How to Start a Two-Bit Operation: Small Business Tips » About http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog From start to small business. Learn and live vicariously. Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:22:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Justin Interviewed on The Hot Iron http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/justin-interviewed-on-the-hot-iron/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/justin-interviewed-on-the-hot-iron/#comments Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:38:17 +0000 Justin http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/?p=208 I had the opportunity to be interviewed on The Hot Iron by Mike Maddaloni of Dunkirk Systems.  Give it a read to see what we’ve been up to and how we work as a small, virtual company.  Thanks again, Mike!

Justin

]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/justin-interviewed-on-the-hot-iron/feed/ 0 30+ Things about Justin Chen You Didn’t Want to Know http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/30-things-about-justin-chen-you-didnt-want-to-know/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/30-things-about-justin-chen-you-didnt-want-to-know/#comments Wed, 29 Aug 2007 07:45:11 +0000 Justin http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/2007/08/29/30-things-about-justin-chen-you-didnt-want-to-know/ Mike Maddaloni tagged me so I’m supposed to give some random things about myself and then tag some more people. Here’s a post about the whole tagging game. For my post, in addition to my 5 things, I’ll give you a bonus of almost 30 of my habits.

  • I’m a large asian man and I’m becoming obsessed with CrossFit. If you see me doing squats for no reason at all, that’s why.
  • When I was 5, I broke my femur falling from a ladder. I had to have a body cast that went from chest to toe and I had to be flipped on my side to use the bathroom. Ouch!
  • I love traveling. The few years I had a working wage, I went to Italy (twice), France (twice), the Czech Republic, Spain and China. My wife and I love traveling so much it was the theme of our wedding in July.
  • I enjoy the taste of bloody meat. Nothing quite satisfies me like knawing away on a juicy steak. No seasoning please.
  • You can read me like a book. You can tell if I’m nervous. You can tell if I’m happy. You can tell if I’m unhappy. I’ll tell you if I’m hungry.
  • Here are my almost 30 publicly admitted good and bad habits. What are your habits?

I thought about helping to stop the tag train by not tagging others, but what would be the fun in that? After all, unlike email forward spam, the tag game gives people free links to help SEO and who doesn’t want more links? So here we go….tag you’re all it! (Justin runs away waving his arms like a child on a playground.)

- Justin

]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/30-things-about-justin-chen-you-didnt-want-to-know/feed/ 0 Food Fights – a vital part of every birthday! http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/food-fights-a-vital-part-of-every-birthday/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/food-fights-a-vital-part-of-every-birthday/#comments Sun, 04 Feb 2007 01:23:43 +0000 john http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/2007/02/04/food-fights-a-vital-part-of-every-birthday/ Happy birthday Two-Bit Operation! Today marks the one-year anniversary of our last day at our previous jobs. It seems like just last week that, wide-eyed and full of boundless optimism, we started the company and this blog. What difference a year makes! Our eyes aren’t as wide anymore (fatigue-induced :) ), but we’re still optimistic. In a couple days we’ll post a Two-Bit retrospective about the past year.

b
One thing we’ve definitely learned is to keep moving forward, and in that vein, we’re super excited to announce the first monthly Menuism Food Fight! You might have heard about it on the Menuism Blog, but a good thing bears repeating: Eat PANCAKES and win prizes! In honor of National Pancake Week (Feb 18-24), we’re looking for the BEST pancake in Seattle, Chicago, New York and San Francisco, and you can win by just eating pancakes and reviewing them on Menuism. You can win even if you’re not a pancake fan – just refer a winner and you’ll win as well. So get out there and spread the word, or check the press release or contest page for more details!

Publicity in all forms is great, and we’re really excited to be getting Food Fight coverage from the awesome guys at Tech Cocktail and WindyBits. However, you know you’ve really made it when your name shows up on a banana, courtesy of the fine folks at BananaName:
banana

This is proof positive that Menuism’s Food Fight is something to go “bananas” over… sorry, couldn’t resist. :)

- John & Justin

]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/food-fights-a-vital-part-of-every-birthday/feed/ 0 Stop wondering and start eating! Presenting Menuism.com http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/stop-wondering-and-start-eating-presenting-menuismcom/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/stop-wondering-and-start-eating-presenting-menuismcom/#comments Tue, 03 Oct 2006 17:29:56 +0000 Justin http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/10/03/stop-wondering-and-start-eating-presenting-menuismcom/ If you’re following our blog, you might be wondering what we’ve been working on.

