Harvest

Harvest is an excellent time tracking service that we use at ThetaBoard. It's simple to use and very powerful and offer a great tool--the Harvest Platform--that allowed us to add time tracking to ThetaBoard in a very unobtrusive way.

How to Track Time in ThetaBoard

Like all of ThetaBoard's add-on features, Harvest time tracking is completely optional. To use this feature, you will need to enable it for your account or on a per-Board level. 

Once enabled, you will see a "Track Time with Harvest" link on each Card. Clicking this link will present you with a dialog box asking you to sign in or register with Harvest (if you haven't already done so). You then will need to associate your ThetaBoard Board with a project you have set up in Harvest.

Once you have associated your Board with the correct Harvest project, you will be prompted to start tracking time for the Card you have selected. While the timer is running, you will see an indicator on your ThetaBoard Card with a "Stop Timer" link. This indicator is visible even if the Card is collapsed. When you are done with the task, simply click the "Stop Timer" link and confirm the action in the popup dialog.

From Harvest, you can view the time you have logged for each Card and follow a link from the Harvest time entry back to the related ThetaBoard Card.

Harvest Platform and BackboneJS

ThetaBoard uses BackboneJS to create a rich javascript user interface. The rest of this article will talk about how we added time tracking to ThetaBoard using the Harvest Platform and BackboneJS.

We need to configure this code slightly for ThetaBoard:

applicationName

Pretty straightforward here, our application name is "ThetaBoard".

permalink

This is a template that Harvest uses to enable links from its timesheets back to ThetaBoard. Placeholders are used for item ("Card"), project ("Board"), and account (not applicable in our case).

skipStyling

By default, Harvest will display its own time tracking image. To make the Harvest integration look more like ThetaBoard, we have set "skipStyling" to true and handle the CSS ourself.

Backbone Views in ThetaBoard

Before we can look at the Harvest Tracking, we need to look at the organization of Backbone views in the ThetaBoard project. At a high level we have a "BoardView" which has a collection of  "ColumnViews" which in turn has a collection of "CardViews".

Card views are even more complex. In addition to itself having several collections of subviews ("CommentViews", "ChecklistViews"  etc), it also has "child" views--single detailed views that encapsulate a single feature. We use these "child" views for items such as the Card title ("TitleView"), Description ("DescriptionView") and now time tracking ("HarvestView"). These "child" views are attached to elements in the "CardView" html template.

The "HarvestView"

To add the new "HarvestView" we first need to modify the "CardView" template to include a placeholder for the "HarvestView". The Harvest Platform code will look for elements with the class "harvest-timer". Because we are going to handle the styling of the timer on our end, we have added two child elements for starting and stopping the timer. This HTML is added to the html template for the "CardView".

The "HarvestView" will be a "child" view of the "CardView". When the "CardViews" are loaded into the Board, the "render" method of the view is called. In this method, we need to initialize and render all of the "child" views it contains--including our "HarvestView".

Typically, the Harvest Platform will bind itself to every element it can find that has a class "harvest-timer". Unfortunately, ThetaBoard loads Cards after the Harvest javascript snippet has loaded. We therefore need to add the Harvest timer to the Card when the Card renders. To do this, we trigger an event "harvest-event:timers:add" in the "HarvestView" render method.

Styling it Up

By default, Harvest Platform inserts a nice looking clock icon which turns a solid blue when you are tracking time. We decided to style the timer ourselves to make the integration with Harvest match the existing look and feel of ThetaBoard. By setting "skipStyling" to "false" when we include the Harvest javascript, we are free to display the timer any way we see fit:

When the timer start, Harvest adds a "running" class to the "harvest-timer" elements. This allows us to show and hide our start and stop buttons as necessary.

Conclusion

How Dropbox and Google Drive Integrate with ThetaBoard

To enable this feature, you simply need to to enable document storage. You can do this for all boards in your account by going to your Account Preferences page or you can specify it on a per Board basis by selecting "Configure Board" in your Board settings menu. Once enabled you can attach a file by clicking "Attach a File" on any of your Boards's cards.

