
7 Days and $500: One Man's Plan to Bootstrap A Startup In A Week - AndrewWarner
http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2010/01/7-days-and-500-one-mans-plan-t.php
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eo3x0
It's not a business until you hit that phase where you realize no one cares
about the toy you built in a week's time. Then you pivot and put in a lot more
effort than you ever bargained for - that's when you have a startup.

~~~
patio11
_It's not a business until you hit that phase where you realize no one cares
about the toy you built in a week's time_

You might think its a toy, and I might think its a toy, but if it solves a
problem for a customer, then it is not a toy. Your lawyer doesn't need to
labor a full week to write a letter worth hundreds. My dentist didn't need to
drill for forty hours to charge me $770. There is nothing magical about
computer programs which makes them worthless until an arbitrary amount of Red
Bull cans have been consumed.

I wrote the first iteration of my software in eight days. People bought it. It
has pretty much gone from there.

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tlack
Does anyone remember when businesses started off trying to make money? This
HN-fueled "startup" mania is getting ridiculous.. just because you have an
idea and built some minimal prototype thing doesn't mean you're some brave
entrepreneur.

~~~
blizkreeg
Great point. I think 'entrepreneur' off late has become more of a sexy label
to give oneself. It's funny how the term businessman(or woman) is never used,
almost as if there's a dirty connotation to it. I think saying that I do
business implicitly puts the expectation that there's cash flow.

I've been guilty of this thinking too, mostly influenced by such articles and
the media fueled frenzy over "entrepreneurs" and their nice little website toy
thingies built over weekends and in dark rooms. At best they're hobbies and
fun projects.

==this comment is more of a reminder to self than a judgement of another==

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mschy
It hadn't occurred to me before, but I refer to myself as a businessman in
most contexts, and describe only my unproven activities as 'entrepreneurial'.

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vaksel
Most bootstrapped entrepreneurs don't get to blog about their progress "on the
homepage of Australian entrepreneurship magazine Anthill." and they don't get
a feature in RWW.

So to say..."all it takes is some will and dedication" is a little too much,
when you are getting all that extra exposure.

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wmeredith
He's launching in 7-days. A successful _launch_ does not a successful startup
make. I've had several successful launches myself. Still punching the clock at
my day job, though.

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s3graham
It's fine and all, and best of luck to him, but I'm not sure that doing
something for 7 days demonstrates much in the way of "dedication".

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alain94040
I think he also cheated by opening a bank account and incorporating. That's
overkill at the stage he's at, but it gives the impression of "making
progress", which surely impressed his readers.

I should know, I designed <http://fairsoftware.net> to prove that you don't
need a corporation or even a bank account to build successful multi-founder
software startups. And this guy is alone, so even less of a reason to waste
money.

~~~
andrewtj
How would he takes payments without a bank account? <http://fairsoftware.net>
gives me a 503 at the moment.

~~~
alain94040
The way a virtual company works: customer -> virtualcompany host (fairsoftware
in my example) -> personal account

This way, the end user has a business relationship with the virtual company
host, shielding the entrepreneur, but the entrepreneur stills earns money as
an independent contractor of the virtual company host. To me, the best of both
worlds (but I'm biased). It beats opening a merchant account, that's for sure.

PS: no 503 for me...

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petesalty
Is it just me or does a week seem like a long time to do this? I mean
obviously it's not really a business just a little web service, but really,
any competent programmer could probably have the functionality up and running
over a weekend - figure another day to do design, half a day to put together
the "business plan" power-point, and another half to register a domain,
incorporate and set up bank accounts (really how long does that take? - maybe
it's harder in Australia). So what 4 days? Cool, that's 3 left - you could do
another launch in that time.

~~~
dan_the_welder
If it logs your miles from a text message, that's a bit more complicated than
a website.

SMS to web gateway, process the data, update the database, connect database to
website, make functional website.

These are not super complicated on their own, but having them work together
well and meet user expectations/needs is another matter.

He can then sell the service or advertising on the page. Sounds like a startup
business to me. Not huge or sexy but money in the bank if done well.

~~~
petesalty
Actually it's not that hard, I've done it before - once the account was set up
(15 minutes) the SMS was integrated and tested in about an hour. He's
certainly not opening his own SMS gateway with $500 so he's probably using a
service where you get a 5 digit number that customers include in their texts
(everyone has seen this I'm sure). The companies that supply this tech usually
have a very easily integrated API so hooking it up is no more complex that
hooking up to something like Twitter, in fact usually much simpler. Speaking
of which I'd just hook it up to Twitter and let them be the gateway, saves a
bunch on SMS fees (which cost you incoming - although this might be different
in Australia).

Advertising is a pretty easy hook up as well, depending on the service.

Take a look at glunote.com, it's something that I threw together over a rainy
weekend (and it certainly looks like it). It's for taking notes using Twitter
and is probably at least as complicated as what he's doing. I'm sure there are
a lot more examples around.

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andrewtj
Twitter withdrew their SMS service in Australia quite some time ago. Both
incoming SMS and calls are free in Australia.

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robryan
If he can launch something successful in a couple of days of coding well good
luck to him, unfortunately that's not the case for most startups, unless your
going for a minimum viable product that in most spaces isn't going to attract
more than some feedback.

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Psyonic
If the MVP won't attract any more than some feedback, it's not really an MVP,
is it? Doesn't seem particularly viable

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dpcan
Doesn't it usually take at least 10 days to get a short code for 2-way SMS?
And it's going to cost more than $700 based on my research.

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andrewtj
You're looking at the high-end of the market - he's using a GSM phone
connected via a serial port as his SMS gateway.

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dpcan
Do you have any more information on this?

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andrewtj
Sorry I missed your response. Many years ago I used Nokia 5110 and 6210 phones
to do this. All that was needed was a serial cable, a list of the relevant AT
commands and some Perl. Google should be able to fill in the gaps on how to do
this, but if not just drop me an email (listed in my profile).