Wait no longer….

(drum roll)

We’re proud to announce Menuism!

Menuism is a user-contributed restaurant guide that has menus, food reviews, and provides personalized restaurant recommendations!  Check it out at:

http://www.menuism.com

If you want to follow along the menuism-specific updates, check out the blog at blog.menuism.com or subscribe to the RSS feed. We’ll continue to update the Two-Bit Operation blog with general business posts and our usual rants.

Thanks for all your support these past few months.

John & Justin

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]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/stop-wondering-and-start-eating-presenting-menuismcom/feed/ 2 The cat’s (halfway) out of the bag… http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/the-cats-halfway-out-of-the-bag/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/the-cats-halfway-out-of-the-bag/#comments Thu, 04 May 2006 07:32:29 +0000 john http://twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/05/04/the-cats-halfway-out-of-the-bag/ And her name is Ruby. Ruby on Rails, to be exact. After “working” now for a few months in near total secrecy, it’s time we shared some of the technical details of how we spend most of our time. We’re still not ready to share what exactly we are doing, but we want to be able to discuss how we are doing it. And a large part of the how is Ruby on Rails.

What is Ruby on Rails? Ruby is an interpreted, object-oriented programming language, and Rails refers to the web development framework that DHH and others at 37 Signals extracted from their Basecamp product. Ruby is a simple-to-learn, yet powerfully expressive and flexible language that can lead to really elegant (or really ugly) code. Combine this with Rails, which provides a very supportive MVC architecture, and you have a fantastic starting point for building any sort of web application in a short amount of time.

Since Justin and I had only minimal experience in building websites, we wanted to go with a technology that was easy to learn and be productive with, and had a large community of users from which we could get a lot of support. Ruby on Rails fit that bill, and we couldn’t be more happy with our choice. Along with many helpful websites, the following two books got us up and running quickly; I’d highly recommend them to anyone interested in Ruby on Rails:

So consider this fair warning; from now on we’ll be geeking out occasionally with Ruby on Rails-specific issues and solutions that we encounter. Of course, the best way to follow along is to try it yourself. :)

-JL
]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/the-cats-halfway-out-of-the-bag/feed/ 0 Springtime in the Second City http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/springtime-in-the-second-city/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/springtime-in-the-second-city/#comments Sat, 15 Apr 2006 15:49:31 +0000 john http://twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/04/15/springtime-in-the-second-city/ I’ve been out here in Chicago for about a week now on yet another working session, and like always it’s been quite a productive episode, both in terms of work accomplished and calories consumed. The weather in Chicago has been absolutely gorgeous, unlike the 0-degree wind chill that welcomed me the last time I was here. It’s been sunny and warm, and jogging through Grant Park across from Justin’s place provided a skyline view of the city that was absolutely breathtaking. I don’t know how he’s capable of staying indoors all the time. :)

Work-wise we spent the first few days of the week pushing hard to put the finishing tweaks on the initial set of functionality that we planned to share with the close friends that are visiting this weekend. I’m glad to report we were pretty much on schedule, but like all all projects the devil was in the details, and we still have quite a bit of those to go, as our friends could attest to. Our hope is to get some really solid (and critical) feedback on our idea that will help us adjust our development direction appropriately. Since we’ve been working in a feedback vacuum it’s hard to say how useful our design ideas really are. It’s much easier to change direction earlier than later, and the criticism is easier to take from closer friends. :)

On a more personal note, we had a fantastically fulfilling meal last night at Fogo de Chao, a fancy Brazilian barbeque place. I’d never been before and was great fun flipping the “bring it on” token to green and having waiters suddenly appear offering massive slabs of meat-on-sticks. Mmmmm…

-JL
]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/springtime-in-the-second-city/feed/ 4 kids, don’t try this at home http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/whats-a-tired-dog-to-do/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/whats-a-tired-dog-to-do/#comments Sat, 01 Apr 2006 21:39:03 +0000 john http://twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/04/01/whats-a-tired-dog-to-do/ Just a quick snapshot that neatly captures what our working sessions are all about: alcohol, caffeine, and curiosity. And lots of trash, in all senses of the word. :)
Lack of sleep + alcohol + curious dog = ?