You be presented with a pop up window to sign in to the service you chose. Select the file you want to attach and you are done. The file will be linked to directly from the ThetaBoard Card.

Future Partners

Step 1: Export Your Trello Board

To export your Trello data, browse to the Board in Trello and append ".json" to the URL. This will begin the download of json-formatted data in your browser. Alternatively, you can:

1. In the Trello Board settings drop down select the "Share, Print, and Export..." option.
2. Click "Export JSON"

Save this file to your desktop.

Step 2: Begin Import Process

Sign in to ThetaBoard and browse to the following URL:

https://app.thetaboard.com/boards/import

If you have access to multiple accounts in ThetaBoard, select the account you wish to import the Board into.

Then, use the browse for the ".json" file you just downloaded from Trello and select it. When you are done, click "Continue".

Step 3: Map Users

You will next need to associate users from your Trello Board with users in your ThetaBoard account. The dropdown on the right shows users who are assigned to your Projects or have access to your account. Select a user for each Trello user and click "Continue" to complete the process.

For best results, add each of the users  on your Trello Board to your ThetaBoard account BEFORE starting this import process. This way you can correctly match up the users. Alternatively, you can map all of the Trello users to a single ThetaBoard account.

1. How many people are coming to our site?
2. How many people are signing up for our free tier?
3. How many people are upgrading to a pay plan.

Show and Tell

Very early on, we decided to make it super simple for visitors to figure out what ThetaBoard was all about. We experimented with screenshots and videos but decided rather than show or tell people about ThetaBoard--we should let them try it for themselves. We re-engineered the app a bit and started offering a one-click demo from every page on our site. We immediately saw a massive increase in the percentage of visitors who tried out ThetaBoard. On average 20-30% of our visitors kick the tires.

More and more visitors were trying out ThetaBoard (which was great!) but those visitors weren't signing up for our free trial as often as we would have liked. Now, ThetaBoard is a young project  so we didn't mind that not everyone wanted to sign up, but we felt like we were missing something.

A Little Hand Holding is Nice

Last month I found myself sitting on a train talking to Brennan Dunn, founder of Planscope and he suggested I try out Bootstrap Tour. He said it had made a big difference in helping his new users get acclimated with Planscope. I had a look at it—and several other options—and decided it was worth a shot. Since ThetaBoard is built with Twitter Bootstrap, it was a cinch to drop a tour of my demo page in place.

Hit the High Points

I experimented with the tour a bit—trying to find the right amount of features to point out. Too few tips and you aren't educating your visitors enough—too many and you just bore them. By measuring how many visitors closed their tour before reaching the end, I decided 7 steps was the magic number (your mileage may vary). These tips pointed out the main features that new users need to get started right away.

Give them a Nudge

When a user completes the tour (either by progressing through all 7 steps or closing it prematurely), I show them one more tip--"Don't forget to Save This Board"--with a gentle reminder that ThetaBoard is free and there is absolutely no reason not to sign up for their free account.

1 Hour, 46% More Customers

The results of the experiment were incredible. The hour of work I put in creating the demo tour increased the converstion rate from demos accounts to free trials by 46%. Sure, these are just free accounts but, well, you have to have an account before you can upgrade it. An added benefit of educating visitors was a significant drop in support related emails. All in all, time very well spent!

Why not try out ThetaBoard and let us know what you think!

Or join the conversation on Hacker News.

edocr.com

One such startup participating in nReduce is our first integration partner—edocr.com.  In their own words:

"edocr.com helps organisations of all sizes extend their brands online through documents, generating high level of demand for products and services  [....] edocr makes it easy to share documents across the internet [...] captures the incoming traffic, and [...] allow its customers to export leads in real-time to CRM and email marketing for lead nurturing..."

edocr.com founder Manoj Ranaweera and I quickly identified an opportunity to work together. edocr.com provides ThetaBoard users with a new option for file storage. In ThetaBoard, edocr.com users have a project management tool integrated with edocr's social document sharing features.

