Link: How to do what you love, the right way

Every time I start a new job I take my dad to see my office. He loves seeing where I work, and I love showing him. It’s a thing. As much as I enjoy this unspoken ritual of ours, there’s always a predictable response from my dad that serves as a clear indicator of our large generation gap. At some point he’ll ask a question along the lines of, “So… no one has an office? You just sit out here in the open?” I’ve tried many times to explain the idea of co-location and collaborative work, but I don’t think it’s something that will ever compute for him.

Thoughtful article by Rian van der Merwe.

We use various tools to help make The Interviewr your premiere Interview location.

Some are web apps, some are installed apps.

This post is to give credit where credit’s due and introduce you to apps that can work well.

Tools built by others

• Intercom.io, is our first tool… This handy CRM helps us see how people are using the site and from where in the world they are from.. This helps us make decisions such as what languages to support in our upcoming localization update, and what features to keep, remove, build upon.
• IFTTT.com, If-This-Then-That lets us handle various functions such as sharing our blog posts to twitter and app.net via buffer app
• Coda 2, this installed desktop app is used to build our site and handle any coding needed. It’s handy site management features make it fast to switch between working on the front end of the site, logged in area of the site, or the API.
• WordPress, the front end of this site, and the blog are powered by WordPress.
• Twilio handles all of our phone work
• Box.net is used for secure cloud storage of all files uploaded by our users related to interviews and contacts. We also use Box.net for sharing files between various people as we work on bringing our users the best solutions we can.
• Basecamp is used for project management, notes, planning, communications, just about anything really.

Interesting presentation from Dropbox.com founder Drew Houston.. Being followers of lean startup methodology ourselves, it’s nice to see what other startups have done.

Link: The complete guerrilla marketing guide – From 0 to 10M downloads

This post is the result of a long struggle, learning how to market a mobile app – the main struggle most mobile app entrepreneurs experience. I’m sharing the lessons I’ve learned, in the hope of shortening other entrepreneurs’ marketing learning curve.
 
I never planned to become a marketer. I was on the product/ Techy/ UX side of things and was quite happy there. In the (first) startup I co-founded, VisualTao (acquired by Autodesk, the product is now AutoCAD WS) we developed a web and mobile CAD app. The technology was innovative, the product was great and the need was clear. We started marketing it by the book – crafting our positioning and working with a PR agency to approach bloggers. This didn’t work. We went at it a second and third time – tweaking our positioning and web site once again, adding more product features and writing to more bloggers. Didn’t work – again.
 
I gradually came to an understanding that when competing with hundreds of thousands of other apps for attention, marketing is not just another ingredient in an app’s success. It’s the main one. We were a small team with a very limited marketing budget, so we declared war the only way we knew how – as engineers and UX designers. The following months we left what we knew about traditional marketing behind and started exploring new and creative ways to reach new users, and like the engineers we were – we measured each step along the way, down to the last click. These days the product is celebrating 10M downloads worldwide with customers from dozens of Fortune 500 companies.

 
Interesting post that can serve as a nice marketing guide for apps.. Since we’re about to send our app to the various app stores…

Link: Outsupporting Your Competition

Founders are often eager to delegate supporting their product, treating it as a necessary evil rather than a competitive advantage. After all, there are more important and exciting things to focus on: product development, feature planning, user experience design, fundraising, and so on.

But for a small startup, making amazing support a key feature of your product will help you get more customers, keep customers longer, and increase their lifetime value.

I linked to this article, as support is something we find very important here.

I spent years working tech support for a local hosting company before starting my own projects, so I saw the importance of providing fast, effective support from day one, and have always prided myself on personally looking after every support request that comes in as quickly as possible.

It’s helped grow our userbase, and it’s helped keep users coming back to use our service, so when I read this blog post today, I had to share it here.

In fact, we have multiple ways to be reached on the site, via tickets, as well as via our handy new widget at the bottom of the page when you are logged in:

Clicking “Get In Touch” will let users send an email to us right away, and “Submit an idea” will open the contact form on this site so users can submit their ideas.

We’ve just pushed our new tagging system live for everyone to use.

Tags let you organize your interviews and contacts into a keyword (or tag) that can be quickly referenced to help associate interviews to events, articles, associations, or even just by the month.

Tags appear on the left sidebar below Recently Viewed Items, and when you click a tag, you will see a list of interviews and contacts associated with that tag.

This was a big item on our todo list for this month, and is an often requested feature, so releasing it is something we are happy about.

Link: How to Keep Fit While Working at a 9–5 Job

This post is for those who are chained to a desk from nine to five, constantly snacking to fend off the boredom.

By changing our daily routines, even just slightly, you can improve your overall health — both mentally and physically.

Here’s how to keep fit while working at a full-time job:

Handy post about trying to keep fit when working behind a desk.. This is handy for people involved in start ups as well, where we sometimes forget to get up and move or eat regularly while trying to hunt down the next awesome feature we need.

Back when I first started testing TheInterviewr a year ago, I needed to make sure it was easy to use, so I’d pass one of my phones to my then 3 year old and send her to another room to answer it.

Many of our first interviews were actually conversations between my daughter and I as we tried to make sure everything worked right. It actually became a game for her, as we’d talk on the phones, then she’d listen to herself from the recording, sometimes she’d even sing since she knew it was going to save what ever she said.

Now over a year later, she’s still our first beta tester, and she knows the site as well as everyone. She gives final input on several new features and look, since if a 4 and a half year old can use it, then so can anyone.

We introduced our transcription service last week to all users, and I thought I’d write how it works for those who were wondering.

After you complete an interview, you’ll have the option to get it transcribed.

When placing the order, you can choose from a number of different packages depending on how fast you need the transcription.

Once we’ve received payment, the interview is queued and assigned to one of our transcribers who then get to work.

Once they’re marked the transcription as complete, you’ll receive an email containing a formatted PDF file, as well as being able to view the transcription from your account at anytime.

How large is the transcription team?

Currently, we have five transcriptions as well as a lead transcriptionist. We have a pool we can call on to add more if we need to anytime as well, which means we can quickly grow to handle any number of orders.

How is the pricing organized?

Pricing is per-minute, based on the length of the interview and the package you choose, our packages are:

1. Budget Transcriptions (a 10 – 12 day turnaround): $1.00 a minute
2. 6 Day Transcriptions (within 6 days): $1.50 a minute
3. 3 to 5 Day Transcriptions (within 3 to 5 days): $2.00 a minute
4. 24 Hour Transcriptions (within 1 day): $2.50 a minute

Don’t others offer similar services?

Sure, but we wanted to do this in-house, and we’ve had requests for transcription services since the site first launched, so it’s always been planned, and the timing was right to do it now as we enter our second year.

I have more questions about this service

Questions are welcome, please email us anytime here

It’s Movember, and that means its time to raise money for health.

During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in Canada and around the world. With their “Mo’s”, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and male mental health initiatives.

I’ve actually taken part in Movember three years in a row, and this year, I want to do something extra..

With that in mind, 80% of all deposits, subscriptions and transcriptions are being donated to the Movember.com foundation until November 30th.

We want to make a difference, and this is one way everyone can help out, and still benefit from a useful service