Invite only is a good idea for an MVP, and you could also write it as a browser based app using jQTouch or jQuery Mobile (not sure what the android equivalents are) and use that to prove the concept.
7,523 karma · joined February 21, 2007
I'm Aditya - a software designer based in New York, interested in technology, design, creativity, code and culture.
currently @QuriousLabs
Web: http://4ditya.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ac
(Email: aditya at sublucid dot com, feel free to say hey!)
ferric on #startups on irc.freenode.net
Continuous Fundraising is a pretty radical idea. Basically, you never close your seed round since you're doing a note and the terms are fairly standard, so you just keep getting small checks from a large number of angels. Less pressure and hassle. Big win for entrepreneurs. As Naval says, you raise 50k/month for 6-12 months and you're all set.
Basically, the idea seems to be that once you've used your API ecosystem to grow to a certain size, you can fuck over the developers that allowed you to get to that point by building on top of your platform and by attracting users to it or keeping them engaged. The only way to get around this is to become so big that the platform can't shut you down (Zynga, Twitpic).
Twitter says, stop building clients, build in these verticals. Who is going to stop them from going after the most profitable verticals tomorrow once developers have proved that there's money to be made there? As a developer, why the hell would I want to deal with this?
Open API's seem to be the antithesis of the profit motive, or atleast, that's how it seems to be. Sad.
Also, re: how to interview junior people. I'd say the one thing they don't have is experience, or to measure a senior engineer's abilities it makes sense to ask how many times have you built this <insert rocket ship> before, and what did you learn?
For a junior engineer, it is enough to test for willingness to learn, and aptitude for problem solving. Personally, I hate brain teasers and straight up algorithmic complexity type questions. But, given a real world system, asking them how they would build it is usually a good start. So, test for ability to understand big problems, break them down into smaller problems and then figure out a way to attack each small problem.
Curious about other people's interviewing ideas.
* Make it easy, Step 1: Connect netflix, Step 2: Connect Twitter/FB, and so on.
* You're telling me something I already know on my home screen, maybe show me highly rated movies from within the FoN network (not necessarily my friends) without telling me who rated them, etc?
* You can grab email using FB connect, and it is a great marketing tool once you get going to bring people back to the website.
Super excited!
Fascinating move by both Warner Bros. and FB. I wonder if this is streaming from FB datacenters or Warner Bros? No wonder Apple hates FB, they just went up against Apple, Netflix, Amazon and Google/Youtube (EDIT: Also, Hulu) in the video rentals space, and social is one aspect that affects movie watching the most. Very smart.
EDIT: Ooh, they also launched an iOS app that allows you to buy the movie: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-dark-knight-app-edition/i...
Also, Imagine being able to use facebook credits earned in Farmville to rent movies...
Nifty. Of course, it's missing a lot of context, is it just reading /newcomments? If it read out the on: <topic> that would give it more context.
Right now it just sounds like those precogs blabbering in Minority Report (while predicting the future), or the hybrids in Battlestar :-)
It's an experienced set of investors and entrepreneurs, but they seem to be making rookie mistakes, over and over again (first with scaling the tech+business and now with the way the API/ecosystem, which was instrumental to their success, is being handled). Have you seen this before? What the hell is up at Twitter HQ?
@msuster your post is a misinformed and contrary to what I'm certain you would counsel as an investor.
On April 7, we'll invite the groups that seem most promising to meet us in Mountain View during April 23-28. We'll reimburse up to $600 per group for travel expenses[1]
A funny thing happened on the way to the solution. Try and picture this. On my first day of work, no one told me what to do. On the second day, the same thing happened, and on the third. That’s as much as I could take. I decided to meet with everyone I was coming in contact with to find out more about their individual talents and personalities, and to find out what was going on. Before I knew it, I was developing a picture of how things really were, and who needed what, and I became creatively involved in defining my own participation in relation to the skills I could bring to the table. In the process of doing this, I had complete access to everyone in the company, from other newlings to the President. Nothing but open cubicles no higher than 3 1/2 feet. I was allowed to learn, interact, and find solutions to every problem and need I recognized. I always found something important to do, and it became natural to provide effective solutions as needed. I am not a very unique individual, but I am effective because I am allowed to be. I also know it may be different for some people, experiencing this kind of freedom. I know that some people are petrified by this kind of freedom, and equate it to abandonment, and it drives them crazy not knowing what to do. I also know that even under the best of circumstances, people become sedate sometimes and settle in to patterns of repetition for false comfort. The answer, then, is to have them all switch places every few years, no matter how well they may be doing their job, because it is just as important to let everyone see their own position from someone else’s position. It also allows for the surprise of finding how much fun change can be when your creativity meets a new challenge. See what you end up with. It’s either this, or that.
More here: http://aditya.sublucid.com/2008/11/20/let-your-employees-fig...
You want to build a Ning for businesses? Since you don't sound like an engineer, here's what I would suggest you do.
Pay a designer 500$ for mockups, then go sell it to 10 businesses at $10k a pop, and if you can get contracts signed, build the product with that cash.
Your description above sounds out of focus, start with one thing, do one thing and do it really well.
If you are an engineer, build a prototype - what are you waiting for?
EDIT: And why would businesses want it?
1. Get a startup attorney (you probably already have one, who incorporated you, if you don't - use one of the bigger names (wilson sonsoni, gunderson, cooley))
2. Figure out what your perfect offer would be, and counter
3. Rule #1 of any negotiation is to be willing to walk the fuck away if you're not happy. As soon as you become a little desperate, you've lost leverage.
4. I'm not quite sure how double trigger acceleration works but if you're getting options that vest, you could potentially figure out a way to get all (or some) of your options accelerate if you do get terminated. Usually this applies only on change of control, but I'm sure your attorneys could cook up something.
5. Why do you need to get acquired to work on the million ideas for the future? Have you thought about raising capital to do that (you know, the choice that Foursquare took when it turned down acquisition offers) - raising capital when there's already acquisition interest should be easier if that's the route you want to take and you can take money off the table if you need the cash and still build a potentially massive company. Talk to VCs anyway. This goes back to what you think the size of your opportunity is and how tired you are of going after it.
6. If you do "verbally" accept the offer, make sure you and your attorneys go over the LoI and terms with a fine tooth and comb, you could still get screwed. There's a million ways that could happen and that's where good attorneys will help.
7. Don't panic.
8. Best of luck!
(Only partially kidding)
How can you afford to offer such a service, completely free? What is your business model?
Pivotal Labs is a software development consultancy, we get paid to build software, from web applications for startups to large-scale enterprise systems. We built Tracker to support our own projects, and now share it with the agile community, but it is not a primary source of revenue for our company.[1]
Wonder what changed?
[1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:V05_lTO...
On a more serious note, this is fascinating data. I wonder what the comparison to web apps looks like, but that's a much harder (almost impossible?) number to get at.
I say fascinating, because who would've thought that having a centralized marketplace with a builtin secure payment mechanism would've created so much value/wealth over such little time, kudos to apple.