Upload Files Directly to Your edocr.com Account

When you upload documents to ThetaBoard Cards, you will now have the option to save the file in your edocr.com account. This is great for documents you want to share with the public. Edocr.com offers a number of different ways to then distribute these documents across the internet.

Link Files on edocr.com to ThetaBoard Cards

Already have your files stored on edocr.com or want to link to someone else's document on edocr.com? You can now search edocr.com by username and keyword and link the results to your ThetaBoard Cards with one click.

We're Not Done Yet

The edocr.com integration is just the beginning. We want to offer you the ability to store your documents where you want including Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box.net. Stay tuned for more updates.

10GB of Storage

ThetaBoard users with the Freelancer package and greater will be able to store files in the cloud directly with ThetaBoard. If your organization needs more storage—there is a plan to meet your needs.

3rd-Party Integrations

Over the coming weeks, ThetaBoard will be adding support for several 3rd-party services which will expand your storage options. We will be announcing the first of these integrations later this week. These services will be available to all accounts and will not count against your storage limits.

We're all about data portability at ThetaBoard. To export a ThetaBoard as JSON:

1. Open up the ThetaBoard you want to export.
2. Select "Export" from the "Settings" menu.

You will be promted to save a ".json" file which contains you Board's data.

For more about ".json" files, check out http://www.json.org.

Introducing Linked Boards

At ThetaBoard, I have a Master Board which I have split into different columns--one for each area of the company I want to improve. Under each of these categories, I have identified a number of different performance indicators (KPIs) and identified several large projects that I think will help me reach my goals. Each of these projects goes on my Master Board as a Card.

I have set up my Master Board as a very simple ThetaBoard--labels, comments, and checklists are disabled (for now) and the new Linked Cards feature is enabled. To configure these settings on a project-level, visit your Board's settings and preferences.

I then created new ThetaBoards for each of the Cards I have added to my Master Board. With these boards created, you put the Linked Boards functionality to work! On the Master Board Cards, click the "Link to Board" link at the bottom of each Card. From there, you will see a list of all of your Boards. Simply select the Board you want to link and your link is ready!

Coming Soon

The current setup is great for getting a high-level list of your companies goals and managing them with Linked boards. In the coming weeks, we'll be adding new features that will let you glance at a Master Board and get a quick idea of the status of the underlying Boards.

Remember ThetaBoard is FREE for individuals. Sign up for our personal plan and get started today! If you have any questions or ideas for improving this feature, let me know at support@thetaboard.com.

Card Checklists

Checklists are todo lists embedded in ThetaBoard Cards. You can create multiple Checklists for on each card and sort them in order of importance. Make sure you visit your "Account Preferences" page to enable this feature! Or you can enable them on a Board-by-Board basis.

To create a Checklist click the "+ New Checklist" link on your Card. To add multiple items to your Checklist, type "Control + Enter" after you have finished entering your item--you will save the current item and create a new one for you.

Use Cases

We think you'll find Checklists invaluable for when you can't logically split a card into two separate cards but want to provide a more granular level of detail.

Coming Soon

We are planning on updating the Checklist feature in the coming weeks to allow you to create a new Card from a single Checklist item. If you have any other ideas or suggestions, please let us know!

Add Comments to Your ThetaBoard Cards

Keep the conversation in one place by adding comments to your ThetaBoard cards. Login to your account to check them out!

As with all new ThetaBoard features, you can choose whether or not you need these new features. When you next login you'll be asked to set your preferences. If you don't need a feature, we'll keep it out of the way to keep your ThetaBoards as simple as possible.

Don't worry, if you change your mind you can always change your settings.

Markdown Support

Sometimes words are not enough. Thank god for Markdown! Markdown is a simple way to add extra style to your ThetaBoard cards by adding bold text, italics, bulleted lists, and more. It is easy to learn and requires no knowledge of HTML. Check out the complete syntax guide.

