[HN Gopher] Tell HN: A disabled 40-year-old person founded a sta...
___________________________________________________________________
Tell HN: A disabled 40-year-old person founded a startup and makes
a living
I am Michael Cao. I am from Viet Nam. I suffered the polio disease
and became disabled when i was one year old. When covid 19
pandemic hit the world. All people has suffered a lot. I and my
friend, Canadian guy, decided to cofound 2HAC Studio because we
thought that we need to do something to help people. We don't want
to hire any employees to keep the cost at minimum (only spend 9.99$
per year for domain). I keep my job at American company in Viet Nam
and my cofounder also still worked at a Bank of Canada. We spent
our free time to implement and marketing our products We have been
developing the Google workspace addons. Out technology stack are
App Script, VueJS for addons. Hugo for our website. We hosted our
website in Google Cloud. Paypal is our payment system. Tawk for
customer support. All of them are free. At 2020, we had a pain
point in Viet Nam because health official requires to do contact
tracing when people went to events, churches, schools so we
scratched our own itches and developed QR Code Attendance addon
https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/qr_code_attenda... .
After that, we provide our addon in G Suite marketplace and a lot
of customers used our addon for contact tracing, for example take
temperature, name, health status of attendees and give data to
health official. Currently, we continue working on QR Code and
barcode solutions. Our startup has survived and thrived during
Covid-19 while a lot of startups have failed miserable. Our
business model are both subscription and lifetime pricing. We have
more than 5 million users for all our Google workspace addons. We
make a decent living but we don't want to risk to give up the main
job. Financial recession is coming and a lot of pain is ahead. We
highly recommend that most founders should keep the job and reduce
spending as much as possible for a while during early stage of
their startup. Also, I would like to encourage disabled people,
older people to escape your comfort zone and make changes in the
world. All of us could develop outstanding products with open
source or very cheap tools. If you have any questions and
feedback, please fell free to contact me and send me an email. Have
a great day, everyone.
Author : michaelcao
Score : 704 points
Date : 2022-10-03 01:57 UTC (21 hours ago)
| flashgordon wrote:
| Mate this is amazing. You are an inspiration for giving a big
| middle finger for disability and hurdles in your way. All the
| best going forward!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for encouraging us
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| I am very proud of you. I spent a lot of time in Vietnam. I am
| always happy to hear about Vietnamese start up success stories.
|
| How did you attract business? Did you advertise anywhere?
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks. I hope that we can drink beer in Viet Nam when you come
| back here. I only posted some posts in Facebook, Twitter,
| Linked In, etc. I haven't spend any money for advertising
| because we are living in covid-19 pandemic. I am an value
| investor also so I always want to minimize risks as much as
| possible. We think and invest for long term. Honestly, we were
| quite lucky because covid-19 helped our QR Code attendance get
| tractions very quickly. We keep our jobs so we have money to
| raise our children and family so we don't need short term
| thinking for our apps.
| olliepop wrote:
| This made my day. Thanks dude, you're amazing and very inspiring.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for your comment. Have a nice day
| zygy wrote:
| Congrats on the business, and thank you for sharing!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for your comment
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Congratulations Michael, your story is truly inspiring! What
| impact do you foresee the coming financial recession is going to
| have on your product, or indeed on any dependent functions (e.g.,
| meetups, subscriptions, etc.)?
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for your comment. I learn a lot of lessons from Ray
| Dalio, an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager,
| who has served as co-chief investment officer of the world's
| largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. He said that an
| idea could reach saturation point in 5 years generally.
| Therefore, we have been preparing new ideas from a year ago. To
| be honest, we failed multiple times. We developed some apps and
| most of them failed but we always try new ideas. That's why we
| still keep current job so we are safe during upcoming severe
| recession. Also, i am moving to be a stock investor to be
| diversifying my portfolios. I am currently investing in real
| estate, software, stock and may be crypto currencies. I believe
| that diversification is a free lunch during crisis.
| rishsriv wrote:
| This is awesome! Thank you for sharing your story.
