Kynlyn

Do you also lament the creation of things like the fore-runner of the Internet that was created by the military industrial complex? Or the countless other advancements we use every day that were driven by military R&D? Or are you just completely and totally unaware of the significant contributions that military R&D has made to civilian lives?

And there are countless forums to discuss such "important" issues. Just because a story has humanistic touch, that doesn't mean it belongs here.

...except he stated in the article that they work 8 hours a day...

The link is now a 404..I hope it wasn't powered by Meteor...

The fact that it's considered contrarian to advise people to start with building a profitable and sustainable business model is a sad testament to the "startup culture" that emphasizes hype over substance.

Oh stop it. Get over yourself, already.

I've run my own software business for over a decade now and I still have a boss. It's called The Free Market.

I can decide I'm above doing certain tasks, but my customers can also decide to go to my competition if my company isn't taking care of their needs. And sometimes my customers need things that I really don't feel like doing.

But I do them..because they are my customers; they pay the bills. They are the boss.

I think it's a worthwhile goal to attempt to achieve this in other companies, but it's also important to truly understand why this works so well at GitHub.

GitHub is largely developers writing software for other developers. An interesting problem to a GitHubber is just as likely to be something that their customers are interested in. GitHub is a classic example of dog-fooding. They use their own product and many of their employees used the product before they came to work there. A typical developer at Github is very likely to have the same vision (and passion!) for the product as the owners of GitHub.

If your product is software for a vertical that doesn't happen to be other developers then are going to be likely challenges. What is interesting to the developers very well might not be interesting to their customers.

"Even if they were, they have no right of condemning their children to such life"

So who does? You? Western society? Don't you find that thinking a bit arrogant?

Oh snaps...And I got suckered by this.

It might have been AutoData, but they have merged with Chrome. Edmunds has a decoder, but it's pretty laughable. I'm not aware of any other major players in that field outside of those.

Chrome offers 1-1 matches on VIN to style Ids for most OEM's, but it's an additional cost.

Trucks are certainly the most difficult to decode. But if you are using something like ChromeData for the VIN data, and combine that with the info from the dealer's site then you can usually narrow the vehicle down to a specific trim level.

Not always however. Dealers frequently have incorrect or missing information on their websites, so garbage-in, garbage out.

This is why scraping dealer websites for data is always going to be problematic. Far better to work with the providers to have them send you the data. It's faster, easier and you get far better data.

What about trim levels? Trim levels are crucial in the buying decision. For example, if you search for a Ford F-150 on your site, there is no way to see if it's an XLT, King Ranch, Raptor, etc. The price and equipment difference in those vehicles is huge.

What about options and equipment? Does the car have navigation? Sunroof? Most consumers have specific option packages in mind when searching for car online.

This is why VIN explosion is necessary for any serious automotive shopping site. If a consumer can't narrow the vehicles down to a trim and option package level then it won't get wide adoption.

Exactly. Anyone who takes a look at revenues in an industry that they know nothing about, then extrapolates that to some measure of profit is being fairly naive. He goes a step further and determines his domain is "worth it" based on his guess at the profits.

Of course, he has a great domain name and he is well within his rights to ask whatever he wants for it. But to imply it's affordable without having any factual data to back that up is a bit much.