New Website

We've just relaunched www.thetaboard.com with a brand new look.

New Features

Over the last few months, we completely redesigned the ThetaBoard application adding:

• Unlimited boards. Every account on ThetaBoard comes with unlimited boards.
• Board sharing. Need help with a project? Share your board with others to collaborate.
• Real-time updates. Make sure your team stays in sync. Changes to your ThetaBoard are immediately shown to your teamates.
• Custom avatars. Use gravatar.com or upload your own, ThetaBoard-specific photo!
• Custom labels. Every project is different—why wouldn't your labels be? Create and customize labels to apply to your ThetaBoard cards.

These are just a few of the new features we've released! Login to your account to see the *new* ThetaBoard.

Premium Plans From Just $3 Per Month!

We have just released premium plans for ThetaBoard which allow you to share your ThetaBoards with more people. Right now there is special introductory pricing starting at just $3/mo. As we add new features, these introductory rates are going to rise but sign up for a plan now and your rate will never go up!

These rates won't stay this low for long so why not get in on the ground floor?

Coming Soon

We are just getting started. Over the next few weeks we are going to be improving ThetaBoard and releasing new features including:

• File uploads. Initially, we are going to allow you to upload files to your Google Docs account and Dropbox but we have some exciting partnerships in the works that will expand this list!
• Checklists. Add checklists to your cards to create a fine grain to-do lists.
• Comments. Keep your project communications in one place by commenting directly on cards.
• Custom Filters. Apply filters to just show cards assigned to specific users or with a certain labels.

We'll let you know by email and on the blog when we release these new features so keep an eye out.

Feedback

Have comments, suggestions, complaints or need help? Look for the "Feedback" or click here. We're going to shape the future of ThetaBoard based on your feedback so let us hear you!

Follow Us On Twitter!

We are trying to get more involved with Twitter and at the moment only have 39 (fantastic!) followers. Click here to follow us on Twitter!

I've been in this position for the last 10 years or so. I've tried to start cool projects (an online jukebox), social projects (a Top 5/list sharing app), useful projects (bug trackers), and have come up with countless ideas that never made it out of the idea stage. My current project ThetaBoard is still in alpha/demo mode but it's getting used, generating interest and I'm certain it will be a success.

Your idea is the first big decision you'll face

Unless you have a history of startup success--or have the money to take a year or two off--then you need an idea that you can get off the ground while working a day job. You can try and start a frighteningly ambitious startup--the next Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram--but the odds of these ideas succeeding is depressingly low. Do yourself a favor and pick an idea that you can realistically get off the ground.

The following is the idea wringer I put any potential startup idea through before dedicating time or energy to it.

1. Does it inspire you? If not, pick one that does.

I spent a year working on an ecommerce website that was going to compete with the likes of Etsy, etc. Unfortunately, online retail sales doesn't really excite me. It's very difficult to maintain the energy level required to start a company if you aren't inspired by the idea.

2. Does the idea leverage your strengths? Don't waste your talent.

I'm sure you are good at something. You may be a developer, a designer, a marketer, or a shopper. Pick a startup that allows you do do what you do best and capitalize on it. As you work on your idea, you will find yourself wearing several hats and many of these roles will be foreign to you--make sure that the main role is something you are good at.

3. Is there an existing market? If not, walk away.

If you idea requires creating a new market or explaining what exactly your product does, you are facing an uphill battle. First you have to build the thing, then you have to spend 100 times that long trying to create a market. Skip it. Build something that people already need, just do it: a) Cheaper, b) Better, or c) Faster. You likely won't be a billion dollar company but it will have a far greater chance at being a million dollar company.

4. What's the business model? If it's advertising walk away.

If you are going to rely on advertising, you are relying on traffic, which means you are relying on rapid and vast adoption. Customer and visitor acquisition is hard. Chose a business where the people who use it have to pay you money to do so.