| michaelcao wrote:
| I appreciate your comment.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| That's great! congratulations!
| pts_ wrote:
| Very motivating! Thanks!
| rramadass wrote:
| This is indeed inspiring.
|
| Congratulations and Good Luck for the Future!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for taking your precious time to read my post.
| icosahedron wrote:
| Congratulations on your success so far. And great job creating
| something useful to people in a time of need.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks. We learn much from the Rework book of Jason Fried and
| David Heinemeier Hansson. I rarely write publicly. But
| recession is looming so I would like to share our story and
| encourage start-ups to save money and prepare for the worst.
| 1001101 wrote:
| Michael, best of luck to you. You aren't the only one
| thinking along these lines. I saw this list of good advice
| from YC on the macro setup back in may, posted on news.yc:
|
| https://twitter.com/refsrc/status/1527238287471292417?lang=e.
| ..
| jokab wrote:
| Congrats. I hope you become more successful.
|
| Love from the Philippines.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks your post. We are living in Asian countries. Hopefully,
| you can go to Viet Nam in the future and we can drink beer and
| discuss about start-ups
| pplonski86 wrote:
| Great story. Thank you for sharing. Did you have programming
| experience before starting a startup?
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks. I am a software developer for 15 years. Recently,
| cofounder (CTO) does technical things and I do all the other
| stuffs. I love my company and my boss so I don't want to go
| full time for 2HAC Studio. I and cofounder only spend free time
| for 2HAC Studio. We automate most tasks. For customer support,
| we can reply some hours later and most customers don't complain
| about that.
| sunderw wrote:
| Hi Michael, congratulations ! In what ways do you think your
| disability has been a force or an obstacle to your startup ?
|
| Also, combining your main job plus building a startup must have
| been very hard. Do you have an idea of how many hours you spent
| working each week in total ? I'm asking that because I too have a
| disability, and it's very hard for me to work more than 20h per
| weeks, but I'd love to start my own startup one day...
|
| Have a great day too :)
| jnovek wrote:
| I'm in a similar boat -- I am a founder and YC alum who became
| disabled a few years ago and I can't currently work in a
| sustainable way. I want to work my way back very much.
|
| For me, the rule is to keep making progress. If I'm always
| making progress I'll eventually end up in the other side of
| this thing.
|
| I push myself as far as I sustainably can in my current
| condition. I read papers and I do my best to control my medical
| narrative and experience. I try every new (or new to me) thing
| that I think might help. I just push and push and keep pushing.
|
| It's not unlike being a founder. Everything is two steps
| forward and one step back. Sometimes a new problem is just two
| steps back. In both cases you have to plow forward on your own
| and make a path where none (or almost none) exists.
|
| Edit: feel free to drop me an email if you want to talk to
| someone about it, it's in my profile.
| michaelcao wrote:
| I absolutely agree with you. Deliberate practice is a great
| way to improve performance bit by bit. I will drop you an
| email when i need to talk to someone and need advice from
| you. Thanks again.
| michaelcao wrote:
| You and I have disability physically but not mentally. I wake
| up 4.45 am everyday and go to bus for work. I reply to customer
| on the go. Software is a great way to earn passive income so we
| can do both full time job and start-up job. I wish you all the
| best. Please contact me if you have any problems which I could
| help.
| snsa_kscc wrote:
| Great story, Michael! As a struggling business founder myself
| much of what you said is very relatable. Nevertheless, this story
| made my day and I wish you and your partner best of luck. Have a
| great day.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Cam on - for your story!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for reading my post
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Hi Micheal,
|
| I admire what you did, seriously. But here us the "but"...
|
| In no way am I understating the difficulty of what you have to go
| though. I am disabled myself and you should celebrate your
| success widely in t his forum.
|
| However, you lost me when you said:
|
| >Also, I would like to encourage disabled people, older people to
| escape your comfort zone and make changes in the world.
|
| When you say that things like that you lump all disabilities into
| one amorphous blob and it actually harms the disabled community.
