HelloFax.com Dev Blog

HP and Yahoo have teamed up to send you advertisements on your fax machine. With access to your IP address, they will be able to identify your area and target you with a local advertisement (see computer world).

That’s a double bonus for HP. They get money from:

1. The advertisement
2. Increase ink usage

As big business becomes more and more unreasonable, small companies that respect consumers can only become more competitive.

1. Pick a name

The name of your LLC really doesn’t matter.  You might change the name of your website — we’ve already changed once.  So, we picked something innocuous and called ourselves JN Projects (for Joseph Nate Projects).  That way we can continue to use the LLC for other projects we might do together.

2. Check the availability of your name

Do an online search at the Minnesota Secretary of State:
http://da.sos.state.mn.us/minnesota/corp_inquiry-find.asp?:Norder_item_type_id=9

3. Register it online

There’s a $170 filing fee, plus $10 if you want to do it online. Otherwise, you have to drop it off at the Minnesota Secreatary of State Office. Here is their Express Service:
http://expressservices.sos.state.mn.us/

4. Filling out the form: Expiration date?

LLCs can have an expiration date.  What you should know before selecting this option is that the LLC will naturally expire if it is not renewed each year.

5. Annual Renew

Don’t forget to renew your LLC each year.  Otherwise, your LLC will expire:
https://online.sos.state.mn.us/abr/corp_annual_filing.asp

6. Get an Employer Identification Number

It is a Federal Tax Identification number.  When we do business with other companies, they oftentimes require an EIN or Social Security Number. We didn’t want to give out our personal SSN for business relationships, purchases and liability.  So, getting an EIN made sense for us. Here’s more information from the IRS on whether you need an EIN:
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98350,00.html

If it makes sense for you, you can apply for it online:
https://sa2.www4.irs.gov/modiein/individual/index.jsp

7. You’re done. Government can be fast.

The IRS will immediately give you an EIN at the completion of the application and the Minnesota Secretary of State can approve your application as soon as the next day.

373 Absolute unique vistors in 5 days!

The good (from Hacker News) :

• “You are now bookmarked!”
• “I like it!”
• “I’m a fan”
• “I can’t say enough how much I love your design. Super simple, super sleek, just awesome.”
• “This looks like a service I was looking for a couple of months ago, but couldn’t find.”
• “I love this… I’ve used a few of the other online services before but canceling a monthly plan was like pulling teeth. I love the idea of being able pay by the page.”
• “Actually this is kind of cool though ”

Also good (from email):

• “I love the idea”
• “Very easy to use”
• “I liked that it supports multiple file-types”

The Advice (from Hacker News):

• “I’d kill for a small, annual plan that just lets me receive without signing up for monthly payments or attaching it to sending credits. A la carte all the way.”
• “I would keep the per-page model.”
• One commenter:
  • “$1-$5 to send a fax. This seems totally within reason. Driving to find someplace with a fax, waiting in line, exposing your document to some clerk, etc. The one-time fee gives me the service I want with no commitment.
  • $10-$20 for bigger faxing ‘events’. I should be able to send unlimited faxes (which in reality will be <10 but makes me feel better they are not metered) AND have a temporary incoming fax number that I can receive faxes on, which forward to an email address. This service could be available for 30 calendar days from the moment you buy.”
• “I couldn’t see an email-to-fax feature, but that would be a useful one.
  • This feature is now in the pipeline!
• “I think if you keep it simple and convenient, it’s nice.”

We’re still giving free faxes for feedback. So, if you have any thoughts (or just love startups), please email us!

An Avoidable Dilemma

A programmer from Freelancer.com was almost done with our project. So, I did some final testing to verify that the rest of the site still worked.  Several pieces were broken.

When I asked him to fix it, he said they never worked in the first place.

I’m confident I checked the code before hand and it worked; he’s confident he checked it and it did not.  Who’s right?

Lesson Learned

If the buyer and the programmer don’t agree on what already works before a project starts, there is huge potential for misunderstanding or abuse.

The Potential for Abuse:

• The buyer may be trying to get the programmer to fix bugs that were already there.
• The programmer may be trying to get out of fixing code that he broke on the rest of the site.

Even without intentional abuse, two good people can simply disagree and potentially scuttle a project — or end a perfectly good project with mutual bad reviews.

How Do We Avoid This?

Before you start a project, as a Buyer or a Programmer, agree on which part of the site already works — and which parts do not.  That should save you from most instances of abuse or misunderstanding.

Anyone who signs up gets 3 pages automatically free. If you send feedback to support@hellofax.com, I’ll fill your account with more free credit.

We love feedback. So, we hope to hear from you.

Regards,
Joseph and Nate

Our employees wear ties to work! We’re that serious!

While we’ve been developing HelloFax, we’ve been debating our name. Are people really going to want to use a chill name like HelloFax? Or do they want a name that indicates reliability… like eFax, TrustFax, or SmartFax.

“You’re a little company, now act like one”

We were tempted to be serious and we went through all the serious names. Fortunately, domain squatters and me-too faxing services bought them all up.

Then, I read this post about startups killing their personality with a wannabe-corporate, stuck-up, wear-polished-shoes-to-work persona.  Really, your next sale won’t be to Oracle.  Get over it.

Besides, create a company you want to work for
After creating a startup to not work for the man, why pretend you still do?  I want to work on a website that I enjoy, that is fun and irreverent.  If you really want to work on a corporate style site, apply to one, rather than create a sub par version of one.

This is the company I want to work for:

Does the company personality matter?

The world doesn’t need another cookie cutter service.  I think our users will notice and appreciate that we make our service as human as we are. But, in the end, it matters to us.

Why Real Fax Machines are a Waste
You spend at least $100 before sending your first fax.

How Can Faxing Online Look Like Paid Email?
What happens when one business that uses an online faxes service sends a fax to another business that also uses an online fax service? They both get charged for something that could have been sent as an email.

So, why do business keep faxing?

• They love the idea of a paper trail.
• Habit.
• It’s easy to sign and fill out forms.  Just use a pen!
• It is legally binding (disclaimer, this is not legal advice.).
• Email can be overwhelming – but a fax indicates a priority.
• It’s action oriented and says: do this and get it back to me.