Top all-time · #4789
Erica Douglass
Personal blog · erica.biz · on HN as ericabizbusinessstartups
Erica Douglass's personal blog at erica.biz covers business and startups. Since 2010, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 39 times, most often “Need an idea for your business?”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters link Erica Douglass's 2012 post on SaaS pricing strategies as related reading on changing pricing models. The comments are mostly bare links, so the writing itself gets little comment.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Erica Douglass, "temporarily retired" after selling a successful business at age 26, writes thought-provoking blog entries challenging you to change your life and daring you to become more successful.
Most-linked posts?
- Need an idea for your business?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-05-09
- When The Sh*t Hits the Fan With Your Startup2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-08-07
- Dear California: I'm leaving you. Here's why...2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-08-08
- Sounding the Alarm: Now Is the Time to Be a Cockroach2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-07-20
- How to Price Your Product or Service-To Avoid Killing Your Business2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-07-30
What Hacker News says?
I wrote something similar today, only I called it "When the Sh-t Hits the Fan with Your Startup": http://www.erica.biz/2013/startup/ In the post, I wrote: I firmly believe no outside problem (running out of money; struggling to pay bills) can’t be fixed by looking inside yourself and becoming a better, stronger person. That may sound sort of cheesy and "self-help-y", but for me it was transformative. I had to have i…
Comment linking /2013/startup/
on “How to Convince Investors”Submitted Sounding the Alarm: Now Is the Time to Be a Cockroach as a story · 188 points
HN discussionSure; I gave a great example in my blog post here: http://www.erica.biz/2012/failure-success/ Feel free to email me with more specific questions if you like; email is in my profile.
Comment linking /2012/failure-success/
on “"Journey to Justinia" – how I got my 5-year-old son to sit still for 5 hours”Submitted My Experience at YC Hacks as a story · 132 points
HN discussionActually, girls can have ADHD too (I should know--I am one, and I've been diagnosed.) Also, as someone who's been diagnosed with ADHD, saying "boys being boys" is not only untrue, but also dismissive of what IS actually a medical problem for some of us. I wrote a blog post about ADHD called "Why I Feel Like A Failure, Even Though On the Outside, I'm A Success..." I think it might resonate with many here: ( http://ww…
Comment linking /2012/failure-success/
on “"Journey to Justinia" – how I got my 5-year-old son to sit still for 5 hours”Submitted Silicon Valley is Broken. Should We Even Bother to Fix It? as a story · 85 points
HN discussionI discovered this last year, too, and ended up not setting any goals: http://www.erica.biz/2011/2011-goals/ 2011 was a great year. I met my future spouse, bought an RV, and we went traveling together. It went so well that I didn't set any goals for 2012, either. Now I have a daily list of things to do (how I write that and what's on it is vastly different from most people's--that will probably be my next blog post),…
Comment linking /2011/2011-goals/
on “The busy trap”Submitted Dear Investors, My Company Failed and We Lost All Your Money. as a story · 22 points
HN discussionHi Tim--thanks for replying! To show my full hand, I'm the business/marketing co-founder/CEO at a software company--though I have a strong tech background, I chose to go into the marketing side because I love psychology and analytics so much. (I'm running an analytics startup.) I'm also a woman who's been known to drop some serious coin on clothes, and finally, I've previously stated publicly that I believe the futu…
Comment linking /2013/macklemore-effect/
on “I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100”Submitted Tips on Hiring Employees as a story · 17 points
HN discussionSomeone shared a couple links on this topic before but I didn't see them here http://www.erica.biz/2012/pricing-strategies/ http://conversionxl.com/pricing-experiments-you-might-not-kn...
