cschmitt

I am in the process overhauling my company's bets program. I have previous experience managing betas, so I know what I should be doing. But I am very interested in your experiences. What are examples of bad beta programs you participated in and why were they bad? (lack of transparency, feedback went into a black hole, no communication, etc).

Thanks in advance for taking some time to help me out.

I love building web apps and can build MVP's with the best of them. My problem is that I suck at customer discovery. So I tend to build web MVP's that go no where with little to no feedback.

What tips do you guys have for weekend entrepreneurs like me who want to build web apps but suck at customer discovery?

I am curious on what everyone uses to manage their betas. Something like prefinery or maybe a homegrown app?

Some days are better for news than others. Is any one particular time better than another to get maximum exposure for your beta launch?

Mondays, Fridays, Early, Lunch, Late.. what works for you guys?

I have a new idea for a game. The game is mostly text based and doesn't require heavy graphics. The game centers around social competition through a series of random challenges (mostly word based). This got me thinking, what is the better development platform. Facebook or an android app. I choose those platforms based on my skill set, rails and java.

Any advice/thoughts from you guys would be appreciated.

I am starting a new project and I am curious what you do for hosted contact forms? I really don't want to go through adding a full backend just to support a contact form. I know of services like mail chimp and contactology but they are more for list management. And sites like wufoo are really expensive and I hate online theme designers.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for the feedback

I missed the original post on coding horror but came across a video of Jeff giving the presentation at the 2012 Atlassian summit. After watching the video I wrote up a new blog post about my thoughts on Jeff's talk. I am new at blogging so I would love any feedback you guys have.

Link To Blog Post: http://oakcitylabs.com/2012/10/17/how-i-interpret-jeff-atwoods-how-to-stop-at-sucking-and-be-awesome