In our series on startup hints & tricks here tips 19 & 20:

19 – Catch those warnings – Use Splunk

As soon as your website is live a ton of data is silently gatherd in countless log files across your application’s systems. Most often nobody ever pays those log files tribute, i.e. reads them. Normally the sys admin will delete the older files once disk space becomes scarce. We think this is a bad approach.

A smarter method is to use tools such as Splunk. Splunk at its core is nothing more than a full text search index built from multiple and disparate log files. You can search for specific patterns, and Splunk will create on event an automated notification. You also can search the log files for error codes. And best: This works real time, too. A coder can watch what happens at creation of that server exception.

I haven’t seen a more clever usage of log files.

20 – 80% of success is showing up

How to advertise your application? A national ad campaign is probably over your budget, so is the TV. Yet there many alternative and very cost effective methods.

One of the best possibilities to promote your product (and yourself) are the manifold events taking place. Just to name a few here in Zurich an vicinity: StartupCamp, Barcamp, WebMonday, WebTuesday, Chuchis, Venturelab Events, etc. etc. The Olympic slogan pays: Participation is everything.