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Tell HN: I'm launching in 30 days. No matter what. Hold me to it
234 points by kabuks on July 29, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 129 comments
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.

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.

That's over now. I'm committing to launch in 30 days no matter what.

And I'm telling you this because I know that it will help keep me accountable.

Thanks for reading!

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/



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.


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


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!


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.


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.


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


This is what I get: http://imgur.com/dbLty.png

Opera on Ubuntu


Fixed. Thanks.


It sounds good, but please put this on the landing page and elaborate a bit more, as well as explain how hackers might find your service interesting.

I think the HN community just launched your service for you :~).


Yep pretty much. I posted this and went for a walk with my son. Half-way to the park I saw that it made it to the front page.

We turned around and I'm thinking to myself "shit, I just launched"


"open democratic project management tool" sounds pretty bad ass sir :-)


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.


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.


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.


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


Thanks. Fixed it.


It's having problems with Opera. The text is really huge.


Should be fixed now. Bad <h2> tag


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


is this it? http://rm.bettermeans.com/projects/bm


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

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

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


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.


Yeah...serious ripoff!


That was my initial take too. I love pivotaltracker and don't particularly like to see it ripped off.

That said, it's an amazingly functional interface. But I'm hoping some degree of permission was obtained first.


Er...are all your internal documents and planning, price plans etc meant to be public? http://rm.bettermeans.com/attachments/51/Pricing_page.pdf via http://rm.bettermeans.com/projects/48 Credit if you really plan to run things that openly otherwise you really should be taking things down ASAFP.


PLEASE don't use security as a price discriminator. The web is already too full of shitty security. "Enhanced" security should be baked in to the app for EVERYONE.


Agreed. Just changed that. Thanks for the feedback.


Yep, it's all open. Not just for people to see, but for people to join us and make it better.


Wow. I'm not sure whether that's brilliant or insane but I wish you the best and will watch with interest.


Can you elaborate? what disadvantages do you see in running this way?


There's a reason the "command and control" model has evolved. The history of mankind has shown an increasing tendency toward specialization of expertise in our daily jobs. One of the risks of doing things this way is that people that aren't specialists in a field and have no context about how a proposed decision came about will start dragging down the group like lead weights. Think about the kinds of comments you see in newspaper articles. It's lowest common denominator for a reason. Everybody there is commenting on stories that are, at best, second-hand information (not to mention whether the information is even accurate to begin with).

I wish you the best of luck, but I have to admit I don't think I would find your tool to be very useful. If people working for me are that unhappy that they feel the need to resort to anarchism, then maybe they should question whether working for the company is something that they should even be doing. Put another way, if I were working for somebody and felt like a pawn, I'd choose to work elsewhere if trying to engage the leadership and persuade them on issues failed.


No major ones. Until something goes wrong and every deliberation and discussion about how to respond is dissected and quoted without context in public. I mean are you going to do everything in public? Hiring and firing decisions? Whether to sue someone who screws you over somehow? Whether to change hosting suppliers?

As I write this I'm arguing with myself about the power and value of genuine transparency, it's something I believe in deeply but done asymmetrically, as you are doing verses your competitors or as our governments are doing verses the private sector does provide a huge soft underbelly for easy attack.


I agree about the huge soft underbelly. It definitely feels exposed and vulnerable to write everything in the sky. But after a while you get used to it. It keeps us honest (well more honest), and fair, and hopefully encourages more and more people to join.

What we lose by the competition reading our every move, we gain by having a large, engaged team.

I don't think it's for everyone, and there's definitely a place for stealth, privacy...etc. But I do think that businesses can afford to be a LOT more transparent than they are today. Hopefully it doesn't blow up in our face.


Also, there are no hiring or firing decisions. Anybody can contribute, contributors have non-binding votes.

Members can nominate contributors to become members (this voting happens in private) and then they can have binding votes. It's a mod of the apache foundation governance and it's baked into the platform.


Yes! How did you find it?


No time like the present. Why not make this the front page and launch right now?


FYI, the columns on that page run into and obscure each other when you shrink the browser size (in Safari 5). This starts to happen well before 1000 pixels.


This is cool! I've was looking for something like this earlier in the week. Obviously this isn't the place for filing bugs, but after signing up, http://rm.bettermeans.com/my/account is a broken link for me? Which kind of makes it hard to try my hand at a demo project.


Thanks. Just fixed it.


Nice! Other comments:

-As someone else posted on the site, attempts to create a new workstream meet with a 403/not authorized despite being logged in.

-It may just be a placeholder, but the "Browse all enterprises" and "Browse all workstreams" seems to be an unwieldly way to discover new enterprises/workstreams, since after the launch is well underway, that list will explode in volume. The search box is nice to find enterprises you already know about, but really what's needed to make it easier to find new enterprises (IMO) is some way to hierarchically categorize or tag your organization. And also those "Browse all..." type pages should definitely be paginated; they're way too long already.


- 403 is fixed. Yikes - Totally agree, it's a placeholder for now. We'll need a much better find and browse functionality.


I made an account, and logged in, but I still see the default set of stuff. Is that expected?


Nope. Try again. There should be link to create a workstream.


tbh, the project looks good enough to be launched. throw up a landing page NOW and take advantage of being on the front page :)


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).


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.


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


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?


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


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


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


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.


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.


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


You could convey the same thing by saying "best value" or something like that


On a similar note, that "Popular" ribbon looks really bad in Chrome. It's like ... fragmented.

http://skitch.com/jackowayed/dq24n/bettermeans-popular


It is. Thanks for pointing it out. Right now it's our guess that it will be the most popular plan based on talking to customers. I'll change this very soon. Thanks again for holding me accountable.


Can you launch any sooner? How about tomorrow?


Ummm. It seems like I just inadvertently launched!


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


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.


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!


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


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.


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


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


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...


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.


Done. Thanks!


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.


Will do. Thanks for the encouraging words.


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.


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


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...


Short answer: Use PNG for everything except photos, in which case you should use JPEG. It will be better for both file size and quality.

Long answer: ehhhh, look them up on wikipedia.


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.


This governance model explains who an open enterprise works.

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

Would love your feedback


Well, the first thing I notice is the inconsistent navigation to "home". If I just go to the domain, I get /front, if I click the link "home", I get a different looking front (/home) page.


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.


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


I think he answered that question here:

http://bettermeans.org/front/?page_id=19

with more of an introduction here:

http://bettermeans.org/front/?page_id=306


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


Thank you. Should be fixed now.


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 :)


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


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.


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


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 :)


Viktor Frankl's video (at the link above) is amazing.


And, I should add, the difference between corporations and government is that corporations are not able to apply arbitrary force (rightfully) while the government can.

Therefore government actions are much more dangerous that corporate actions, and they are far less often held accountable for the results of their actions.


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?


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.


"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!


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.


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


Thanks. It's still very early, and very rough. But our hope is that others will come on board and make it way better than what it is right now. We're eating our own dogfood, and have are running bettermeans on the platform. Everything is transparent, and equity is shared.


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.


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


Just took a look at google analytics from yesterday.

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


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


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.


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


Thanks. Fixed.


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

-- Trindaz on Fedang


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


Do you need help?


Yes please. Do you speak rails?


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


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/


Unfortunately I do not. If there are python components involved though, I'll gladly provide whatever help I can.


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


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


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.


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


Thanks. Fixed.


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


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.


you have "-->" on your frontpage


Thanks. Fixed.


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/


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


Signed up.

Will bitch in t-minus 30 days and counting.


Nice slow reveal.


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.


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.




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