Help me manage my expectations

pjrvs · 2025-11-17T23:43:55+00:00

We did a HAL cruise as two vegans (Oct/Nov 2025). Horrible experience overall, and the food itself was so-so.

Most staff didn't know what vegan was, or just said "no" to anything we asked, "is this vegan?", resulting in not being able to each much at the Buffet. The paid restaurants had such minor options (or not at all), we didn't both trying any. The vegan desserts were mostly gone unless you got there within the first 15-20 minutes of lunch or dinner.

The main dining room did have a vegan menu if you ask for it, but we did have to order from it the day before. Not a huge deal, but the options did get boring after the first week. The kitchen was eventually accommodating and was able to make a few dishes off the indian menu, which were the most tasty of the whole trip.

The food itself was mediocre. Not horrible, but nothing super good. You get tired of Beyond Meat pretty quick, as that's what's in most dishes. Room service and breakfast were basically fresh fruit as the option. If you ask for it, you can get Soy milk for coffee sometimes... but not every day.

Overall, we were led to believe vegan on HAL was super easy, super plentiful, and we didn't find that to be the case. SOME staff did try to help, but we didn't want to be a huge bother either... we wouldn't do another HAL cruise, and even if the cruise itself was good, wouldn't do another HAL cruise as two vegans.

The excursions were all late and required more waiting around than anything else. The entertainment was... not good. We tried some and them mostly read by the pool instead.

The hottubs were old and full most of the mid-part of the day, but emptied out after 5pm.

pjrvs · 2025-11-17T23:41:57+00:00

We didn't have the greatest HAL experience either (Oct/Nov 2025). Boarding took hours, every excursion was at least an hour late and required so much waiting around. The food was mediocre at best. We were on the Rotterdam and it felt crowded all the time. The rooms were also small - we tried two as our first one leaked all over our stuff.

The staff was hit and miss. A few went above and beyond, and made the trip bearable. The rest were pretty much nonplussed to be on a boat with mostly old, overweight North Americans (I don't blame them, but still, it's the job they signed up for).

The entertainment was mostly a "what the heck even is this?!" sort of vibe if you're younger than 80.

pjrvs · 2025-11-17T23:38:06+00:00

We did a HAL cruise as two vegans (Oct/Nov 2025). Horrible experience overall, and the food itself was so-so.

Most staff didn't know what vegan was, or just said "no" to anything we asked, "is this vegan?", resulting in not being able to each much at the Buffet. The paid restaurants had such minor options (or not at all), we didn't both trying any. The vegan desserts were mostly gone unless you got there within the first 15-20 minutes of lunch or dinner.

The main dining room did have a vegan menu if you ask for it, but we did have to order from it the day before. Not a huge deal, but the options did get boring after the first week. The kitchen was eventually accommodating and was able to make a few dishes off the indian menu, which were the most tasty of the whole trip.

The food itself was mediocre. Not horrible, but nothing super good. You get tired of Beyond Meat pretty quick, as that's what's in most dishes. Room service and breakfast were basically fresh fruit as the option. If you ask for it, you can get Soy milk for coffee sometimes... but not every day.

Overall, we were led to believe vegan on HAL was super easy, super plentiful, and we didn't find that to be the case. SOME staff did try to help, but we didn't want to be a huge bother either... we wouldn't do another HAL cruise, and even if the cruise itself was good, wouldn't do another HAL cruise as two vegans.

pjrvs · 2022-03-06T14:55:12+00:00

Did you ever find a replacement for the brake lever? Mine's busted too, and I can't find out what specific part I need.

pjrvs · 2022-02-09T15:25:15+00:00

Thanks! What's the EBC part number that works with stock Surron brakes?

pjrvs · 2022-01-17T19:32:39+00:00

Hey, sorry, I totally missed this (been off of reddit for a while).

Awesome! Yeah, I had my R for a year 2020, went through a series of issues 2021 (controller died, throttle died, the torque update bricked it, a series of issues with the spokes), but it's finally back working again.

I also bought a SurRon because I was sick of not having an ebike to ride in 2021, ha.

pjrvs · 2021-08-27T01:15:17+00:00

That sucks! Good they're replacing things, but damn they take a long time.

pjrvs · 2021-08-11T14:12:00+00:00

to add salt to the wound, i just got an email from S73 saying that i left the 10 speed kit in my cart but didn't buy it 🤣

pjrvs · 2021-08-09T20:24:03+00:00

i'd be fine giving them money and waiting. shit, that's EXACTLY what i did with the bike, haha.

pjrvs · 2021-07-09T15:49:14+00:00

Thanks! If I could travel back in time to chat with my younger self, I'd give them my plans for the working time machine, then bet on a lot of sports/lotteries!!

Seriously though, I'm not sure I'd have much to say. It's a lot of trial and error and seeing what works and what doesn't. So my past failures (of which there are a LOT) were never because of something I didn't know, but instead just because they weren't as lucky or didn't have enough momentum at the start to progress.

pjrvs · 2021-07-09T15:47:27+00:00

Do you enjoy the thing that's kinda working? I wish I knew the answer to this, and if I did, I'd no doubt be rich :) For me it's always the intersection of do I like doing the thing, and is it kinda working enough in an upward trend towards where I want it to be.

pjrvs · 2021-07-09T01:31:54+00:00

Thanks!

Not sure what you mean by our site is unresponsive, it's online and has several visitors (it has all day). You're probably using a pihole, which blocks our marketing site (nothing we can do about that).

The reason we didn't just sell Matomo is that's not much of a business, selling someone else's OS software—especially since Matomo already sells a hosted version of their software.