5. Does it require a critical mass? Starting from 0 is tough.

How many users do you need before your app provides value? If the answer is anything more than ZERO, bin it and move on. At all costs, avoid "chicken or the egg" situations and pick an idea where you can provide value to customer number 1.

6. Do you know how to build it?

There are plenty of problems out there that do not require an overly technical solution. Pick one that you know how to solve. Ideally it will be something that you can develop yourself. If you aren't technical, you'll want to choose something that you can atleast define and convey to someone who is.

7. Can you afford it?

Give yourself a budget but not a big one. The cost of creating a start up is getting absurdly cheap. With AWS, 99 Designs, ThemeForrest, PSD-to-HTML services, etc. even a non-techie can launch a fairly sophisticated project on a shoestring budget. If you can't launch it for under a few thousand dollars then move on. If need to raise money, move on.

8. Can you juggle two jobs at once?

After you launch you will have a whole new set of hats to wear. You will be responsible for customer support and marketing from day one. Can you take the time to property support your new customers while doing your day job? Pick an idea that won't interfere with your day job or you risk failing at both endeavors.

9. Do the financials 'add up'? Excel is your friend.

For subscriptions-based businesses make a few conservative estimates: 1) what will you charge per month, 2) how many months will your customers stay with you. Multiply the two. Congrats, you have your Lifetime Value (LTV). Now figure out how much it costs you to live. Add on your server costs. Divide that number by what you charge per month. Now you know how many customers you need. You get the point. Open excel. Put in these formulas. Read this. If the numbers don't scare you, then proceed.

tl;dr

Bootstrapping a business on the side is hard. You should pick an idea that gives you the greatest odds of succeeding. If your idea got through the idea wringer, it might just be the one...

Discussion on Hacker News

Last Thursday I made a post on Hacker News titled "Client-Side Error Logging With Google Analytics" and submitted it on Hacker News. The post was inspired by an idea in a discussion about the importance of logging client-side errors. The post got to #1 or #2 on the front page and stayed on the front page for nearly a day.

I was definitely surprised by the traffic that the post generated. Thursday and Friday, the post got a total of 12,295 visits and 14,403 pageviews. Nearly 7K of the visitors were direct referrals from HN.

I'm just getting into blogging so to say this was a spike in traffic would be a bit of an understatement. The day before the post I had 17 visitors and most of those were probably my mom. Since then--14K visitors and 17K page views.

The post got 240+ tweets including one from someone on the Google Analytics team:

awesome tip.. how to track client-side JavaScript errors with Google Analytics: bit.ly/HvquwQ

— Ilya Grigorik (@igrigorik) April 6, 2012

There were probably 4K direct referrals or visitors from t.co. I'll chalk most of these visitors to Twitter which is pretty amazing. Having people click on a link is satisfying--having people blog about or Tweet something you wrote is even more gratifying.

Impact and Lessons Learned

In terms of making a contribution to the world, the post was definitely a success. It generated a great conversation and I think people will run with the idea and figure out how to improve upon it. It also gave my new project a little bump. Though the massive spike of traffic is gone, I continue to get a few hundred visitors a day which is great. It has had an impact on organic traffic thanks to some new inbound links.

I had over 300 visitors try a demo of my project ThetaBoard and 3 people sign up for personal (free) accounts. I'm pretty happy with these (small) numbers--ThetaBoard is in its infancy and I don't consider it a mature project. After I launch some new features I'm working on, I'd hope for a much, much higher sign up rate.

My biggest failing was in fully taking advantage of Twitter. When I originally made the post, I didn't even have the ability to Tweet the post. I added this on-the-fly and it had a huge impact on traffic (getting 250+ tweets and who knows how many retweets). 

I then realized I didn't have a "Follow @ThetaBoard" link anywhere on my site so I added it as well on Thursday afternoon. I definitely feel like I missed out on some new Twitter followers by omitting this option from the beginning.

