andjones

My startup offers online surveys, which are mainly used for research, company and employee evaluation, and feedback.

I don't consider the service so glamorous, but I think its useful and I'd like to spread the word as much as possible. I come from a programming side, so I can make all the website magic happens, promoting my website does not come so naturally to me.

I think sharing your idea with others is a great way to start. You get:

* Practice selling your idea

* Feedback about the validity of your idea

* Encouragement (hopefully) from others

* Suggestions that you may not have considered

That's worth a lot more to me than the possibility of someone running off with my idea.

And like many lessons, they are best - and unfortunately often - learned through experience. As an beginning rider, I was told to pretend like no one sees you, and in fact, people will try to hit you. I internalized those lessons much more after my first wipe-out.

I've watched friends and start-ups I've worked with make the same mistakes as others despite the wealth of knowledge available. I wonder why this happens. My best guess is we are all idealistic people on the inside. We have trouble with the "why" something matters unless we experience it for ourselves.

I think the author is attacking the wrong viewpoint. Being passionate about some idea I scrawled on a napkin at a bar is a great way to start a business.

The phrase "Be passionate" says nothing about discipline or determination. Most of his points seem to focus on these qualities. Sure, I've been part of many passionate conversations that started "Wouldn't it be cool if...?". Many of these ideas never made it past the beers they were shared over. But for the ones that did, passion is a good start.

If you are passionate over a long period of time, you will be good at what you do. This is not the same as making money, but you will be good at whatever it is you do. You can fake passion for a job, but those who matter will notice.

Although I understand the author's desire to not have his work copied, I think he stepped across the line when he used a personal attack:

"Guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby."

I think there are several start-ups which are boring and we don't hear about. I think I fit into this case and I'd love to hear other stories as well.

My startup at http://new.surveyshare.com is a tool where you can develop online surveys and collect results from people you know. Not glamorous, but people need it, and I am ramen profitable. However unglamorous, I am willing to continue working on it and enjoy it, which I think is the important part.

well done sir, well done

Give the Programmer as Much Control as Possible.

See: http://paulgraham.com/langdes.html

Let the programmer shoot himself (or herself) in the foot. I do not believe a language's job is to hold a programmer's hand. A programmer will write good code or bad code. A language cannot change that.

Variable variables allow for easy class reflection. I'm curious to hear other uses of variable variables.

This reminds me of the scene in "The Social Network" where Mark Zuckerburg sits in front of the Harvard disciplinary board for hacking into house face books to harvest student images.

The Zuckerburg in the movie thought that he deserved credit for pointing out security vulnerabilities in the Harvard network.

I do not believe the actions of these traders (or Zuckerburg) were correct. That being said, I still think their actions have value.

One way we learn is through our mistakes. There are many proprietary electronic trading platforms. Who checks them for bugs? Who checks them for accuracy or possible manipulation? I do not think these Norwegian programmers should be gaming a trading robot. At the same time, the SEC and other market regulators need to uphold their end of the bargain. If they would like to see a fair market, I think they should check trading robots for possible manipulation.

I do not think any of us are born with the ability to understand the structure of GitHub and Rails projects. These are learned abilities.

How do we learn them? Two ways. (1) spend time on our own. This can either be brute force (i.e. just exploring every folder over several projects until a pattern emerges) or though a guided tutorial. (2) Ask someone with more experience.

As for as (2) goes, when someone asks me a question that I think is trivial, I try to realize that its not trivial to them. This person is asking because they respect my ideas and they think I can save them a good deal of time.

I don't hold everyone's hand though. Sometimes I do respond with "consider searching for X and trying Y on your own". Where the appropriate line lies for direct answers versus gentle encouragement, I do not know. However, politeness, in both cases, is free.

I remember reading articles 1998/1999 saying that the search problem had been solved and no major new search engines would enter the market.

Google proved that wrong.

There are many 1+ billion opportunities. Think of the ideas that started Google / Facebook - Pagerank and a class hand-book. Had these ideas been explained to me as starting successful billion dollar companies, I would have laughed.

Not to say that that all laughable ideas create billion dollar companies. However, I think the laughable part is the interesting bit. Maybe we find these ideas humorous because they force us to look at the world in a different way.

Is there any context you can give about the project our environment in which you'll be working? And, why only Ruby vs .NET?

This information is invaluable. This is a great way to attract some traffic / get valuable feedback.

I once posted an early version of one of my sites on the craigslist forum for feedback. The responses were not helpful.

Essentials of Programming Languages (EOPL) http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Programming-Languages-Danie...

and

The Seasoned Schemer as well http://www.amazon.com/Seasoned-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/...

I think most of the comments are are missing the main point of the article: enjoy the journey instead of painfully achieving a goal. Goals are wonderful. However, I think our society is a bit too goal oriented (i.e. be a doctor, get a law degree, go for the promotion).

Have goals and enjoy the journey. Maybe I'm reading too much into the article, but that's what I got.

Facebook is an excellent tool, despite its many privacy concerns.

I hear people talking about leaving facebook entirely and that seems a bit short-sighted and draconian in measure. Little do I hear discussed changing the way that we use Facebook.

Last month, I went from 250+ friends to 40. Instead of using Facebook as a mean to accumulate every acquaintance I've ever made, I decided to only keep the friends to which I am close and comfortable sharing parts of my life. I changed most of my privacy settings to the most restrictive possible.