| That and your whole story is known as "Disability Porn".
|
| Not all of us have disabilities that are constant and
| predictable. I was making six digits working at Cisco Systems and
| idea that I should struggle through it all for some notion of
| success almost killed me. I have Schizoaffective Bipolar
| Disorder. It is not predictable and it is way more stigmatized.
| Plus it get worse when you are under stress. I know you can
| appreciate that as the owner of a startup.
|
| So people will read your story, then they ask me what I do and
| when I am disabled they say a lot of stupid sht like; "Why don't
| you get a part time job?" Or "You are so intelligent, can't you
| get an online job?" All because they heard some guy who was
| disabled by polio did a startup up, or a man with no legs climbed
| Mount Everest.
|
| The part about telling us to "escape our comfort zone" was
| demeaning as well. In the U.S., many disabled people are
| forcefully pushed out of our comfort zones. I am currently
| homeless livening on disability as inflation makes me more and
| more uncomfortable.
|
| This is not to say I do not keep trying. I have taught my self
| Genetics, Nutritional Biology, amount other health related
| sciences in hope to keep me alive with this genetic disorder. But
| there were times when the effort involved to merely brush my
| teeth was all the success I could muster.
|
| I am glad for you, really, but I had to say all this if not for
| anyone here, just for myself.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| Thanks FollowingTheDao, this guy indeed needed the tough love
| that you provided. Their certainly was "Disability Porn" in his
| post. I suppose you get a free pass because you are disabled
| yourself, god forbid if a able bodied person said it.
| ohiovr wrote:
| Congratulations on your success! I have a hobby project I'm going
| to release soon I hope in time before the collapse so people can
| enjoy some of the work I've been doing.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks. I wish you all the best. If you want to have a tester
| for your product, please fell free to send me the link so I can
| give you some comments.
| ohiovr wrote:
| I might do that! I'd like to hear what music you'd like
| turned into an orchestra work from Vietnam. It would be easy
| for you to set up microtonality if you need something special
| for the local scales. Its all python and pretty simple to
| read. But I have a lot of docs to write.
| michaelcao wrote:
| I like the song "Nguoi ve dem toi ngay vui" of Trong Bang
| author. Orchestra helps me to reduce stress during
| Covid-19. Python is a very powerful programming language
| and I have been using it for some work.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| Wise words of advice in this post. I definitely feel that times
| are changing and many of us will definitely have to be more
| thoughtful about our expenditures going forward.
| michaelcao wrote:
| I absolutely agree with you
| random_0 wrote:
| Great work! You're an inspiration for us
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Hey Michael! I have lived in HCMC for a while and I thought it
| must very unfriendly for disabled people. (nothing is ever
| wheelchair accessible etc.)
|
| So even better when I hear this story.
|
| edit: ah I see you are from Hanoi. Well not sure how it is over
| there, but I cannot imagine it's very different
| ugh123 wrote:
| #winning
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| The proper term is "differently abled"...
| dtjb wrote:
| Isn't the proper term whatever people choose to use to describe
| themselves?
| tomcam wrote:
| Congratulations! Inspiration mixed with good plain business
| sense. You rock!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thank you
| nixcraft wrote:
| I would say reading your post brightened my day. Thank you for
| sharing it. Cheers.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks. I am happy that my post could help founders and
| startups at some points.
| yuvalsteuer wrote:
| This is inspiring, Michael please keep sharing more updates!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Definitely, thanks
| navjack27 wrote:
| _standing applause_ Awesome! Congratulations! Inspiring!
| belkarx wrote:
| I edited this for readability while maintaining as much of the
| style as possible. If doing that was offensive or not socially
| correct I can remove it.
|
| ***
|
| I am Michael Cao. I am from Viet Nam. I suffered from polio and
| became disabled when I was one year old.
|
| When the covid-19 pandemic hit the world, all people suffered a
| lot. My Canadian friend and I decided to cofound 2HAC Studio
| because we thought that we need to do something to help people.
