Articles marked historical record the period of starting HelpSpot in 2005 through 2019. In 2020 I decided to give the blog a fresh start, but have left these here for posterity.

December 15, 2008

help desk priority structure

Over on HelpSpotted: Creating a Help Desk Priority Structure

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December 11, 2008

helpspot 26 sneak peek

If you're interested in seeing some of the new features in the next HelpSpot release we have a post about it on HelpSpotted. http://helpspotted.userscape.com/2008/12/10/version-26-sneak-peek/

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December 10, 2008

the helpspot blog

Just a quick post to let you know that we've launched HelpSpotted. The official HelpSpot blog. We're going to be posting tips, tricks, sneak peeks and more there. We already have a lot of good stuff...

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November 19, 2008

blog blazers book giveaway

HelpSpot customer and fellow MicroISV Stephane Grenier just released his work of love, Blog Blazers. The book is a series of interviews Stephane conducted with 40 popular bloggers. I'm honored to be...

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October 29, 2008

are you hiring ive got your man

My friend Kevin Dangoor recently lost his position at a technology company in Michigan. He's looking for new opportunities that can make use of both his project management and development skills. If...

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October 23, 2008

another way your product may benefit in a downturn

Nightly news is mostly doom and gloom these days, but it doesn't have to be this way for some of us ISV's. If you've been smart (lucky?) enough to position your product mid market these could turn...

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September 29, 2008

why now is a great time to start a software company

Is a depression a good time to start a software business? Of course I hope things in the financial system don't get to that level, but even if things stabilize it's obvious that there's going to be a...

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September 15, 2008

lunch time walk over the mid hudson bridge

It's a perfect day here today so we decided to take a little walk and enjoy it before Fall sets in. In the year we've lived in this house we've never walked over the Mid Hudson Bridge which is just...

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September 8, 2008

cocoa framework for the helpspot api

Over the last few weeks I've been working with one of our customers, Audiofile Engineering, on a Cocoa framework for the HS API. This takes all the heavy lifting out of building a Mac based...

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August 1, 2008

helpspot on the deck

Starting today you'll be seeing HelpSpot ads on The Deck ad network. It's the first serious advertising I've done for HelpSpot so I'm excited to see how it goes. I was originally looking for...

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July 23, 2008

help desk talk redux

So a few years ago I tried to launch a forum/community website around the help desk/customer service world. It was a complete failure. It's unfortunate because there was some early traction, but I...

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July 22, 2008

helpspot price nudge

A price nudge sounds better than an increase, no? I think so. In any event today I'm announcing a small price increase for HelpSpot. The short of it is that HelpSpot is moving from $179 a user to...

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July 17, 2008

building an app in 30 days is stupid

All the rage the last year or so seems to be trying to build an application as fast as possible. The common length of time seems to be 30 days, but it sometimes goes down as low as 7 or even 5. While...

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June 25, 2008

great post on selling to the government

Best post I've read in a while: http://nukemanbill.blogspot.com/2008/06/government-whore.html I also suggest you check out his first post, which I agree with pretty much 100%:...

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June 12, 2008

antairs new blog

Andrey has a new blog up. It's been a while, good to see him back in the fold. One of his first posts is about HelpSpot, thanks Andrey! http://www.antair.com/blog/

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June 3, 2008

modules youd like to see in helpspot version 3

I'm nearing the end of planning for version 3, but to be honest I'm going back and forth on a couple of modules that I want to add. So I'm looking for input. If you have a new module you'd like to...

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May 21, 2008

a look back at helpspots first 6 months of sales

Now that HelpSpot has been out about 3 years I thought it would be fun to look back at the early days. I always get a lot of questions about how I started UserScape, how long it took to get rolling,...

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May 20, 2008

what should i do with 50 ipods

Apple sent me an interesting email today. They have a special program for companies that want to buy iPod's in batches for use with promo programs. The minimum order is 50 and it can be any iPod type...

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May 19, 2008

helpspot 24 beta is out

Whew, this release has been a bit more work than I intended. I think it's a really strong release though. It's one of those releases where on the surface it's not much different but there's a lot of...

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May 12, 2008

follow me on twitter

Just an FYI, if you haven't subscribed to me on Twitter please do. I still write here from time to time, but it's hard to find the time for full blog posts these days. The low commitment level of...

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