Yes, Facebook may change its privacy settings again. If the privacy becomes such an issue to warrant me leaving, I will leave. However, keeping up with the privacy changes and settings is a price I am willing to pay. Facebook is not free.

Being an entrepreneur, I do want an easy way to announce things I do. I want a way to keep in touch with those closest to me. That number of people is 40 right now, and still seems a bit high. Still, since I have cut most of my friends I have found myself more open and willing to use Facebook.

My father used to tell me "it's all about the journey, not the goal".

As a kid I thought that was silly, but as I grew older it made more sense.

As an adult, I would sum up that statement as follows: When you look back on you life, would you like to say look at all these goals I completed, or look at how much I enjoyed the journey of all my years?

How exportable is YCombinator? Much of YCombinator depends on people being in the same geography. I understand that to be the reason why founders are required to move to Mountain View.

Do you think it would be possible to start YCombinator prime elsewhere in the country? If we put together many of the same factors, angels, infrastructure, good mentors, could this be replicated, albeit on a smaller scale?

I agree, this is very useful. Entering address information into separate fields is something we have, sadly, come to accept. From a user standpoint though, this makes no sense. I write my address on an envelope, and the US post office delivers it just fine. Why would I need to separate my address?

One thing to keep inmind is the Geocoding limit. If this is used on a busy website, you'll need to build in checks:

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/faq.html#geocoder_limit

RFC 2616 HTTP/1.1 has a definition of idempotence with regard to request methods:

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html

Section 9.1.2

"Methods can also have the property of "idempotence" in that (aside from error or expiration issues) the side-effects of N > 0 identical requests is the same as for a single request."

How attached are you to the domain?

Should eBay choose to pursue this and you choose to defend it, you may make a good case. I'm not sure if your site has anything to do with auctions, as I can't reach your site ATM - I'm guessing you've been slashdotted. You may argue that you do not share any similarity to eBay and "bay" is a common word.

Right or not however, changing your domain could be the easiest course of action. Especially if you're not attached to it yet.

I don't think dropping Facebook is the right answer. Announcing to everyone that "I'm leaving Facebook" seems too idealistic and self-righteous.

I have 45 friends on facebook. This number still seems too high to me, but I realize is very low compared to many of my friends. I share things only with those that I am closest to. I decline the large majority of friends requests sent to me. I am comfortable using Facebook for only my closest friends and family, however others have criticized my use of Facebook in this way.

There are many ways to use Facebook. If you are prepared to accept some criticism for "not going with the group", I think Facebook can be a very enjoyable social tool.

Excellent read. I found myself relating this to the division between hacker types and the MBA types. I think the comparison is close as sometimes the product people are the MBA people.

As a hacker, I enjoy having large blocks of time to create what I think is good and not coding some autocratic vision of a product. As I've grown older though, I have come to appreciate and value the interaction between MBA types and myself. In one particular project an MBA type brought me valuable information about what we were doing well, how we compared against competitors, and what he thought our customers wanted. He then told me to run with it and stepped out of the way. I thought that was pretty neat.

Another thought - A quote from the article:

"A sudden rise in Long Beards simply copying Product People Products but doing it cheaper using their cost reducing backend skills."

reminded of the Paul Graham essay "Copy What You Like"

http://paulgraham.com/copy.html

... and copying something you like is probably a good way to bridge the gap between back end "long beard" and product designer.

Microsoft was once charming and sexy?

I am curious about why Netflix has succeeded so well with regard to streaming movies and so much TV content. There are competitors, Hulu and YouTube, but Netflix seems to be winning. I think there are three possibilities:

(1) They got lucky. Netflix made the good deals early on. After a few of these, the deals simply snow ball.

(2) Netflix has a captive audience created through their DVD rental service. Netflix gives us DRM'ed content we can view online and we applaud it because we already love getting those red envelopes in our mailbox.

(3) Their distribution network is superior and is the best to deliver all this content.

To me (2) seems the most likely. Perhaps is a combination of all 3.

That is correct. However does that make it a good idea to do so?

First, take a deep breath.

Second, approach the situation honestly. Honesty does not mean you need to approach everyone on your knees. Most of your creditors likely do not know what situation you are in right now. Many people actually enjoy finding creative win-win solutions. You never know unless you ask.

Third, good luck. Looking back at the low parts in my life, they all worked out one way or another. Without challenge and without hardship, I would not appreciate what is good in life. Learn what you can and always remember to smile :)

Having a C-Corp, Delaware or no, does not remove personal responsibility. Let's say I form a C-corp and accept client's money. The company then just happens to spend all that money on me and not deliver any product or service. I believe that is still called fraud and the individual is still liable.

That may be a harsh example.

Business is still about people. Regardless of whether an individual's credit it tied to the company - and in this case I believe it is - these decisions affect his future ability to conduct business. These decisions affect his relationships with other people.

Telling everyone to take a hike may be a short-term solution. However, I believe finding a win-win solution among all parties is a long-term win.

Any new company must boot-strap their credit (and credibility) in some way. Generally this is done by an officer or owner tying their credit with the company's credit. I own majority in a C-Corp and when applying for a merchant account I was asked to backup the company with my credit and SSN as well as sign for the company with its EIN.