|
| We don't want to hire any employees to keep the cost at a minimum
| (only spend 9.99$ per year for domain). I kept my job at American
| company in Viet Nam and my cofounder continued working at a Bank
| of Canada. We spent our free time implementing and marketing our
| products.
|
| We have been developing the Google workspace addons. Out
| technology stack is App Script, VueJS for addons, and Hugo for
| our website. We hosted our website in Google Cloud, use Paypal as
| our payment system, and use Tawk for customer support. All of
| them are free.
|
| In 2020, we had a pain point in Viet Nam because health official
| required to do contact tracing when people went to events,
| churches, schools so we scratched our own itches and developed a
| QR Code Attendance addon:
| https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/qr_code_attenda....
| After that, we provided our addon in G Suite marketplace and a
| lot of customers used our addon for contact tracing, for example
| take temperature, name, health status of attendees and give data
| to health official.
|
| Currently, we are continuing to work on QR Code and barcode
| solutions. Our startup has survived and thrived during Covid-19
| while a lot of startups have failed miserably. Our business model
| is both subscription and lifetime pricing. We have more than 5
| million users for all our Google workspace addons.
|
| We make a decent living but we don't want to risk to give up our
| main jobs. A financial recession is coming and a lot of pain is
| ahead. We highly recommend that most founders keep their jobs and
| reduce spending as much as possible for a while during early
| stage of their startup. Also, I would like to encourage disabled
| people and older people to escape their comfort zones and make
| changes in the world. All of us could develop outstanding
| products with open source or very cheap tools. If you have any
| questions and feedback, please fell free to contact me and send
| me an email.
|
| Have a great day, everyone.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Sorry about that because I posted in Hacker News in the first
| time. I even don't know how to break lines. Hacker News
| interface is simple to use but I struggled to find how to break
| lines.
| raantuva wrote:
| Your post was fine
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks
| mkl wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html, and in
| particular https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc. (And other
| links at the bottom of the page.)
| socialismisok wrote:
| You need two lines to make a line break on HN. It's bizarre.
| afterburner wrote:
| Just like Reddit.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks. I am an introvert and rarely post online.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Reddit.... that bastion of usability
| raantuva wrote:
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for understanding
| aerovistae wrote:
| In what universe would adding line-breaks to a giant run-on
| paragraph be considered offensive? I can't imagine being that
| worried about offending people that I'd put an apologetic
| disclaimer on a reformatting of an internet comment.
| keerthiko wrote:
| Putting the disclaimer is still harmless. GP took some
| liberties with fixing grammar and wording in addition to
| formatting, on text from an obvious ESL speaker. Of course,
| OP's post is plenty comprehensible grammatically for a
| competent english-speaker, despite the minor syntax issues
| here and there.
|
| As a bilingual non-western national, I find the disclaimer
| respectful and appreciate it! FWIW, I would not have been
| offended per se, but would have been mildly annoyed without
| it.
| Markoff wrote:
| Fixing grammar could be annoying for sure (like you have
| nothing better to do, I worked with non-native speakers for
| 10+ years now and still find it astounding when some native
| speaker feels the urge to fix someone's grammar in online
| forums, which I would never do if the content is
| comprehensible), but adding paragraphs to unreadable block
| of text can't be even annoying, that's just common sense
| and everyone can agree Reddit/HN formatting is mess
| michaelcao wrote:
| I agree that we need to keep the HN as simple as possible
| but it is quite difficult for me to find a way to break
| lines although i am a software developer in the past.
| This is an issue for sure.
| socialismisok wrote:
| The parent post also changed the words in addition to adding
| line breaks.
|
| I grew up with a family member who spoke (and wrote) Hawaiian
| pidgin. His emails would be like, " Eyyy! Me an bruddah Brent
| goin to get plate lunch. You want?"
|
| Obviously, his Hawaiian vernacular was an important part of
| who he was, and retyping that could change the identity of
| the speaker, e.g., "Hey, my close friend Brent and I are
| going to pick up some Hawaiian take away lunch. Would you
| like me to pick some up for you?"