JL

]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/whats-a-tired-dog-to-do/feed/ 1 too late/early for a title… http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/too-lateearly-for-a-title/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/too-lateearly-for-a-title/#comments Fri, 24 Mar 2006 12:51:16 +0000 john http://twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/03/24/too-lateearly-for-a-title/ It’s Friday at 5 am and we just wrapped up our second in-person working session, just in time to catch Justin’s ridiculously early flight. Like the first one in Chicago, this session lasted for two weeks, which is about the maximum amount of time you want to spend heads-down, 24/7 on a project to maximize productivity without causing lasting physical damage. :)

While we didn’t have the crazy excitement of breaking ground on a new project, we were still energized and motivated and got a lot of stuff done, including:

  • code-completion of our first-pass functionality
  • tracing the core use scenarios and one-offs to create a set of core test cases and plans for more
  • continued iterations with Julie on the logos and site design
  • investigation of our production needs
  • planning our large-block work items for the coming months

All in all, a very productive two weeks. It’s nice to see the project start to come together, and it’ll be much easier to accomplish work items separately as we were able to eliminate a lot of the ambiguities that can make early-stage project work tough. Now for the highlight reel:

  • getting a PO box
  • admiring our official business Operating Agreement – what a beautifully printed stock Word document :)
  • the first purchase with our spiffy new corporate card
  • multiple costco runs for cheap polish sausages and massive quantities of light beer
  • the Diet Pepsi+Diet Mountain Dew+chicken+spinach debacle
  • blowing our food budget by being too happy at happy hour
  • one really, really clogged toilet

We’ve got a full list of things to do before I head to Chicago in mid-April, including good-to-write-about stuff like trademarking, business foreign entity registration, and site deployment processes. Stay tuned for more to come! For those who are really curious, mark your summer calendars for our projected Beta release. Exactly when in the summer depends on how many happy hours we can avoid. :)

-JL

]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/too-lateearly-for-a-title/feed/ 1 Why do you work so hard? http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/why-do-you-work-so-hard/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/why-do-you-work-so-hard/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2006 18:05:38 +0000 john http://twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/02/23/why-do-you-work-so-hard/ We continue to be heads-down on technical development here in Chicago, working long hours but having lots of fun. This doesn’t give us time to write much, but luckily we found a timely article on sfgate that speaks for us. Enjoy!

]]> http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/why-do-you-work-so-hard/feed/ 3 More about the blog http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/more-about-the-blog/ http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/more-about-the-blog/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:17:39 +0000 Justin http://twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/02/09/more-about-the-blog/ Since we’ve been telling people to visit our blog, I thought I’d have a quick post about it. In the About section, I documented a few reasons why we’re blogging.

  • To document what we’ve learned about business for the benefit of others.
  • To internalize what we are learning more effectively.
  • To update all our fans on our progress.

There are also a few other self-serving reasons that I won’t be shy about (and those of you that know me, know I’m not shy about sharing anything :) ).

  • Make extra money! It’s no secret that we have Google Adsense on our site. I’ve heard all the comments that they’re ugly and clutter the site. Well, ads are rarely there for aesthetic reasons. If we can make a few extra bucks on the site from the ads, then they’re gonna stay there – anything to help reduce the ongoing expenses! For those of you that aren’t familiar with Google Adsense, it’s basically a program where you put ad placeholders on your site for Google to place their customer’s ads. So in these cases, Google is like the middle man that pays website owners (like us) a pretty good share of whatever the advertisers pay Google. Oh, and they’re supposed to be relevant to whatever content is on the page (hence all those business plan ads). The other way to make money with a website is to join an affiliate program like Amazon Associates where you refer your visitors to Amazon to buy goods and you get a percentage of the sale price. You’ll see some of these links in the Recommended Resources page.
  • Create a following of readers and users to publicize to when we launch. Hopefully by reading along with our journey, you’ll also want to see what we’ve been working on! We would also love your feedback, so this blog will be one of our primary communication mechanisms for when we are ready to show the world. I hope you all stay tuned in long enough (give us a few months)…

I hope this addresses some of the questions about the blog. Feel free to comment if you have others.

- JC

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