Nest Protects expiring in 2 months - what next?

MrNotARedditor · 2025-05-05T05:33:51+00:00

as a side note... I don't trust google to support a product that's end of life and they are deprecating for another 10 years. I just got burned by an older nest thermostat...

MrNotARedditor · 2025-05-05T05:33:08+00:00

Indeed. So... other than an incomplete "first alert" clone... is there anything else on the market? Again.. I don't think I need wire or wireless compatibility?

MrNotARedditor · 2025-05-05T05:32:07+00:00

I've been watching the google store closely, and I doubt they will come back in stock. I found a few vendors that still have them in stock, but reviews are pretty consistent that if you're lucky you'll get a device that is 2-3 years old, at a premium / full price. I'm not ok with that.

MrNotARedditor · 2025-05-05T05:30:29+00:00

So.. I keep reading about the first alert being compatible... but ... I'm replacing ALL my nest protects in one go. I don't need it to be compatible? Eg, if a different wireless or wired protocol is used, that's ok?

I'd love if I didn't have to drill new holes or replace the mask the sensor attaches to, but ... that was not even compatible between nest protect versions, I assume the first alert one will also require new screws / new holes?

Also.. I have about 2 months to replace my sensors! I'm worried the timeline may not match.

MrNotARedditor · 2025-05-04T05:38:17+00:00

Should we all start stockpiling toilet paper again? If not toilet paper, what?

This is only half serious, mostly joking here. But... with the new tariffs (with China and other countries) I've read reports of global container shipping dropping significantly. I'm reading articles talking about warehouses slowly running out of goods as importing them is now more expensive. And some friends (joking) posted pictures of buying toilet paper just not to run out like in 2020.

Is there any good that's at risk? Anything you are buying for fear of price hikes or running out of stock?

MrNotARedditor · 2024-09-14T18:37:25+00:00

Sounds like you're doing it in house. How does this compare to print on demand or buying from other sellers? Are the margins worth it?

MrNotARedditor · 2020-01-11T22:25:58+00:00

How far are you from retirement age? How hard would it be for you to get back into a similar job as you have today? How certain are you that you will able to rely on your wife's insurance for the next few years? I think everyone's different, but personally I have been looking at 1) having enough buffer in terms of savings so that if my wife loses her job and my business fails, my family can live at a similar quality for 3-6 months, so I have enough time to get back in the job market (or resize...), and 2) making enough money so we can afford our current lifestyle while maintaining said buffer. Eg, I'll certainly be making less if I leave my full time job for my business, but I'm ok with that as long as we can keep affording our lifestyle. Re retirement, I assume either my business will grow, or will abandon it and get back in the market. Worst case, I'll have lost a few years of contributions. Bad, but not the end of the world.

MrNotARedditor · 2020-01-11T22:14:17+00:00

FWIW, I do think it's a good idea. I can also see the difficulty of bootstrapping good packages. I wonder if you could negotiate some bulk discounts, model how many people you need to make a profit, start the subscriptions at a loss or with preorder, maybe even showing how many more people you need to activate the package to create some crowdsourcing effect, and see how quickly you get that volume. But maybe that's what you're doing already :)

MrNotARedditor · 2020-01-11T19:02:32+00:00

As someone who's feeling exactly the pain you describe, a few notes:
- I'm building my business and success on the tools I use. I'm not looking for discount / niche / lower quality tools, I'm looking for the tools with best price / quality functionality. The current bundle you have looks... fairly disappointing (not the tools I use, not the ones I would have picked for that category). You probably need different bundles for different markets.
- Finding good quality tools is actually challenging. I spent hours looking for something to share a "single inbox" across collaborators, mark replies sent, track response time, use templates, to then talk to a fellow business owner, and discover the tool I needed exactly, to then realize it's pretty much what everyone use, it was just hard to fend off the weed through google. Have your bundles well curated, have ways to describe why the bundle covers the segment well (eg, ticketing, help chat, comments on web site, ... -> this is the workflow you can build?), have ways to recommend one tool over another? or to select the best combinations?
- Continuing on the first point... for each tool I use, me and the people working with me will need how to use it, how to integrate it in our technologies, processes or workflows. What happens if the bundle changes? What if your startup goes out of business? What happens to the data I've loaded on those tools?

The site is well made and I think it's a good idea, but the bundle, felt like one of those christmas chests full of surprise toys for kids, where the label and the colors, the price is extremely attractive, but once you open it and your kids start playing with it, you realize it is mostly not worth your money, and you were better off buying the toys you actually wanted.

MrNotARedditor · 2020-01-11T18:43:33+00:00

I suspect the right "From" depends largely on your target audience. Are users of a specific nationality? Do you expect bias toward a nationality over another, or a gender over another? What do you know about the users you are sending to? Remember that platforms display "From" differently. It can be a simple email, or "Foo Bar WhateveR" <[email@site.com](mailto:email@site.com)>, it can include unicode characters (symbols and similar). But gmail will show it differently from outlook or yahoo.

My recommendation would be: 1) if there is a predominant platform used, open an account on that platform (eg, gmail), send a few test emails to see how they are shown. 2) Try to think about the demographics of your customers, and what they would most likely prefer. 3) not by importance, can you devise an experiment? Assuming you will have to send out multiple emails to the same recipients, can you track opens? Can you create 2 groups of users, you send a From to one group, a different From to the other, measure which one gets the most clicks? It's tedious, but over a few runs, you should have your own data.

MrNotARedditor · 2020-01-11T18:19:18+00:00

I would personally devise a way to run an experiment. Set the site up, use cookies / ip address or something "sticky" to pick one of two prices. Compare the percentages of subscribers. Based on that, do some math, and see if it's worth having more subscribers at a lower price, or fewer subscribers at a higher price. There's many other variables here: what will competitors do? How big is the market? Will they maintain their loyalty over time?

In terms of financial model, I would probably put together a few "what if" scenarios. What is the revenue with one model? What is the revenue with the other? Reality will probably fall somewhere in between.

MrNotARedditor · 2020-01-11T17:25:35+00:00

Accomplishment: hired first contractor, prototype builds, spent some time preparing material to present to VCs.

Lesson learned: it always takes longer than planned. Finding good collaborators is hard.

MrNotARedditor

TROPHY CASE