|
| Now, not all folks are that attached to how they write, or
| may be self conscious about their English and really
| appreciate the corrections.
|
| Hence, a gentle warning and note that if the author is
| bothered, they'll remove it seems just about right. It's
| extending a courtesy to the author and saying, "please assume
| I had good intent!"
| Markoff wrote:
| His Hawaiian pidgin seems much more efficient than your
| transcription and I would prefer it as non-native speaker.
| But English is like my 3rd or 4th language so what do I
| know...
| socialismisok wrote:
| People speak how people speak. The point is that making
| editorial changes to how someone speaks can change the
| identity embodied by the text.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| In this very (sometimes crazy) universe we live in,
| unfortunately.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Erring on the side of kindness. Yeah, crazy.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I offend _myself_ trying to decide where line breaks go in
| text I actually wrote. I sincerely re-edit multiple times to
| hopefully convey what I meant. It's okay for someone to be
| careful about their indie edits.
| SadTrombone wrote:
| > I can't imagine being that worried about offending people
| that I'd put an apologetic disclaimer on a reformatting of an
| internet comment.
|
| Seems weirder to be this bothered by a harmless disclaimer,
| tbh.
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| In a universe where you're taking something that Michael has
| written and correcting his English grammar and formatting
| without being asked to do so. Some people may find that
| offensive, so it makes perfect sense to me to issue a
| statement of intent and to pre-apologize, just in case their
| attempt to help may have offended Michael (which, thankfully,
| it didn't).
|
| By the way, good on you Michael and best of luck in the
| future.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks. English is not my native language so I am thankful
| for editing my post.
| dang wrote:
| I've edited the formatting similarly at the top now. Thanks for
| watching out for a fellow user!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for that.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Congrats on your success, and I'm wishing you the best through
| this coming recession.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks. I wish you all the best. Take care.
| yding wrote:
| Great job! Really inspiring.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for reading it
| testmzakrzewska wrote:
| Gnvh
| roberthahn wrote:
| Great story, Michael, thanks for sharing!
|
| I have a disability (profound hearing loss) and I've started 2
| businesses in my career; the first was a freelance gig, the
| second was a health recordkeeping app for iPad. Neither have been
| successful enough for me to sustainably provide for my family but
| I'm hoping the next one will succeed!
|
| Really glad to hear your story - it's very inspiring!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Great to hear your story. I wish you all the best in the
| future. I started a start-up during pandemic and when i was
| quite old to be a founder. But everyone should try to do it and
| mitigate risk by keeping full-time job if possible.
| hiyer wrote:
| Congratulations on your success. I hope you reach a point in
| revenue when you can quit your day jobs.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks. Actually, we already reached this point but I love my
| company and my boss so i don't want to quit.
| tough wrote:
| You're awesome Michael, inspiring words today, thanks for
| sharing your journey and keep rockin'
| bbsimonbb wrote:
| Super. Thanks for posting! Nice stack. I shall be using some of
| you're picks I think. I really want to go back to Vietnam some
| day.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Cool. Please ping me when you go to Ha Noi in the future.
| redanddead wrote:
| App script? Nice!
|
| Let's say you weren't disabled, what job would you have/is best
| for a founder?
|
| Myself, I personally think coders should code for work and for
| their startup, this way you develop higher quality code in both
| sides, which creates better outcomes, you're always in the
| software soup so to speak, or in the pho in this case.
| michaelcao wrote:
| I personally want to be a stock investor. I read a lot of
| investing books such as Margin of Safety - Risk-Averse Value
| Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor by Seth A.
| Klarman, memos and books from Howard Marks, other books about
| Buffett. Investing help me to minimize risks for my startup. I
| also want to have multiple passive income sources. Stocks and
| apps are great options.
| avnigo wrote:
| Congratulations, Michael, thank you for sharing your story!