Capitalize on Your Traffic

I've learned a few lessons I'm going to put into place this week to capitalize on future traffic to the this blog. These are all pretty obvious but I wasn't doing them--maybe you aren't either:

• Make it easy for people to share your content. You should be able to share every single item of content you create with a single click. I would start with a Twitter Button, Like Button, and Email link.
• Make sure people see your future content. You need to have a Follow button on every post and featured prominently on your site (header/footer/sidebar). If you have an RSS feed, make sure you have the ubiquitous orange icon featured prominently. If you have a mailing list, make sure have a very visible signup form  I don't.
• If you are promoting a product--don't hide it. This is one area where I think I did pretty well. 300+ visitors tried out ThetaBoard (you should too). Make sure each and every piece of content has a link to your sign up page or a demo.

I haven't implemented most of these suggestions yet but will definitely be doing so this week so I don't waste all the traffic to the next post that proves popular.

tl;dr

I wrote a post that got a ton of traffic. It was awesome but I wasted most of it.

Discussion on Hacker News

"the only problem is we have project management web app fatigue."

and

"This is a service that I've seen before. Not yours of course, but others like it."

Very similar comments telling me that web-based project management tools are a dime-a-dozen. These were not vitriolic comments mind you. They just wanted to know why they should consider--and I should bother writing--yet another project management tool.

Your Project Management Tool Sucks to Everyone But You

Everyone works differently so it makes sense that everyone's ideal project management software would be different. Invariably, if you get a team of 5 people to use a tool, at least one of them will not like the tool you've choosen. At best, you can get people to suck it up and use the tool in front of them. However, in time, the process will begin to break down and ultimately the tool will be abandoned. What is the longest you've stuck with the same project management tool?

Your Software Shits on the Agile Manifesto

The very first tenet of the Agile Manifesto is:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

It would lead you to believe that tools developed to faciliate agile software development would practice what they preach. Unfortunately they don't. Project Management software nearly always tries to impart its genius new process designed to supercharge your development.

Unfortunately, the development process you have built into your software is your process. Your customers likely don't share your vision. You may actually convince them that it will improve their process so they sign up for your product. It's their job to convince their team members. It doesn't work.

By introducing your genius new workflow/project management tool you are putting the focus of your software development on the tool and forcing your individual team members to adjust. It's as unagile as it gets.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of these tools are slick as hell. And I'm not saying they aren't great products. I'm sure they help a lot of people get a lot done. But they all put process and tool ahead of individuals and interaction.

So What's So Special About ThetaBoard

• Simplicity at it's core. ThetaBoard is going to be a barebones (yet effective) tool for keeping track of projects and tasks.
• Customizable. You will be able to customize your ThetaBoard to fit your company's development process. Furthermore, your users will be able to further customize their ThetaBoard experience so they like it more.
• Extensible. Users will be able to add functionality to ThetaBoard's core functionality through APIs.

I think that the #1 reason people stop using a tool is because it contains too many unused features. There is something psychological about that excess, waste and clutter. I think that if I can create a tool that removes all of this excess, people will use it and use it longer.

ThetaBoard Sucks Too

I know. In fact I constantly find myself violating the first tenet of the Agile Manifesto myself. I've let terms like "iterations" and "stories" creep into the design and code. I constantly find myself making decisions on behalf of my future users. When this happens, I stand back, and rip out the functionality and start over.

There are two camps that won't ever like ThetaBoard: people who feel like ThetaBoard imparts its own process on them and those who need much more functionality. I'm going strive to make the first group of users very, very small. I'm going to simply ignore the latter.

What you see now is an MVP that's taken a wrong turn. I've gone back to the drawing board and started a complete redesign to stick more closely to the vision described above. When ThetaBoard finally leaves beta and I start adding premium plans, I think it will be a tool that sits in the background and adapts to your process letting you really supercharge your development.

