The Online Web Development Course Fallacy
Technology

The Online Web Development Course Fallacy

I lack a formal education in programming. Outside of taking an introductory development course in college, I learned how to program by reading various books and developing side projects. When I began my journey there wasn't an abundance of interactive online courses, but now this material is the preferred method of learning and has accelerated the education of novice developers faster than ever. While this development is incredible to see, the downside to modern courses are that many create fall...

Pick a Theme, Rather than a Goal for the New Year
Thoughts

Pick a Theme, Rather than a Goal for the New Year

New Year's resolutions are well-intended, but rarely accomplished. Every year we go through the process of picking a goal that we want to accomplish and tell ourselves that starting January 1st, we will become a new person. I wish life worked like that, but studies tell us that 80% of resolutions fail, and most by the middle of February. So this year, try something different and choose a theme, rather than a goal. Goals require a strict start date, end date, and a specific outcome. It requires...

Getting Excited About Learning Again
Founder Story

Getting Excited About Learning Again

I was a “B” student in school. I listened in class and put in enough effort to get the grades I needed, but I never put in the work outside of class to master the material and rise to the perfection of an “A” student. For a long time I felt the resentment to put in the effort was the result of the subject matter, but I recently experienced these feelings again and convinced me that there was a different reason all along. After closing out Synotate and feeling a bit burnt out from working on te...

Founder Story

Sharing Failure

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." -Winston Churchill In my previous post, I briefly wrote about coming to terms with startup failure and moving forward. Today, I would like to share what it was like to share that failure. Failure brings out one of the worst emotional states in you, which is being embarrassed. This feeling is never welcomed and one that can drastically impact a psyche. I certainly had this emotional state after admitting defeat...

Founder Story

Admitting Failure

After close to seven months of working on Synotate [https://www.synotate.com] I am shutting the product down and going back to the drawing board. Admitting defeat is never easy and my decision to shut the product down is a difficult one I have made, but I have come to terms with this failure and have grown to appreciate every step of the journey. The development of Synotate forced me to learn new skills, navigate legal requirements for operating a business and face new challenges. This personal ...

Elastic Beanstalk - Ebextension Reverse Proxy Server Configuration
Technology

Elastic Beanstalk - Ebextension Reverse Proxy Server Configuration

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Beanstalk software is a massive help for developers looking to launch and scale servers without having to touch the server infrastructure. This benefit has been the reason why I have used it for multiple projects, but whenever I have needed to re-configure the server for certain use cases, I have found the product and its YAML based configuration files, ebextensions, to be difficult to use with limited documentation available. This was certainly the case when I ...

Founder Story

Early Stage Perception vs Reality

Before I launched Synotate I dreamt that it would be a home run right out of the gate. I blindly led myself to believe that the problems faced by myself and other marketers would be solved by the product I worked on for two years, but I was wrong. “Reality hit me fast” is the best way to summarize the four months since releasing the product to the public. The product has not been an immediate success, but I’m not by any means disappointed by the progress I have made and I want to share the impor...

Automatically Deleting Old Emails in Gmail
Technology

Automatically Deleting Old Emails in Gmail

Our life runs on email and depending on the state of our inbox, life can be good or bad. If you achieve inbox zero with ease, then congrats, you are in the 1% of people who can sleep well at night knowing they are on top of their tasks and communication. For the rest of us, it is common to stay afloat with cluttered inboxes blending important emails and newsletters to websites we didn’t realize we opted into. I, like many, fall into this category with some of my email accounts, so a few days ago...

Founder Story

Development Cost Expectations for Launching a Technology Startup

Starting a technology business is more capital intensive than most might be led to believe. While it is true that a business can be started with as little as a free Wordpress website, most business ideas have a unique product ideas that go beyond the functionality that a basic content management system (CMS) like Wordpress can provide. Due to these functionality requirements, free or low-cost app/website building options are not feasible to succeed and the only option entrepreneurs have is to bu...

Founder Story

Not Having Customers Sucks, But Feedback is Key

I am coming up on a month since launching Synotate [https://www.synotate.com/?utm_source=connorphillips.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=not-having-customer-sucks-but-feedback-is-key&utm_term=synotate&utm_content=article] and while I have my first non-paying customer, whom I work for, and one sign up that was from a forum feedback post, I do not have a single paying customer. It is definitely disheartening to be in this situation...no, actually, it sucks, but my feelings are the result of g...