|
| A cautionary note on using Paypal as your sole payment system. If
| this is a considerable source of your income, I would caution
| against only using Paypal or keeping a large amount of money in
| that account. There are too many Paypal horror stories out there
| to mention of people getting their accounts limited or shut down
| without recourse because their automated checks flagged accounts
| for suspected fraud or violating their ToS. Best of luck!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for reminding us. We are thinking about integrating
| Stripe also.
| nickphx wrote:
| The same issue can happen with Stripe.. They approve accounts
| before doing underwriting, once you hit a threshold your
| account is reviewed for underwriting, funds will be withheld,
| usually a 'rolling reserve of % of last X days of
| transactions' sometimes it's more. :(
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for your information. I don't integrate Stripe
| because it doesn't support Viet Nam.
| nickphx wrote:
| I'm not sure of your situation and I'm not a lawyer, but
| you could research forming a US corporation as a foreign
| citizen. Stripe offers such a service called 'atlas'.
| While I've never used them for that, it may be a good
| source of information for you.
| wyclif wrote:
| I am currently staying in the Philippines, and I am
| constantly trying (and mostly failing) at getting Filipinos
| interested in software engineering and programming,
| especially women. Women here just don't consider technology
| to be a valid career. The traditional professional career
| track for Filipinas is usually nursing, physical therapy,
| medical coding, or other medical careers based in hospitals.
|
| Personally, I would love to start a top notch offshore
| software dev company here, but the sad fact is that this
| country doesn't allow 100% ownership for foreign investors.
| canadianfella wrote:
| cpursley wrote:
| VA (virtual assistant) is a common path for women in the
| Philippines. They are family oriented and this type of role
| offers a lot of flexibility for mother's there. And some of
| their tasks can be fairly technical. I've worked with them
| before and had a positive experience.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Why is it important for more people to be software
| engineers compared to nurses? We need more nurses in the
| world, not more software engineers.
| Zhenya wrote:
| But nursing doesn't scale! /s
| hrbf wrote:
| Precisely. We need more human care, for ourselves and
| others, not more software.
| tomxor wrote:
| > failing) at getting Filipinos interested in software
| engineering and programming, especially women
|
| Don't get people interested, _find_ people that are
| interested and lack the resources and opportunity - then
| help those people. There may also be a lack of interest due
| to cultural relevance, tech that looks cool and interesting
| to the west might not in SE Asia, finding local help could
| improve this.
|
| You mentioned women - If you are concerned about countering
| artificial biases in tech, ensure fair opportunity, but you
| cannot expect to force people to be interested. There may
| be inherent statistical differences in the interest and
| values of technology as a career between cultures and
| between genders just as there are with other subject that
| bias in either direction. The goal should be to counter
| unfair, artificial biases that result from prejudice,
| including your own... this is an unpopular opinion, but
| reality is more complex than SJWs like to think, there are
| multiple causes for the proportions of minorities in a
| particular area, and this needs to be understood in order
| to help people effectively do what they want - in short
| fighting bias with bias can be harmful.
| knicholes wrote:
| James Damore was punished for this line of thinking.
| tomxor wrote:
| Policies of inclusivity are currently governed by the
| perception of the mob. Trying to apply thoughtful
| thinking in this area publicly is dangerous (presuming
| that's what he did) because it's falsely evaluated as a
| dichotomy between either discriminating positively or
| discriminating negatively... conflating all other complex
| sources of minority proportions, not bothering to
| understand the source of these differences, and ignoring
| the potential negative consequences of positive
| discrimination to the very people they intend to help -
| the general reaction to this criticism in my experience
| is that these details are insignificant, whereas I
| suspect the true reason is that they are _uncomfortable_
| to explore.
|
| It's incredibly difficult to broach this subject with
| anyone publicly in a rational way, let alone widely
| because the mob has already made up it's mind that if you
| are not in camp A, then you are evil, since the only
| alternative in their eyes is camp B. If you can also see
| the potential harm it can cause, the best you can do is
| plant seeds with others, and focus on being _unbiased_
| yourself, if you want to go deeper then you could even
| try to explore the sources of the differences (privately)
| and then enact some _informed_ change - but committing
| career suicide helps no one.
