Kendall's "Internet startup checklist":

1. Idea:

  1. Would YOU write a check for your idea?
  2. Don't spill your candy in the lobby.
  3. Is your idea refining or revolutionizing?

2. Funding:

  1. Are your financials realistic if nothing goes right?
  2. Could you see your investors with a 10X, 20X return in 3 years?
  3. Do you have back-up plans b,c,d before quitting your day job?
  4. Do you have a great answer for the most cynical of investors?

3. team:

  1. Can you build your idea or will it take a team of pros?
  2. Is a specific person on your team essential or can he/she be replaced?
  3. Dont give up the farm to recruit talent.
  4. Hire brave & passionate smart people.

4. Product:

  1. Does your product SOLVE a problem?
  2. Beware of feature creep! Customers & prospects add features, not developers.
  3. Stay focused on money earning features, not cool ones.

5. Marketing:

  1. Is it costly (time/resources) to get branded in your target market?
  2. Make a goal of closing a core group of customers the first year. (traction)
  3. Adjust marketing resources to get traction (don't need much).
  4. Be sure to test your "seo / ad-words / ad-sense" properly before banking on them
  5. Nothing is better than "boots on the street." Start knocking on doors.

6. Customer:

  1. How many "loss leaders" do you have?
  2. Does your idea help your customer or is it just a "nice to have"?
  3. Make each customer feel like they are the only customer you have.
  4. Can your customers be up-sold? Do they have peers they could refer?


February 9, 2011 Paypal Rails 3 Recurring Billing

Photo: [flickr]

If you really want a treat, at a whole new level, check out this one. It isn’t a cookie, but a sweet Gem that just got sweeter.  Be sure to fall in love with the gang over at Shopify for creating Active Merchant. Active Mechant is a wrapper for Paypal’s API to help hacks like me talk to Paypal’s API via my Ruby on Rails apps (other gateways too) effortlessly. On top of that enormous time savings, thanks to Van Tran et Raymond Law with SOAP, we now have recurring billing with Active Merchant! If the below means ANYTHING to you, be sure to check it out.

::GATEWAY = ActiveMerchant::Billing::PaypalRecurringGateway.new()

//
 response = GATEWAY.create_profile(nil, :credit_card => credit_card,
      :description => 'Good times',
      :start_date => Date.today,
      :period => 'Month',
      :frequency => 1,
      :amount => 1000,
      :initial_amount => 1000,
      :auto_bill_outstanding => true)
//

If anyone is crazy enough to be a Ruby hack and needs help with this let me know. I will make a sample app on github to clone otherwise Van does a nice job.

Want to comment? Comments: 2

Posted by Kendall in rails3


2 comments so far

  1. So I’ve been searching thru the rdoc for the ActiveMerchant (http://rubydoc.info/gems/activemerchant/1.15.0/frames) and can’t find anything regarding PaypalRecurringGateway. Is this not in the public version of ActiveMerchant? Or is it in a pre-release version?

    Thanks!

    June 8th, 2011

  2. check out VanTran at link below. It is a modified gem that you call activemerchant from his git. Works nicely, cant find bug with it.

    http://www.naivehack.com/2010/11/24/active-merchant-paypal-recurring-payment/

    June 8th, 2011

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