theunixbeard

Joined 15 years ago

Karma
321
Submissions
140
Member since
Jan 2
Ben Gelsey - Ruby on Rails software developer currently traveling throughout the world.

say hi:

ben at bengelsey.com - or - beng at empireflippers.com

View on Hacker News

Recent submissions

Comment · 8 months ago
Empire Flippers | Remote (no office), all timezones | Full-time | https://empireflippers.com

Empire Flippers is a true global-remote company with travel in our DNA and employees scattered across 5 continents and all sorts of countries. Since I joined 6 years ago, I've personally been to India, the US, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, the Philippines, China, Japan, Thailand, the UAE, all while working remotely and coding our Ruby on Rails + React app. More about us here: https://empireflippers.com/about-us

Though not as well known in the Hacker News / venture-backed startups sphere, Empire Flippers is widely considered the #1 marketplace for buying and selling online businesses in the 5 to 8 figure USD range.

Think of businesses like --- that recipe site you landed on as the first result when you googled "best chicken tikka masala recipe". Or the Amazon FBA seller whose product you purchased when shopping for "Widget XYZ" (with Amazon FBA, these ecommerce businesses never touch inventory and so it's a fully online business).

Turns out these type of businesses may be earning 10s of thousands of dollars per month in profit (or more!) and when the (often first time) founder is ready to sell, Empire Flippers is the #1 place to do it safely, securely and at a fair market price.

Before I joined Empire Flippers I only had a peripheral understanding of this space, but now that I've been steeped in this industry I can say that this "mini M&A" world is just as exciting as the high-flying unicorns (and decacorns) that we read about daily on Hacker News.

The company is hiring for a few different positions (both technical & non-technical), all of which can be found here: https://empireflippers.com/careers

But in particular, I'm hiring a Ruby on Rails developer to help me continue to build out new features in our Platform, both for customers and to help run our (very extensive) internal operations of vetting incoming businesses, facilitating their sale, and migrating them to the new owner after they've been purchased.

That job ad can be found here: https://empireflippers.com/career/ruby-on-rails-developer/

As mentioned, we are a global-remote company that hires people of all nationalities located in any country in the world.

Hope to see your application soon, and with any questions feel free to email me (Ben) at beng at empireflippers.com

Comment · 9 months ago
New Zealand in this case!
Comment · 10 months ago
Comment · 2 years ago
Happy Tiller user as well, with a bit of effort customizing your Google Sheets and you can out-do any SaaS app on the marketplace.
Comment · 3 years ago
Be warned: The Pixel 5A has a manufacturer defect where they just die out of nowhere:

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/11833075?hl=en

This just happened to me after 1.5 years of usage of my Pixel 5A.

Luckily Google extended the usual 1-year warranty to be 2-years to give free replacements (which I took advantage of and in fact was given a free upgrade to a 6A)... But be prepared for your phone to die out of nowhere.

Comment · 3 years ago
Looks like PE and venture-backed tech have a bad rep these days given how cynical the comment section is...

It seems the core problem at hand attempting to be solved is baby boomer small business owners retiring and having no one to buy their business (or pass down to who actually wants to run it)...

That seems like a worthy problem to tackle. Definitely will keep an eye on this company over the years to see if the model pans out or not.

Comment · 3 years ago
For anyone who likes spreadsheets but wishes the boring data input bits were a little more automated, check out: https://www.tillerhq.com

Imagine a Google sheet where 1 tab pulls in all your transactions from each of your banks / credit cards / investment accounts and the other tabs are... Whatever you can imagine.

I am a huge fan, after I graduated from mint.com I've never looked back after finding Tiller.

You can customize to your hearts content (it's Google Sheets, after all), plus they have handy template sheets to get started with.

I personally have sheets to track my monthly spending (by category), my networth, my checking account balance vs sum of all credit card bills, my progress on credit card signup bonus minimum spend challenges are more.

Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
Presumably if your site is behind Cloudflare then this strategy won't work, right? Since the IP addresses that Security Trails sees are just of Cloudflare rather than your actual Heroku IPs...?

Or is it possible in the Cloudflare dashboard there is somewhere to see your Heroku server's IP address?

Comment · 4 years ago
Awesome work, Albert! Looks like you are crushing it on HackerOne, over $37K in bounties?

https://hackerone.com/albertspedersen?type=user

You've obviously got a strong career in Security in the future. Have you looked at any Crypto projects? Seems like there are some massive bounties on https://immunefi.com and similar sites.

Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 5 years ago
Empire Flippers | Remote (no office), all timezones | Full-time | https://empireflippers.com

Empire Flippers is a true global-remote company with travel in our DNA and employees scattered across 5 continents and all sorts of countries. Since I joined 1.5 years ago, I've personally been to India, the US, Brazil and Colombia so far, all while working remotely and coding our Ruby on Rails + React app. More about us here: https://empireflippers.com/about-us

Though not as well known in the Hacker News / venture-backed startups sphere, Empire Flippers is widely considered the #1 marketplace for buying and selling online businesses in the 5 to 8 figure USD range.

Think of businesses like --- that recipe site you landed on as the first result when you googled "best chicken tikka masala recipe". Or the Amazon FBA seller whose product you purchased when shopping for "Widget XYZ" (with Amazon FBA, these ecommerce businesses never touch inventory and so it's a fully online business).

Turns out these type of businesses may be earning 10s of thousands of dollars per month in profit (or more!) and when the (often first time) founder is ready to sell, Empire Flippers is the #1 place to do it safely, securely and at a fair market price.

Before I joined Empire Flippers I only had a peripheral understanding of this space, but now that I've been steeped in this industry I can say that this "mini M&A" world is just as exciting as the high-flying unicorns (and decacorns) that we read about daily on Hacker News.

The company is hiring a wide variety of positions (both technical & non-technical), all of which can be found here: https://empireflippers.com/careers

But in particular, I'm hiring a Senior Ruby on Rails developer to help me continue to build out new features in our Platform, both for customers and to help run our (very extensive) internal operations of vetting incoming businesses, facilitating their sale, and migrating them to the new owner after they've been purchased.

That job ad can be found here: https://empireflippers.com/career/senior-ruby-on-rails-devel...

Our target salary range is $85K - $100K USD, and as a global-remote company we are hiring people of all nationalities located in any country in the world.

Hope to see your application soon, and with any questions feel free to email me (Ben) at beng at empireflippers.com

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