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30 years ago, I was an engineering graduate starting my first job. Now I'm an entrepreneur using my technical skills to start and grow my business. Here's the story of my journey.
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PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
A Techie’s Adventures in Startup Land
Rachel Willmer
Slides: http://slideshare.net/rwillmer
Website: http://luzme.com
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
Who Am I?
• Developer & enterpreneur
• Worked for : PAFEC, MARI, Spider Systems
• Customers : London, Rome, New York
• Co-organiser in Edinburgh:
– TechMeetup
– ‘Disruption in Publishing’ Conference
– Edinburgh Financial Cryptography Engineering
Conference
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
Freedom
Freedom by kliefi is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
Luzme Is Born
Anguilla beach by Lionel Eric is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
Luzme• Luzme is the ebook price comparison site
• 1000 4000 registered users worldwide
• USA, Canada, UK, Australia, India
• And now Germany and Spain
• 25 35 VMs in 4 7 countries
• 1 dev/ops/support/marketing/sales = ME
• Written in Django/Python
• And now also Meteor/Javascript
• Started in 2008
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
• Switching to OmniGraffle for
architecture walkthrough…
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
And now in words…• Original: webserver + database + cron job
• #1: Extra worker nodes: scraping, API lookups
• #2: Datafeed node
• #3: Overseas workers (geographical location matters!)
• #4: Queueing (celery/rabbitmq)
• #5: Caching (redis)
• #6: Search (elasticsearch)
• #7: Host Monitoring (zenoss)
• #8: Business metrics (logstash, graphite, statsd)
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
My First Job
Strelley Hall by veggiesosage is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
[Photo of Harris Computer]
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
The Two Rules of Business
• Rule #1: Stay in Business
• Rule #2: Profit is a concept; Cash is
reality (note rule #1)
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
My Dot-Com: Intertrader
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
2003: Now What?
• Back to freelancing…
• With some sideprojects for fun:
–WiiFit price checker
– “How Safe Is Your Money”
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
And Then…
ebooks => $$$
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
There’s More Than One Way To Do It
• Wordpress Theme
• Single function website (e.g. wiifit)
• Self-published ebook
– e.g. “How to do <SHINY NEW TECH>”
• Training Course on Udemy
• Self-funded growth (like I’m doing)
• VC-funded growth (but you give up control)
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
And Finally…
One last piece of advice for anyone
thinking of jumping in at the deep
end…
DON’T DO IT!
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
Resources• PODCASTS:
– http://www.earwolf.com/show/startup-school Seth Godin
– http://startupsfortherestofus.com
– http://tropicalmba.com
• BOOKS:
– http://rachelandrew.co.uk/books/the-profitable-side-project
• Use “PYCON” discount code for 20% off
– http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com
• Use ‘rachel’ discount code for 20% off
– http://nathanbarry.com/authority/
– http://www.startupbook.net “Start Small, Stay Small”
PyCon IE, Dublin, Oct 2014
QUESTIONS?
• Slides are available on slideshare
• http://www.slideshare.net/rwillmer
• Twitter: @rwillmer
