can it work for the 20+ company?

~~~
kabuks
The governance model borrows very heavily from the apache foundation. They use
a similar voting / membership mechanism to self-govern. Thousands of devs on
dozens of high visibility OSS projects.

So far it's scaled easily for us up to 15 people.

------
jhuckestein
"We’ve put together a new organizational design that allows anyone to join us,
to gain equity share, to make decisions, and to make a living. And we’re
building the technology platform to support it."

That's really intriguing, congratulations! If done right this can probably
have a profound impact on the way businesses are run. The best of luck to you,
sir!

~~~
jhuckestein
Just some quick feedback on some of the site copy: It appears you like to use
buzzwords and superlatives quite a lot. I'm not sure if this is appealing to
everyone (it certainly isn' to me). After reading your three columns
"Entrepreneurs", "Workers" and "Companies+Nonprofits" I still don't know what
you do and how I would use your product.

All I know is that you "exponentially increase my agility" (which is most
likely untrue). If I'm a worker you apparently also engage all of my humanity
(which, as everybody knows, is made of passion, purpose and creativity). And
as an entrepreneur, I feel that you are somehow trying to offend me ;)

Maybe a description of what exactly your product does (screenshots are better
than stock images and icons) would be more helpful.

~~~
kabuks
Thank you for the feedback. I totally agree. The copy is vague, and was
written before our product crystallized. It needs a serious rewrite.

------
BeSublime
That's awesome man, good luck and have fun! I hope to be taking similar steps
soon (hell, maybe I'll make the same 30 day commitment, seems like it would be
helpful!), and coming across little bits of motivation like this keep me and
many other thinkers in motion.

~~~
kabuks
Just don't post your 30 day commitment unless you're ready to launch in 30
minutes

------
kabuks
Just took a look at google analytics from yesterday.

4000 unique visitors from HN, and only 4.4% use IE!

------
setori88
Mate, think about open sourcing your software and doing a wordpress clone.

~~~
kabuks
That's a very valid option, and we're giving it a lot of thought (come on
board and think with us!)

Our business itself is open though, so anyone welcome to join us (no
permission needed from anyone) and contribute to the code base, and gain
equity.

As a member of b​e​t​t​e​r​m​e​a​n​s​, you still can't take the code and run
it elsewhere, but you do get full access to it in order to contribute to it.

So it's more 'shared' source, and 'open' business.

My sense is the wordpress business model works with very large numbers, and an
already established community. Two things we don't have.

------
dulipak
There's typo on <http://rm.bettermeans.com/front/features.html> "Get things
done together, don't just doument"

~~~
kabuks
Thanks. Fixed.

------
Trindaz
Love that tag line - answered the first objection I had in mind!

\-- Trindaz on Fedang

------
yayitswei
Typo on your features page (<http://rm.bettermeans.com/front/features.html>),
search for "esitmate"

------
loginx
Do you need help?

~~~
kabuks
Yes please. Do you speak rails?

~~~
mattkern
Is the code out there somewhere? Do you want help?

~~~
kabuks
The code is in a private github repo I would LOVE help.

If you're willing to please check this out, and shoot me an email

<http://bettermeans.org/front/?page_id=253>

We're an open enterprise, so everyone who asks, and agrees to our governance
model can join.

All dev worked is tracked here: <http://rm.bettermeans.com/projects/platform/>

------
roobus
You can launch 30 days later, sure. But if you put up a coming soon page now,
today, it will be really great.

------
fezzl
How many people who hit your landing page actually make it to the end of the
3:56 introductory video?

~~~
kabuks
200 people 'viewed' the video on youtube. I don't know how to tell how many
watched all the way through.

Around 180 people signed up to be notified when we have an 'official' launch,
and over 100 people created an account for themselves.

This story has been on the front page for around 10 hours now.

Don't know how many people hit the landing page until google analytics tells
me tomorrow.

------
slater
Spelling mistake on the homepage: the red text should read "Open democratic",
not "Open democractic"

~~~
kabuks
Thanks. Fixed.

~~~
ryanf
It's still showing up with the error for me.

~~~
kabuks
ok, now it's really fixed.

I'm telling you, being on the front page of HN for the whole day is a _ride_!
Totally overwhelming.

More coffee now.

------
matrixownsyou
you have "-->" on your frontpage

~~~
kabuks
Thanks. Fixed.

~~~
matrixownsyou
it's still there (on my end) <http://imgur.com/vamm8>, check the mouse postion
on the pic.

Feel free to be sponsortive :p <http://zemanel.posterous.com/>

~~~
kabuks
How on earth did you catch that! Thanks again.

btw, I looked hard for a sponsor link but couldn't find one. might want to
make it more visible

------
Marticus
Signed up.

Will bitch in t-minus 30 days and counting.

------
jorangreef
Nice slow reveal.

------
mkramlich
I believe on launching on day 1 of a project, and then just incrementally
improving it afterward. Start with nothing, add something, add something else,
repeat.

------
startupcto
Why 30 days? If you are just making little minor changes, features for
"perfecting" it, you could launch now or even latest in a week. You don't need
30 days.

I'm not in your position so I don't know your product or what state your
product's at, so I'm just basing this off the statement that you're been in
the state of "perfecting" the web app.

