A Smart Bear

go to the Harvard MBA for Bootstrappers i.e https://longform.asmartbear.com

one of the recommended posts: https://longform.asmartbear.com/problem/ which goes to the heart of what you're experiencing.

play in large markets, very large in absolute numbers i.e B2B but small enough not to attract major VC companies - again play in large markets - don't listen to indie-hacker influencers that are making stuff for other indie hackers.

luckily everyone is running into A.I now - so there's plenty of things to be solved. not sexy, you've to look hard, screen hard (cz some opportunities look credible till you do the math i.e is there a large number of people, what is the willingness of those people to pay)

most of your work will be in marketing (marketing not selling) i.e researching to find out which problem will people actually pay for - what are the market dynamics - then only will you code a product.

tip: for a solo business - you've to be in an ecosystem kinda place.

These are all people running AI labs! They want investment, and what better way to get investment than to tell people you're going to create Terminator? The people leaving OpenAI are joining other labs – their livelihoods depend on AI companies receiving investment: "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it".

> The models keep getting better at an exponential [sic].

We don't know if this is true. A lot of growth that appears exponential is often quadratic (https://longform.asmartbear.com/exponential-growth/) or follows a logistic function (e.g. Moore's law).

Additionally there's a LOT of benchmark gaming going on, and a lot of the benchmark solving is not down to having a process that actually solves the problems; it just turns out that the problems already kind of lie in the span of text on the internet.

It seems the article you're talking about is the opponent color process, which here's some great articles about it: https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color2.html https://blog.asmartbear.com/color-wheels.html

I had some fun modeling the color space in 3d on codepen: https://codepen.io/torleifw/pen/jOwjPxp

(or a more boring slider option here: https://codepen.io/torleifw/pen/OJgdyPJ)

One of latest papers I've read recommended using a matrix to transform color spaces, which i've also done a codepen for.

Interestingly the opponent process mirrors the LAB color space, which is soon going to be available in Safari. This is pretty cool and can enable developers to color coordinate easier.

I'm going to give the webpage you linked a good read, looks very interesting.

Nathan and Amy: this is awesome. By letting us “listen in” on your dialogue the lessons in here feel genuine. Great work.

To add a little fuel to the fire, I’ll make a few comments:

> Amy: "I’ve never seen anyone do successful presales for a software product, for the record."

I guess it depends on the definition of “successful” – Jason Cohen had 40 pre-sales before he started building WPEngine: http://blog.asmartbear.com/stop-customer-interviews.html

> Amy: "I don’t know ANYONE… ANYONE… who outsourced their product and made a success out of it."

Again, it depends on your definition of “success” but I personally think Rob Walling is pretty successful, and he outsources almost all of his development: http://www.softwarebyrob.com

April Dunford has two great books. Positioning comes first, then sales.

As a small outfit, you probably don't want to actually sell. The approach that worked for me was to focus on inbound marketing and let customers self-select and come to you. Have a great pitch, ideally right there on your web site. Then get them onto a trial, treat them as customer from day one and get them into your customer success programme.

In essence: build a great product, talk about it, find the right customers and couple with fanatical customer success.

Also, choose a problem for which there is a good audience: https://longform.asmartbear.com/problem/

NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo....... ;)

This is the exact wrong way round. Continuous colour scales are hugely problematic because of the fact that our colour perception is closely linked to context.

the classic illustration: http://blog.asmartbear.com/wp-content/uploads/Grey_square_optical_illusion.png

If precise comparisons are required you're better off not using colour at all. Colour e.g. in choropleth maps, is good for showing broad spatial trends or highlighting particular areas for selection. A bar chart is better for precise comparisons because we're much better at comparing lengths than colours.