Discussion on Hacker News

Roll your own solution

If you want to get your hands dirty, you can write your own logging system. When an error occurs on the client side, make an jquery.ajax call to your server and log the information in a database, text file, redis etc. If you have a buggy application or some disrespectful 3rd-party libraries, this might put a heavy load on your servers. One recommendation was to aggregate and filter the errors at the client using localStorage and then send them in bulk.

If you want full, fine-grained control, this may be your best option.

Logging as a Service

There are several SaaS offerings that will handle this for you. A few worth looking into include:

• Airbrake
• Errorception
• Loggr.net
• New Relic
• Loggly
• Errbit (self-hosted, open source)

Most of these services offer a free tier that will get you started but be prepared to pay at least $10 to $15 bucks a month for your small web app.

Google Analytics: Free and (almost) Installed Already

A third idea that came out of the thread (thanks @DavidPaquet at Okam) was to use Google Analytics to log these exceptions. It may not offer the power of the SaaS offerings but the price is right (free) and setup is a cinch. You simply modify your "window.onerror" method to register an "Event" in Google Analytics:

In a few hours, you'll start seeing your errors show up in Google Analytics. You'll find your Events data in Content > Events. Experimenting with Metrics and Dimensions reveal some pretty useful information:

It's a pretty simple solution to a tricky problem:

• You probably already have Google Analytics installed. You literally just have to add 3 lines of code.
• Let Google shoulder the server load. By relying on Google Analytics for this logging, you free up your servers for more important tasks.
• Track the impact of client-side errors on other business metrics. With the reporting in Google Analytics you can see how these errors are affecting bounce rate, conversion and sales.

Ok, so it's not perfect

There are definite drawbacks to this solution. It it will take a few hours before you see the data in Google Analyics so it's not a real-time solution.

Also, window.onerror sucks--it doesn't give you a ton of information. If you minify your javascript, you won't learn much from the file and line number information either.

I'm going to experiment with wrapping my javascript in a Try/Catch block (pros and cons to this) and see if I can pass more information with the GA Event.

TL;DR

Given the cost associated with the SaaS offerings, the headaches with the roll-you-own solution, and the free and powerful reporting that Google Analyics provides, you may want to use Google Analytics to log your client-side errors.

Discuss on Hacker News

"Hey, will you Xerox this for me?"

A common example is when a tech brand becomes a synonym for the technology. "Xeroxing" is synonymous with "photocopying". Tho' it seems like a dream come true for a company, it's something they often try to avoid:

By controlling the use of their brand name, businesses hope to put off the day when the name grows so popular that it defines all similar products on the market. When that happens, a brand has been lost to “genericide,” lawyers say.

Then again, with the right patent protection this can be great. Take Polaroid. It sued Kodak to protect its patents--a lawuit that made thousands of Kodak cameras useless and forced them to compensate some unhappy customers with $50 worth of Kodak stock. Even tho' it stopped making its iconic film in 2008--"Polaroid" is the "instant camera".

I'll Just Google It... Facebook Me...

You know your startup has made it when it it becomes a verb. Now "to google" something could fit in the "xerox" category above. People often say they are going to "to google" something and then use Bing or some other search engine. But when you say "Facebook me", you are being unambiguious. Log into Facebook. Friend me. Send me a message.

I think I saw it in a tweet

The creation of a new, commonly-used noun is a rarer occurrence. Twitter has accomplished this with the term "tweet". A tweet is a message of less than 140 characters emitted through their service. It takes a catchy name, a new "type" of thing, and a bit of luck for this to happen.

And subtle changes to the way we speak

The most interesting changes are the small ones that just creep in but immediately make perfect sense. New technology requires new terminology. Take the Kindle and e-readers. I recently asked a friend how much of "The Hunger Games" she had read. Her reply?:

"About 40%."

Page numbers may just be a thing of the past.

I went back and forth and decided that I would complete my minimum viable product and submit it to Hacker News and see what people said. At that point I'd see if there was a market and make a decision.

