I give a lot of credit to dangrover for creating and shipping a product that people want to have (Etude for iOS).
Dan's been fairly active in the HN community, and I think a lof of us have been inspired by his success as an indie developer. If he wants to sell his product to another company, that's his choice. If he wants to live in Silicon Valley, that's his choice. Maybe some of you in the HN community in the bay area can help him out. It seems like he's trying to address the number one issue with ETude - the lack of music publisher contracts, at the least.
I had no idea Dan was so young. I think he's different from the other masses because he has dreams and cash flow. He's more like an successful entrepreneur than some of the other dreamers because he has some success already.
I'm curious why Tap Tap Tap was such a sucky place to work. Is it because there is an inner circle?
"Show HN: I finally released that sheet music app I keep yammering about"
In case you read this, what do you think of SwankoLab?
It seems to push the envelope for creativity because it gives normal users the tools to programatically alter their photos. Very clever how they did that, too.
Hey Dan, here are my thoughts on monetizing Etude better: first is a bookstore model for music publishers; allow them to sell through Etude. Right now, I think you only allow free downloads, right? You've got a walled garden setup thanks to Steve, so there should be very little concern about copying and piracy from the publishers.
Second is opening up the market for piano teachers. One thought - it would be super super cool to have the app recognize what notes you're playing on the piano and mark them. There's an interesting discussion over at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1457228/pitch-recognition... on this.
Yikes, this is the typical silliness that seems to be the post-web 2.0 trend. Rather than people coming up with new ideas and new ways to make companies, they do something derivative, spend a lot of time in design, then rush to san fransisco to huddle in with the other masses of 20-26 year old MIT/Stanford graduates who are following all the VCs and Angels on twitter.
I thought being an entreprenuer was about being free, and not about confining yourself to a certain space and trying to meet the expectations of certain people, who are only trying to maximise THEIR profit? What's the difference to a job then, apart from the potential stakes?
I don't understand the negativity. You could make an argument that there are too many startups duplicating effort with similar ideas (with the counterpoint being that there are often valid reasons for that, and established companies certainly do the same thing). But Etude doesn't really fit that mold. It has its own niche.
His story is that he worked for software development shops but didn't enjoy it, built up his own side business until it paid the rent, went full-time and released a new, solidly profitable app, and moved to SF to try his luck in the startup scene. It fits the HN indie template to a T, but that's not a knock. He's taking a more independent path than most people no matter how you look at it.
The first project grew out of software he wrote for himself, and Etude grew out of his tinkering with an iPhone music synthesizer. How does his awareness of a target market and prospective acquirers dilute his entrepreneurship? I'm asking seriously, because I don't understand your point.
It's because if you find something that works and that can give you the money and freedom that I assume entrepreneurs want, then why take the move into a 'closed community'? What he's doing is not entrepreneurship as I imagine it - what he is doing feels more like trying to insert himself into a social group of pseudo-entreprenuers.
These are the people who are more interested in their standing within a certain community, than in actually starting multiple businesses.
I could mention names that fit this template, because there are quite a lot. What they are doing is not about the money, it's about the fame and the social ranking they hope to acquire. That's why it disappoints me to see this - because in my opinion, businessmen should be aggressive money chasers and should not care what their peers think about them.
Past a certain comfortable dollar amount, who's to say that greater fame and social standing are necessarily sillier than more money?
It wasn't even clear that's what he was after from the article. He came across as a bona fide entrepreneur who was executing successfully and wanted to take it to the next level. SF looked to him like the best place to do it.
I'm not sure whether you're arguing that he's always been a pseudo-entrepreneur, or that he remains the real deal but miscalculated in moving to an area rife with fakers, or that he became a faker by looking for a deal or acquisition offer when he should have kept doing his own thing, or whether you're trying to point out the uselessness of a certain personality type, of which he happens to be a poor example.
If that's how you describe someone who quit a co-op (internship) in order to launch a few of his own apps that pay his rent and allow him to keep working on his dream, I'm genuinely curious (and I mean no disrespect when I ask), how would you describe your own self?
Personally, I find both the preoccupation with money and status a little foreign. Me, I just want to do things that make people happy, that make their lives easier. If I could do that and still have some free time, and still have some people around who like to be around me, and I like to be around (though not people who think I'm some sort of superhuman because of my accomplishments) that would be ideal for me.
You're right. Payment processors (including the App Store) should have an option to cap the amount of income a developer can earn in a month, just in case an app actually takes off (after a year of hard full-time work on it), to prevent making developers and customers who hear about it jealous.
Everybody you read about who made X dollars, planned to do so, right? It was very easy and certain, right?
Dan's been fairly active in the HN community, and I think a lof of us have been inspired by his success as an indie developer. If he wants to sell his product to another company, that's his choice. If he wants to live in Silicon Valley, that's his choice. Maybe some of you in the HN community in the bay area can help him out. It seems like he's trying to address the number one issue with ETude - the lack of music publisher contracts, at the least.
I had no idea Dan was so young. I think he's different from the other masses because he has dreams and cash flow. He's more like an successful entrepreneur than some of the other dreamers because he has some success already.
I'm curious why Tap Tap Tap was such a sucky place to work. Is it because there is an inner circle?
"Show HN: I finally released that sheet music app I keep yammering about"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1196055
"Etude for iPad is out"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1399258