I debated what stack to use. I thought maybe I should use this as an opportunity to go deep into Node + React or Vue, or maybe Laravel.
Ultimately I decided to stick to what I know best — my end goal is to build a business, not experiment.
In the end this turned out to be a good decision because WOW are there a lot of moving parts to doing affiliate software correctly & robustly. It would’ve probably doubled development time if I had simultaneously been mastering a new stack.
The app is built in boring old Rails & Bootstrap. But not a single customer has mentioned the tech - they only care that Rewardful solves their problem. This experience has been a good reminder about what matters!
The owners of this site spammed hundreds and hundreds of designers and added them to a JIRA project without consent. A stunning degree of email abuse. Please do not support this website or campaign.
I've been using Arq for years and absolutely love it. Worth every penny. It is extremely well-built software — it's FAST, doesn't hog resources, and feels very polished & reliable.
I like that I can backup to multiple destinations (AWS S3/Glacier, Dropbox, Google Drive, even my own server via SFTP). IMO you can never have too many backups.
I use it along with Backblaze (and will be setting up Time Machine & Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner this week, after putting it off forever).
Uber has recently made it irritatingly difficult to figure out what their rates are, so let's go with Lyft, which has very similar prices. Their SF rates are $1.35 per mile[1] -- assuming that you never have a waiting fee, never hit a minimum fare, and never pay during surge pricing (yes, yes, "prime time tips"), and, mysteriously, never pay their "safety" fee.
If you drive 7,000 miles a year (so, about 5,000 miles less than average), that's $9,450 dollars per year.
The TCO of a Honda Civic, assuming 15,000 miles a year (more than twice what we're assuming for the Lyft rider!) is on average a couple thousand dollars less per year [2].
Rideshare is not a reasonable substitute for car ownership for anyone who is cost-conscious, and it will never be until and unless autonomous vehicles exist.
Well, I was making very conservative assumptions about true cost per mile. The real cost per mile could decrease substantially before it catches up to the numbers I put in my post.
And there are some pretty hard lower bounds on this. Drivers gotta eat, man. At $1.36 per mile, if you get 20 paid miles per hour (which I don't think anyone genuinely does on a regular basis), that's $26.72 per hour -- gross. Take away 20% for Lyft, driver's making $21.38 an hour. Take away $2 for gas for those 20 miles, it's $19.38. Another $1 for maintenance costs, and you've got a real income, pre-tax, of about $36k for a year of full-time work. There may be some room for downward pressure on that price, but there isn't a lot.
(In actual fact, I assume that average per-mile prices for Lyft rides are much higher than $1.36, due to prime time tips and wait time).
I made a similar argument in a prior comment. Particularly once driverless vehicles take off, the economics of vehicle ownership shift massively. Uber will be able to maximize utilization of vehicles and deliver them quickly due to coverage. The idea that network affect doesn't matter here is incredibly short sighted IMO.
Canada Post is an entity that sustains itself solely by delivering direct marketing junk mail. As a Canadian citizen I would prefer to see it disappear entirely. If people need things physically sent to them they should rely on the private sector (FedEx, Purolator, etc).
Such a system would reduce waste and encourage digital of documents, invoices, etc. +1.
It's a great place for this kind of startup. Startup Edmonton (http://startupedmonton.com/) has done a great job of promoting Edmonton as a startup city and getting people involved. Lots of people leaving their cushy government jobs to come hack on interesting startups :)
There are also a TON of financial incentives for doing business in Alberta. Low taxes, SRED, Alberta Innovates, and many other government grants for ambitious tech startups.
It's specifically good for Granify because the University of Alberta has a strong machine learning program.
Plus, the summers in Edmonton are INCREDIBLE — even if winter is a bit harsh ;)
I had a winter business trip to Edmonton several years back. I thought I was going to freeze to death. The locals told me it was 10-15 degrees warmer than usual. Despite this there were hordes of people in the wave pool in the mall. It was surreal.
