amrithk

Hi, I am working with two other people in creating a web application and we were in the same position a year ago. We steadily picked up programming over the months and of course, there were many stumbles along the way. We still have a lot to learn but we are proficient enough to create somethng.

My advice is take the time to learn programming. It is deeply satisfying to be able to create something yourself instead of relying on others to do it for you. Plus, it makes you more aware of how your product is actually getting built, and gives you a good understanding of the strength and weaknesses of your idea.

It is frustrating, espacially in the beginning because it feels like there is so much to know. There is. But you'll get into the groove of things once you start immersing yourself in it.

Thats a great idea. There;s a wealth of information (links, posts etc) in HN and it would be nice to easily access a submission that was posted in the past.

I heard the U.S. govt recently extended OPT for 2.5 years. You should be able to work in a startup for at least that long. If you have contributed a lot to the startup's growth, hopefully they won't mind sponsoring you for a H1-B visa after that period.

Sure. Thanks for replying. That would be interesting. Send me an email at amrithk(at)gmail(dot)com and I can try and see if there are other people who might be interested in this sort of thing closer to the time.

We were actually hoping to meet people individually. But gathering a group of people at one place does not seem like a bad idea. I'll try and figure something out.

Well, we have used PHP extensively until now. We have gotten more disciplined in designing code, compartmentalizing it into classes, documenting the code etc.

However, I recently read an article on YC about how many startups go through a phase debating about which language an application should be built on. We did not give this much thought as we saw a few prominent websites like facebook use PHP and we thought PHP seemed to be a pretty scalable language. Plus, with support for OOP (as of PHP 5), PHP seemed to be a pretty good choice.

I am interested in evaluating if we made the right decision

Its been informative learning about your experiences. What do you mean by frameworks? Something like a backend scripting language, a templating tool (like Smarty or PHPTal), etc?

Thats interesting. What is it about Phyton that makes it attractive?

Thanks for the suggestion. So the javascript file would basically write the html markup for the widget? How would it handle interaction with the database? Can I use it to write php code as well?

How can I access this title automatically in the first place? Are you familiar with any PHP solutions in particular?

Thanks again

Any resources on how to do this?

It depends. A few months ago, my current room-mate had an idea for a startup. We decided to move in together as it would be easier to brainstorm ideas, code, and plan what we needed to do. Both of us have full-time day-jobs and we work on week-nights and week-ends on our idea.

We have been pretty good so far in seperating work from our personal activities. We both make sacrifices to move our project forward. At the same time however, we don't interfere with each other's personal issues and activities. It takes some time to have a good arrangement and the best thing to do would be to communicate your expectations to the developer, and also listen to what he wants in terms of a working relationships. Lastly, I would recommend doing social things together with your developer. For example, you could have dinners with your developer and boyfriend. Such activities strengthen the working relationship and inspire everyone to continue working on the project.

A company needs to have reliable free cash-flow to be able to pay all the debt taken out by financial sponsors. Not sure if many current startups fit that profile

Thanks for the links and information. It seems like there aren't too many options. The other visa classes seem too restrictive.

It doesn't. But the company will have to be registered as a U.S. based entity first which may take some time and will only be done after YC starts.

This advice might sound a bit "old-school". I would recommend you stick with college for at least another year or two. Being a recent graduate myself, I can understand how the stuff you learn in college seems pointless and may not be applicable to what you really want to do/accomplish. However, college really helped me learn how to learn things fast. And that, is a valuable skill to have.

That sounds like a good idea. I am already working at another company on a H1-B visa and run my venture just as aside.

To really pursue this full-time, one route I am thinking is to apply to business-school and work on my venture through that. That way, I'll get to work on my venture, have better chances of meeting bright people I can work with, have better access to funding opportunities and also gain a 1 year provision through an F-1 visa that I can use to build a startup. Does that seem like a good idea?

Another program we've been looking at is TechStars (www.techstars.org). Its based in Colorado, which I believe, is emerging as a startup hub.

The problem is we are all from different countries. If I move to the country of my origin, my team-mates will need a visa to move to that country. Of course, its much easier to work from different parts of the world but not sure how advisable that is for a startup when many people need to work face to face.

Thanks for the advice....

I don't think I want to go the sham marriage route :-)Perhaps the best thing would be to consult an immigration lawyer. Just wanted to know if anyone has had similar experiences to mine as to attend a program like YC, everything is predicated on being able to remain in the country.

Interesting to see the things people are doing.

A few months ago, 2 of my friends from college and I came up with an idea for allowing people to create polls online and give them tools to look at the results in more detail. Only problem was none of us knew anything about web programming and design. We learnt a lot from reading forums, through w3schools and other websites. After more than 6 months of tinkering and working pretty much on weekends (2 of us work as bankers), we came up with PollBag (www.pollbag.com). Its probably a bit amateur but would love to know what you think. We are always looking to get constructive feedback.

Thanks for the reply. I'll check out those public forums as well. But the idea of testing the UI out informally is also pretty good.