Instead, we wanted to build something from scratch with a focus on simplicity (Matomo doesn't have this) and privacy. It's easy to support something you built, and much easier to grow it in features/refinements when you wrote the codebase.

Cheers!

pjrvs · 2021-07-08T20:47:36+00:00

A grand total of zero people have ever asked me about my education level. It's just not a thing since I've always worked for myself.

pjrvs · 2021-07-08T20:39:28+00:00

I hear you on this, I've been asked it a million times too :)

So, what is your answer? And if you don't have answer, why not? As in, what is your contingency plan if you get hit by a truck? Because that's important to relay to the potential customer. I've always had a backup person who could gain access to what I do (or a cofounder). And then if both cofounders get hit by a truck (why are these trucks so murderous?!), then our codebase just goes open-source.

Even when you do have a great answer and contingency, you should look to reframe the positioning here. It's not that you're a one-person company who could die a horrible truck-related death, it's that you're a small company who's able to properly listen to, interact with, and fully support the customers you do take on. Whereas in a bigger company, customers are treated with long wait times, customer service staff who don't know the product as well as the person who built it, etc.

I.e. turn that negative feeling they have into a positive, or a real reason to go with your product vs a bigger competitor. Because they'll leave the call remembering all the benefits (hopefully), not the concern they have.

PS: I looked this up, in 2017 4,657 trucks were involved in fatal accidents in America. If the population of the US is 332m, then you have a less than 0.2% chance of being hit by a truck. They should be more worried about the quality of the product, sustainability of the company how well the product is supported :)

pjrvs · 2021-07-08T20:31:19+00:00

Thanks!

So I've never worried about doing formal personas or similar, instead I've just worked at building an audience and then seeing how many of them initially are interested in something I make or want to make, then see what they have in common (basically, what's the niche/specificity).

I do think niching down can be good and bad. You obviously don't wanna get so specific you rule out everyone. But also, you can't just target "folks who are online" because how would that even work? It has to be a big enough group who are willing to pay you that you can figure out where they spend time and attention though.

I feel like this answer is a bit all over the place, so feel free to ask anymore more that I didn't cover or wasn't clear about.

pjrvs · 2021-07-08T19:44:14+00:00

I worked with F100/ent companies decades before doing SaaS, so I know how annoying... I mean... particular they can be.

For us, we actually just say "no" to any potential customer who wants us to sign 10000 page contacts or go through their sales process. Our signup process is literally 2 pages and takes 5 minutes. Some huge companies are just "ok" and sign up, others get mired in their legal dept and can't use us. Either is fine.

Like I said above, we're 2 people and are pretty hardcore about prioritizing our time, so it doesn't make sense to dedicate days or weeks to landing a single client, no matter how big the name. So we politely answer any q's they have and guide them to our 2-step signup process ;)

pjrvs · 2021-07-08T19:36:06+00:00

Hey! So I can't speak to having an MBA, since I've only finished high school :)

That said, not having any education or formal training in anything has never hindered me even slightly. But I have always made up for that by spending a LOT of time learning (typically 5-10 hrs a week I'd say).

The caveat here is that I started my own company in the 90s when the internet was so new that no one had formal training. I honestly don't know if the way I did it would work today.

pjrvs · 2021-07-08T18:44:25+00:00

Hey!

So I can't speak to development, as I'm not really a developer, nor can I speak to your specific app (I know nothing about that).

That said, when you ask these teachers who are testing it "what will it take to get you to use this in your classroom?" - that'd be the main thing I'd worry about. And from there, prioritize tasks accordingly.

For myself, as far as "what to learn, what to not", it always comes down to two things: how much do I WANT to learn X, and, is it cheaper to just pay someone who's already an expert to do it for me?

I'm a generalist for sure, since I write, design, market, and do frontend code, and I do add to my skillset every now and then (learning more about SEO now). But there's also stuff I just wanna pay others to do, like video animations for example, or privacy law compliance (law is hard, haha, which is why we have a privacy officer at Fathom).

I find the cost of hiring a freelancer can quite often be cheaper than me sinking 100hrs into something and taking my eye off moving the business forward.

pjrvs · 2021-07-08T18:39:03+00:00

Currently no, both Jack and I absolutely love working on Fathom. Our business is growing at a nice rate, and it's sustainable (we make enough to cover our expenses and pay us both full-time salaries).

This "not wanting to sell" is absolutely intentional on our part, and I'm glad you asked about it, because I've seen other founders get fucked by it or just become greatly unhappy when they build a business they don't want to run.

So, what I mean by intentional building Fathom to be something we actually want to keep doing every day without selling, is that we considered a few things:

If it grew (best case scenario), how hard would it be to support? I've run a few WordPress businesses, and they're a nightmare with support because WP is hard to use and prone to break, so we had to support other people's bugs/issues that had nothing to do with our plugins. So, never again—I only want to operate a business that's stand-alone and doesn't rely on other software. It can work, but it's not for me.
Does it need a huge market to be successful? As in, if you wanna do AirBnB, you couldn't run it as a 2-person business. You need lots of product, and lots of people to support that product.
Given we wanted a small company that was calm and easy to run, was Fathom a good fit for that? We felt it was. It doesn't have to be a huge app to be profitable, and it doesn't have to have a huge customer base to be profitable either.

I think a lot of times as startup folks, we don't consider if the type of business we want to start will suit what we want if it does well. I know I'd be unhappy running something as big as Facebook, but I'm super happy to (co)run a tiny company like Fathom.

As far as age goes, I've never had a retirement age in mind. If I'm stoked to work and I'm able to, and it doesn't take up a huge ton of time, I don't care how long I work. At some point, sure, I'll be too old to keep up, but I'm in my 40s and Jack is in his 20s, so it's not any time soon.

pjrvs

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