|
| [edit]
|
| This is probably the most public I've been with this
| subject and I already feel uncomfortable.
| tgflynn wrote:
| Thanks for having the courage to post your very sane
| views in an increasingly insane world.
| nkingsy wrote:
| I forget the details of the memo, but reading Wikipedia,
| this criticism resonated with my memory:
|
| "It mischaracterizes some sex differences as universal"
|
| My sister is also on the spectrum like James has said he
| is. One of her struggles is ironically in understanding
| spectra in other areas like gender differences.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Being punished for being realistic publically is an
| occupational hazard
| michaelcao wrote:
| We need more nurses, doctors, and software developers. I
| admire nurses, doctors. They help all of us a lot during
| Covid-19. I could not post this port without helping from
| doctor when i suffered covid-19's complication.
| xisthesqrtof9 wrote:
| Hi Michael, if you need any help integrating stripe. Let me
| know, I'd be happy to help, my email is in my bio.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks in advance.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>keeping a large amount of money in that account
|
| Or any banking account linked to PayPal. They can and will claw
| it back...
|
| Money should be moved as far from paypal's reach as possible,
| everyone should view them as a hostile vendor.
| salusinarduis wrote:
| Just to share my experience: I had a game server that
| accepted donations through Paypal. We had nearly $4000 in the
| account when suddenly it was frozen for "suspicious
| activity". We never got the money back and Paypal support
| ghosted us.
| michaelcao wrote:
| I like Paypal. I understand your thought so I always withdraw
| money monthly. Thanks again for your recommendation.
| softwareoiu wrote:
| palebt wrote:
| Congrats! This is inspiring!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks a lot
| equilibrium wrote:
| Keep going! Inspiring read - how did you meet your cofounder?
| michaelcao wrote:
| We are close friends from university so we are culture fit and
| easily to reach consensus on all things.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Michael,
|
| For you I would hire a professional copy writer to go over your
| description and improve the flow and readability (writing copy is
| HARD but for you since you have a compelling product its one of
| those things that could make the difference between a sale)
| ws404 wrote:
| This was really inspirational. Thanks and congrats!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for taking time to read my post. Have a great week.
| shadeslayer_ wrote:
| Love your story Michael. More power to you!
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks
| ultrasounder wrote:
| Hi Michael, your story put a smile on my face. Its so awesome
| that you were able to leverage the Google workspace add-on
| marketplace for your QR code. I think there is still a lot of
| untapped markets apart from Contact tracing which might use QR
| codes. So keep plugging and wish You and Your co-founder all the
| power in the world. Start Small.Stay small.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback. I like the book "Start Small, Stay
| Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup" and I learn
| a lot from that book. We event don't have an office. 100%
| remote work.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| I second your recommendation, it is a great book for small
| business founders.
| michaelcao wrote:
| One more comment, i think that Traction: Get a Grip on Your
| Business is a great book for founders.
| rwalling wrote:
| You rock, thank you sir!
| cocoland2 wrote:
| Very nicely done Michael. So happy for your success. More power
| to you , lots of <3 from India
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks for encouraging us
| koopuluri wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this Michael. I'm inspired by your story of
| how all of us can take our destinies into our own hands through
| determination and perseverance.
|
| All the best with your projects!
|
| With <3 from India.
| michaelcao wrote:
| Thanks. Hacker News is a great community for startups and
| entrepreneurs and i learn much from entrepreneurs like you and
| others. Thanks for your support
| tmilard wrote:
| Great job. Very inspiring project...
|
| I also think it is best to keep a job in the beginning. At least
| keeping a half time job. In France we have a great unemployment
| benefit (2/3 of salary Netto). This is great for founders to be
| full-time on the project on the first year and a half. I used it.
|
| According to many business Angel, unemployment benefits counts
| for the BIG majority of 'investment' in a startup.
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