Come for the Ride…

Do any of you know any developers that fit the following?

Who We Are Looking For:

We are looking for a senior level php developer who understands what it’s like to work for an unfunded startup to take us to the next level. (Yes, we know you could very easily still be a student at one of the local colleges.)

You must know php, mysql, html, ajax, CSS, JavaScript and apache intimately to apply. (If you have a blog that talks about php or apache that is a plus. Having successfully exited a previous web based startups is a HUGE plus!)

Our basic site already works and now we’re looking for someone who can come in, update it for SEO, squash all the bugs and tune it for enterprise level performance. Ideally you can come in as a startup sniper and do all the work mentioned above within 2-5 months. (If you don’t know SEO, we can teach you!) Either way, this would a great experience for both parties to learn as well as make a very profitable site.

More work will exist after the 2-5 months, but skillz and speed is of the essence for what we currently need.

If you think you qualify and would like more information (and our URL), please shoot us an email along with your resume, sample URLs, your contributions to those URLs and/or development blog. If you’re a good fit, we’ll be happy to discuss what we’re doing, as well as what we are expecting from the developer.

Thanks!

This past weekend when our team met, we got into a serious discussion about upgrading our server to a dedicated machine that we would co-locate in Atlanta. While my friend at Booz Allen questioned why we would go this route when we’re not in the web hosting reseller business, we actually gave it a lot of thought and decided that this would be our cheapest, long term option.

So last weekend, for the first time in 5+ years, I went back to Dell.com and started spec’ing out high end servers. I think deep down inside, the geek in me would like to create something big enough that we can actually fill up a whole rack full of servers and say, “Look! That’s our piece of the internet” On the other hand, I know no one really cares about the hardware and our wallets really wanted to have nothing to do with my geeky dream.

But the fun part here is that co-located hosting is uncharted territory for us and this is one area I am looking forward to learning a lot about. My last venture had about 100,000 users and it certainly did not need any kind of extreme load balancing or backup solutions. However, with up to 16 million records per year for just vehicles plus other usage data we will be tracking, we basically need a kick ass machine just to handle the data load before we even worry about serving the site to any users.

This is where Dell in a coincidental moment, shined!

Not two days after us talking about the need to upgrade and actually looking at prices printed out on paper, a representative from Dell’s team contacted us and offered to invite us into their discount club. Apparently they found my YouNoodle.com post about our startup, liked what they saw and wanted to get us on the Dell train early so we can bring them along for the ride. (Apparently AutoTrader hosts with HP, so this could be a win for them if I get my rack of servers.)

Now, the marketing and timing here is purely coincidental, but we were more than happy to reaffirm our decision to shop for the dedicated server with Dell especially now that we could get the exact same server we wanted, add warranties and support AND save a few hundred dollars in the process.

Although some may say targeted advertising is scary and could potentially be like “big brother” with the amount of data it collects; I would have to say that as a consumer who knew exactly what he wanted, being able to add more discounts before I pulled the trigger really put me over the top for this vendor. If we were dilly-dallying before on our decision, this “just-in-time” coupon definitely won us over.

With that… we will definitely implement an online version of this sales technique on our web service to help dealers sell more vehicles.

Launch week has been pretty successful.  Even though we are purposely not blasting all the web 2.0 news sites with our arrival due to low inventories, we still managed to get a lot of helpful advice from our friends and mentors who have been checking out the site.  In fact, if you’re in the Atlanta area and are looking for a Panoz, we can hook you up!

With that said, much needs to be done.  We have to optimize our code, we have to create and fill in content, we have to find and squash bugs and last but not least, we really want to get at least 100,000 cars for the metro Atlanta area. (that would be 2x what AJC Cars has)

Before we get there, we need to pick up our speed - our server has been killing us.  This part of the growing pain has actually been an interesting experience for our team considering none of us have faced this problem before.  When we first started, we did what we could to save money.  This included borrowing old servers on T1 connections from our jobs and using them when the resources are available.  Alas, our network of old servers and slow connections that make up Frankenstein could not handle our daily chores.  With that, we decided we need to really invest on a new server - one that can handle the daily imports and the request of 10’s of our fans.

Well, when there’s more to report, I will let you know.  In the mean time, any suggestions on where to find servers and when to upgrade would be greatly appreciated.

Now that the site has launched, I’m looking forward to blogging more about advertising, marketing tests and of course, the details of the results. While I do think we will revisit the development side of things every now and then, what most entrepreneurs want to know is how to promote their blog or services to the masses.

If you have things you’ve tested or would like to see tested, we would love to hear from you. Feel free to drop us an email, send us blog comments or use the Skribit widget to the right. If the plan fits what we’re doing, we’d be happy to test it out for you and report back on the results.

Following 37Signals’ advice, we launched our beta site today to the public and will continue to work on bugs and enhancements as we gather user feedback.  I must say,  it’s been a huge sigh of relief to see the project get to this point.  If you had asked two days ago if we’d be ready for this forced launch, I probably would have laughed and jumped out the window.

However, I am proud to say my team and outsourced developers came through and our first beta is actually pretty good.  So far, most reactions have came back positive so I hope that trend continues!