Comment linking /2012/pricing-strategies/
on “Doubling SaaS Revenue By Changing The Pricing Model”Submitted Why You Should Talk To Investors (Even If You’re Not Raising Money) as a story · 13 points
HN discussionHi, I can't speak for Lloyd. But, as someone else who's building a funded startup here in Austin--and who sits about 10 feet away from Lloyd and OwnLocal every day!--I can answer it for me/my startup. I ran my last company in the Valley and did really well--I exited for 7 figures. I am building my current company in Austin because I see here what the Valley was in 2002-2004. Growing fast, retooling itself as a start…
Comment linking /2011/california-im-leaving-you/
on “How We Got into Y Combinator”Submitted Why I Feel Like A Failure, Even Though On the Outside, I'm A Success as a story · 11 points
HN discussionMy blog at http://erica.biz makes more than $1,000/mo in advertising and affiliate commissions. I built the blog after I bootstrapped and sold my first tech company. I talk a lot about growing your business/startup, and especially about all the failures I had while building my businesses. It became popular (1.2 million unique visitors last year alone.) I've now been blogging there for just over 6 years. Today I'm mo…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects - what did you make?”Submitted How to Price Your Product or Service-To Avoid Killing Your Business as a story · 11 points
HN discussionRelated (from 2007 but still relevant!): http://www.erica.biz/2007/hitting-the-jackpot-doesnt-mean-in... This does seem to be a consensus amongst successful entrepreneurs.
Comment linking /2007/hitting-the-jackpot-doesnt-mean-instantly-becoming-happy/
on “Selling your company doesn’t make you happy”Submitted Turn Off the Noise and Start Creating (An Entrepreneur's Manifesto) as a story · 11 points
HN discussion"Do you have any advice for telling when someone is doing this?" Yes. Put simply, learn to read facial cues. (It's easier than you think--much like a programming language, facial cues are a system. So if you are a systems thinker--and I bet you are, based on the fact that you're here on Hacker News--learning facial and body cues will probably be one of the best time investments you'll ever make.) I had no ingrained…
Comment linking /2008/my-7-day-no-complaining-wrapup-or-how-to-acknowledge-yourself-101/
on “Women and Tech”Submitted Can You Build A Successful Company "Outside the Bubble"? as a story · 10 points
HN discussion> Part of being an adult is owning a home and gaining all the advantages, both financial and psychological, that home ownership offers. Becoming intensely in debt (thereby forcing myself to work more) by buying into a ridiculously overpriced housing market, locking me to a single physical location that is destroying itself through disgustingly selfish infrastructure planning is not my idea of an advantage, financial…
Comment linking /2018/cockroach/
on “Investing Outside the Bay Area”Submitted Dear California: I'm leaving you. Here's why... as a story · 9 points
HN discussionAgreed. I lived in the Bay Area for 10 years and while it's nice there, there are other places that are equally nice without the hassle of having to pay so much in rent. Think of it this way: Even if you cash out rather nicely from a startup (as I did), you still won't be able to afford to buy a house outright unless you want to go back to work right away. I left for Austin, TX and I truly love it here. I'm running…
Comment linking /2012/austin-vs-silicon-valley/
on “How to find an apartment in San Francisco during the tech boom”Submitted “Hustle Porn” Is Making Us Sad and Suicidal as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI can, for Austin. I lived in the Bay Area for 10 years and ran a tech company there. I chose to locate my current startup (now 6 people; 4 Austin/2 remote) in Austin. Here's my perspective: http://www.erica.biz/2012/austin-vs-silicon-valley/
Comment linking /2012/austin-vs-silicon-valley/
on “Why I’m Quitting My Job and Leaving San Francisco”Submitted When The Sh*t Hits the Fan With Your Startup as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSame story; different company: http://www.erica.biz/2009/common-mistake-in-business/ It is amazing how even fairly technically-savvy people get sucked into the "RAID=backup" mentality. This story (in the above link) ended up costing the business owner tens of thousands of dollars.
Comment linking /2009/common-mistake-in-business/
on “I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1”Submitted The Nastiest Habit - Comparing Ourselves to Others as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI'm just going to leave this here in the hope that @Rakathos reads it. It's all about why "small business owners" are a terrible market: http://www.erica.biz/2013/new-business-ideas/ I cite some good examples of markets in there, as well, so you can see the difference between a good market and a bad one.
Comment linking /2013/new-business-ideas/
on “My product failed”Submitted The Real Reason Why 80%+ of Funded Startups Fail as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
