Back
Marc Köhlbrugge

Marc Köhlbrugge
PRO

@marc

Maker of WIP. Building various other projects as well. Writing book about domain names.
4
39
Joined September 2017
Load previous page…

Fun idea! I think it's too specialized for WIP (I try to keep the codebase minimal), but you should be able to build this fairly easily with the API ( wip.co/api ) by fetching recent todos and looking at the created_at timestamps along with the time_zone values. (the time_zone value for each todo represents the time_zone your account was set to at the time the todo was created)

Although now that I think about it, we could do it slightly differently and it might have wider appeal. Or maybe this is what you meant. Here's what I have in mind now:

A column chart similar to iPhone's sleep schedule. The x axis represent the days (each day is a column). The y axis represents the hour of the day. The column goes from first todo created (e.g. 8am) to last todo created (e.g. 9pm).

The length of the columns will show the work session times (longer columns is longer work sessions). Where they start and stop shows when you start and stopped working. We can also show dots within the column for each completed todo.

Times would be adjusted for the time zone you were in at that moment.

I agree it would be an interesting visualization.

One challenge would be figure out what to do with work sessions that end AFTER midnight. Which I think is quite common.

I guess a simpler solution would be not to show columns, but just dots for each completed todo.

I was imagining a little square widget on the user's profile in the right sidebar. The X axis is days, the Y axis is the amount of time it took the person to start working (self-reported).

The idea would be you could have several different types of productivity-measures that people could track. For example, MyFitnessPal lets you track steps per day, but I don't use that functionality.

I think your proposed version would definitely result in a smaller codebase since you wouldn't be collecting and storing additional types of information, my only reservation is that I don't think it would be particularly useful to me without knowing 1) when I woke up that day (maybe have that as a special TODO type that gets ignored on the homepage / profile so it doesn't clutter the UI?), 2) how difficult the TODO was, since some of my tasks take many hours to complete (I suppose it would incentivize having small tasks to jumpstart the day, which is a productivity tip I've already been wanting to use).

One suggestion is to use their mobile app exclusively as it's easier to use than their website.

That said, you shouldn't be using the app that frequently either IMO. Investment is more of a long term thing. Not something where you use the app everyday.

Related: gherget.com/investing-guide

Thanks Marc, I love that guide, it's what made me decide to take the plunge 😀

Your logo/branding isn't going to make or break your startup. I'd just pick something simple and move on.

For handle.horse I just use the 🐴 emoji. For WIP, I used 🚧 for a long time. In your case you could do something like this: 🚂🛍️

If you prefer not to use an emoji, you can just use a nice typeface with maybe a basic shape and color. That's what I did for Room AI: roomai.com

If you really want a logo, I'd just find a suitable icon on one of the many free icons site and add your name next to it. For example this one: thenounproject.com/icon/rails…

Make sure to check the license before using such an icon.

Yeah, definitely logos won't make or break anything (at this point, anyway).

I interpreted as understanding the core audience, positioning, and messaging, which absolutely would make or break a startup.

I've seen a LOT of people use emojis as logos lately, mostly in the indie hacker community. I love to see it!

Yeah, this is what I did initially with the current version. Definitely not a must have, so maybe this is more just procrastination? Probably better to just focus on monetization and other improvements first. The design overall was bugging me (just felt so cheap/clunky) and if I was going to redo the overall site design anyways, figured I'd start with doing proper branding.

Same in the Netherlands and I think the rest of Europe. It's one of the reasons I moved out.

I use Cloudflare + Fastmail. It's $5/mo for unlimited emails and domains I think. I've been using this setup for years and it's perfect.

Cloudflare provides you with MX records for your domain names. This means all incoming emails will first arrive at Cloudflare, which you can configure to then forward these emails to your one Fastmail account. This is free I believe.

Fastmail is a $5/mo email account. Incoming emails are already being forwarded via Cloudflare to your Fastmail inbox. You can then also configure Fastmail to send emails from these domain names. These are known as aliases. You can have as many as you want.

It might be possible to have Fastmail also handle incoming emails so you can skip the Cloudflare step. I'm not sure, but it's something you could look into if you're not already using Cloudflare for DNS.

Thanks Marc! This looks like a solid setup. I'll look into this.

Singapore. Typically you want to incorporate where you do (most) of your work.

This is probably the right answer, confirmed by some online searches and opinions from other communities. The downside is (at least here in Spain) it is really bureaucratic and painful to be a small business.

Same in the Netherlands and I think the rest of Europe. It's one of the reasons I moved out.

The one issue I ran into this, is that whenever someone would ask for a proper invoice, I'd need to generate it with the above calculation. I think Quaderno did this for me.

But then if the customer was a business in say Germany (where I'd take the same approach, but 19%), they might then later provide their VAT ID and ask for their paid VAT back. As technically they don't need to pay it.

I'd need to tell them that if they provided their VAT ID, the base price would be $100 again (and so they didn't gain anything). Bit hard to explain to people 😅

I don't use Stripe Tax, but when I was incorporated in the Netherlands I would just charge everyone the same amount (e.g. $100), and then retroactively decide what percentage was VAT.

So if the customer was in the Netherlands (e.g. based on their credit card country + IP address), I would do $100 / 1.21 = $82.64 as base price, and the remainder as VAT.

The one issue I ran into this, is that whenever someone would ask for a proper invoice, I'd need to generate it with the above calculation. I think Quaderno did this for me.

But then if the customer was a business in say Germany (where I'd take the same approach, but 19%), they might then later provide their VAT ID and ask for their paid VAT back. As technically they don't need to pay it.

I'd need to tell them that if they provided their VAT ID, the base price would be $100 again (and so they didn't gain anything). Bit hard to explain to people 😅

Where are you incorporated now? I'm having to think about this as I will have to start charing users for jobsinenglish.dk soon.

Judging by my invoice for WIP.co membership, it's incorporated in Singapore.

Singapore. Typically you want to incorporate where you do (most) of your work.

This is probably the right answer, confirmed by some online searches and opinions from other communities. The downside is (at least here in Spain) it is really bureaucratic and painful to be a small business.

Same in the Netherlands and I think the rest of Europe. It's one of the reasons I moved out.

I'm using Stripe Tax and Stripe Checkout, which calculates the tax and generates the invoices + receipts. It works nicely. Need to do a followup call with my accountant to discuss it further.

What's the reason he wants you to charge tax where Stripe Tax dictates zero?

I’m not sure we need to look into it together more, they have experience with other PSP but not Stripe yet

Stripe charges a fee for invoicing, you can use this tool instead zenvoice.io/

@levelsio had an internet issue. Not sure about my double comments 😅

It was under our convo about the new messaging feature :)

There is a messaging feature now? Whaaat.

Just seeing this now. I will add this once I've refactored some code.