[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEsBR1wp9F8]
You’re a start-up dude with carefully mussed hair. Your AWS is waiting. You’ve paid the designer. You and your family have created accounts. It’s been a mad dash. You’ve maxed out your credit cards. Your service is done. Now you wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Lots of people have ideas, but very few ideas gain much traction, and in those first few months it’s disheartening to see your subscriber numbers inch up far too slowly for anyone’s good. Every little bit of encouragement helps. That’s why the guys at Zipwhip (a service that basically lets you sync your text messages with your desktop) created an Arduino-powered flag to alert them when they got a new customer. The service itself is ready to go and waiting, they just wanted a way to celebrate when somebody created an account. And celebrate they do, cheering wildly as the flag slowly raises like the arm of Victory high above the bloodbath that is modern start-up creation.
“It’s a ton of fun to see something visual happen each time we get a new user,” they wrote on their blog. They’ve also released the plans and source code in their blog post so you and yours can build a flag, say, for celebrating new Twitter followers or to signal when it’s time to change your shirt (once a day is customary, but I’ve seen once a week work fine for many start-up founders).
Excelsior, Zipwhip, and may your flag fly off the freaking wall once people see this post.
