Hi, I'm Ryan, lurker-turning-poster and maker of things

Introductions
#1

Hi all! I just realized that I’ve been lurking in this forum for over a year :open_mouth:

I’ve been doing the bootstrapping thing since about 2009 when I started Bugrocket with some colleagues. Then in 2012 I started CourseCraft with my wife and left my job to focus on these and other projects. Both are profitable as far as costs-vs-revenue, but not enough to fully support my family so I do part-time/contract stuff as well. Now that I think of it, maybe being so busy is why I never posted here!

Anyway, I’m eager to get more involved - both to get help/feedback as well as help others where I can.

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#2

Love the landing page for Bugrocket.

Has a sense of fun, and also does a good job at selling. I like how at the end after the main call to action (sign up) there is a pretty good last chance with: “Not sure yet? start tour >>”

And the tour is very thorough.

#3

Hey thanks I really appreciate the feedback! Especially on the tour, man it was a lot of work! I wrote/open-sourced jQuery-Tourbus in order to make it - yak shaving at its finest :slight_smile:

Ultimately the market for Bugrocket is a tough one to crack, I think. There are plenty of free options that target the same people (like Trello for instance, or just GitHub issues inside your repo). Those things didn’t really exist or weren’t very good (eg, Bugzilla) in 2009, but these days it’s a tough sell.

#4

Ha ha, that’s funny that you built your own jquery-tour thing from scratch, when you know that there are millions out there already. Even forking/improving someone else’s to suit your needs would’ve had to be a better use of time…

But of course I am totally guilty of doing that kind of thing myself out of a strong need to have complete understanding and control of how the things works, particularly when it’s something that will dictate how prospects “feel”. (Which is all just post-hoc rationalisation, naturally.) Good to see the further bus. :wink:

#5

I suppose I rationalize it by considering this whole thing both a hobby and a career. It was a weekend worth of work that I didn’t spend on something else – but it was a lot of fun, I learned a bunch, and released some useful code for others to use (it’s definitely my most popular open source project). All in all not a big loss I’d say!

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#6

Hi Ryan – I just used jQuery tourbus in an intranet site at work, it was fun to use. cheers.

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