karjaluoto

I don’t think it’s much of an arms race. There are practical limitations to scan frequency that’ll keep most groups operating within the same general constraints.

Added costs/fees are somewhat inevitable. I spent $25 for two small bundles of firewood on my last camping trip. Everyone’s got to make a buck somehow.

I see Campnab as a convenience. Anyone can refresh the booking system manually, but doing so is time consuming. Some folks are happy to pay for that convenience.

Campsite availability is largely a supply and demand problem concentrated around busy centers and amplified during certain times. Drive a little further and go on the weekdays and it isn’t as much of an issue.

Perhaps lotteries would help. Some permits have been switched to this approach. I’m not sure how practical they are to implement across the board, though.

Personally, I don’t think any solution will actually solve this problem. That said, a lot of campsites do sit unused when folks fail to cancel. Reminders a week in advance of a trip could help with this. Some areas also have policies that discourage no-shows.

I love hearing this! (My friend and I built Campnab.)

P.S., I joined each of your suggested subreddits. :-)

Thanks! I follow a few of these sorts of subreddits and do find them useful. It feels like less of a community than HN, though. I also like the text-only approach on HN. It just seems easier for my pea-brain to a linear list of items without the thumbnails and such.

My friend and I did something like what you propose (selling services and working on a product). It was hard and slowed us down a lot.

Consulting work is a business all to itself. Tacking a startup on top of that just complicates matters. Got a family? Well, you won’t see them much.

If I were in the same situation, I’d keep my day job and spend my spare time working on the product. This approach would cover living expenses, compartmentalize my tasks, and allow me to put all of my non-job hours into the product.

Like you, we tried to start our company the “right” way. That too was a mistake. If I had it to do over again, I’d skip the lawyers and accountants and just try to make a product people wanted to buy.

If you can achieve product-market fit, funding and all of the business stuff can get sorted out reasonably easily.

Another approach might be to toss it on blot.im. (I’m in no way affiliated with Blot, but I like how simple the product is.)

I’m happy to see this launch, Andrei! You all have dedicated so many years to working on chat for business. I’m excited to see this out there, and watch this next chapter in your story unfold!

Awesome—thanks for signing up! If you run into any issues, do let us know. :-)

We’re using Wasabi for cloud storage. So far it has worked pretty well for this project.

Nice! If you do try it, please let us know how the experience goes for you. I think the onboarding process is a bit intimidating given the (necessary, yet lengthy) permissions we request.

I’ll mention that you’d be interested in more options around backups to @shelkie. Like I said, I don’t think we can make this happen now, but it’s good to have a sense for what others might find useful.

We’ve thought about it, but I think it’ll be a while before we’re able to get to that. We also run two other products, and we’re just two people. So, we’re already spread a bit thin.

Those are fair points and thoughts I’d probably have myself. I’m not trying to sell you on this, but here are my responses to your two notes.

The first is that we know it’s more expensive than Google Photos storage. That’s in part so that we can actually fund development. As a small operation we can’t run it as a loss-leader or make up revenue from other channels like Google could.

The second is that we’ve been somewhat vetted through Google’s application process. We’ve also been building things for the web for 20+ years. Admittedly, trust is hard to earn from folks you don’t know, but we are decent people.

To be honest, Pixaver probably isn’t right for most folks on HN as most here are pretty technical. (I’m just a daily reader here, and spotted this thread, so I thought I’d share it.)

We’ve geared this more for people like my mom who don’t want to set up a local hard drive or do anything even remotely technical. For someone like her, it’s a couple of clicks to having a second backup without needing to do anything additional. :-)

I feel like you’re projecting your beliefs/values on me. We’ve never met, nor shared any interaction outside of this comment thread. I think it’s improbable that you have any sense for what’s in my heart or what I believe to be true.