How Not To Launch Your Product

Last Thursday I put together a Twitter Bootstrap-based landing page, added a newsletter sign up form, a quick screenshot and linked to a 1-click demo of the app. It was nowhere near my grand vision but in the spirit of the lean startup I felt like it was at a point where I could start getting valuable input. I submitted it to Hacker News just before 2:00 pm Dublin time on Friday, mentioned it on the #startups on freenode, sent the link to some friends and watched.

Wow. It went immediatly to the frontpage. #20 #14 #9. I checked the new real-time feature in Google Analytics. 60 current users. 70 current users. 75. 80. 100. 105. I IM'd a friend "Wow #6 on Hacker News. 105 current users in 10 minutes and growing." 110 users. 115. Uh, 80. 70. 50. 20. 10. 0.

What. The. F&$k.

I ssh'd into my server. Unresponsive.

The night before I used LoadImpact.com to stress test the small (256mb) instance I was on and it actually performed pretty well. I decided I would resize it to a larger instance just to be safe but the resize failed and I decided to leave it til the morning and then completely forgot about it.

With a dead server and a post hovering around #10th on HN, I logged into Rackspace to resize the server and get the site going again. Unfortunately, my testing and failed resize the night before had left the instance in a sort of cloud limbo state. It was stuck in a resize queue but wouldn't complete the resize for some reason.

#10th on the page. #11th. #13th. #15th. #20th. Ugh.

It took a few different Rackspace support agents nearly 2 hours to finally restore my poor little 256mb instance and resize it to something that could handle the load. My "Show HN" post was at the bottom of the first page. It stayed there an hour or so before it was gone. I had 'bottled it'.

A Resounding Success

Looking back I realized that tho I might not have gotten close to 5K visitors, I got enough. My goal was to show ThetaBoard.com to potential customers, see if there is a market, and determine where to go from here.

The website got 1074 unique visitors over the weekend. Of those 1074, over 600 tried the demo, and over 40 registerd for a free account.

There was a decent amount of feedback in the comments. Everything from:

"...exactly what Trello is already doing"

To:

"very nice, intuitive and simple"

So dispite the hiccups, I had achieved what I set out to achieve. Over 1000 people visited my landing page (most of them in the hour or so that the post clung onto the bottom of the front page). I'd have loved for more people to have seen it but what I needed was a sample size large enough to validate or invalidate my idea. 1K or 10K--I don't think it really mattered.

The post got to the frontpage and people clicked on the link ("Show HN: My Project Management and (eventual) Collaboration Tool"). And more importantly--over half of the visitors took the time to try the demo. Even if ThetaBoard sucks, atleast I know that Project Management is still a problem and people are still looking for the solution.

What Now?

Well, based on the feedback I got--I don't think ThetaBoard sucks. Enough people said they liked it and would use it to make my decision easy. Conversations generated by my post gave me a clear roadmap for the next two weeks and I'm convinced that there is a viable business behind ThetaBoard. At the top of the current development list (well, my own ThetaBoard) are the following stories:

• Make it easier to drag and drop stories.
• Allow users to create multiple boards.
• Add keyboard shortcuts.
• Add the "collaboration" part! The ability to share and worth together on boards.

Those were the things that people wanted the most. I have dozens of more features coming afterwards.

From a business development stand point, I know I need to try and get more people who trying the demo to sign up for a free account (just click "Save This Board" at the top of the page!). Also, my landing page (tho' fairly effective) could use some polish.

All in all, I was pretty satisfied with the beta launch. So satisfied that I took the weekend off, went to the pub, watched some rugby, and relaxed for the first time in while. The experience was exhilaring and stressful but I'm recharged and ready to make a real run at what I think will be my first successful startup.

ThetaBoard is a simple tool for helping you get things done. Use it as an agile project management tool. Use it to plan your Thanksgiving dinner. Use it to plan your fantasy football draft. We'll keep it simple and you do the rest.

We hope you find our product useful and this blog informative. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email us at support@thetaboard.com. 

Thanks!

The ThetaBoard Team