avk

I recently had an account with Wells Fargo that I used for my short-lived startup. We didn't use it heavily but didn't have any problems.

One of my favorite insights from Steve Blank is "you fail if you stay a startup." I strongly recommend watching his Startup Lessons Learned Conference presentation (link below). The differences between startups and established companies run deep and most entrepreneurs don't make the transition from the former to the latter.

http://startup-marketing.com/steve-blanks-sll-keynote-its-a-...

This page was a very pleasant surprise find when they introduced dev.twitter.com at Chirp in April. I don't like that most Twitter clients reinvent the wheel in terms of UI. A little consistency and familiarity doesn't hurt.

Thanks for the encouragement. I just updated mine. Feedback appreciated :)

I've done 2 hackathons with a large group over at UC Berkeley (sponsored by the CS Undergraduate Association and Startup @ Berkeley) but both times worked alone. I also did the overnight hackathon at Chirp, the Twitter Developer conference, last month.

General tips:

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- Make sure there's enough food & drink. It's very hard to think and keep working when you're thirsty or hungry.

- Second monitors for everybody involved are a must.

- Definitely still use version control. I've seen some people avoid this for the sake of speed but the ability to try things out and quickly recover is vital in a chaotic coding environment of a hackathon. Take the time to set it up.

- Don't keep things in your head for too long. It's faster to express yourself and communicate on paper. Bring LOTS of scratch paper and pencils.

- Take breaks unless you're in the zone. Get up, stretch out, walk around, get food, talk with others. It'll help re-energize your thinking.

- Don't sleep. All my hackathons were less than 24 hours and I didn't sleep. I got a good night's rest the night before I started and I stayed away from naps because it's very hard to wake up once you fall asleep.

- TDD is optional. If it's part of how you already code all your projects, keep at it. If you're not in the church of testing, don't bother. It will only slow you down. A hackathon is not about coverage or whether your code is well-tested, it's about whether you have code that works at all.

Splitting time:

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- Never hesitate to stop and brainstorm, just don't let a session go on for more than 30 minutes.

- Leave visual design for last. My goal has always been to build something functional, not necessarily pretty or usable. I can also crank out CSS pretty quickly so I'm comfortable leaving most or all of the visual design for the very end.

- It's worth sketch out the flows early on. It will help guide and structure your code and other ideas. Just don't obsess over a great user experience in the beginning.

- Spend the vast majority of your time coding. Iterate like you've never iterated before. Hack, hack, hack, and only refactor if the latency is really bothering you. Get to something that works first and foremost, then worry about code quality, performance, readability, and all the things you're supposed to when you have more time.

Feedback for Startups is intriguing because the pain is definitely there but this approaches it from the wrong perspective. How can we help startups get feedback from potential users in their target market, not just those seeking incentives for doing simple tasks?

What's your favorite & least favorite thing about HN? subreddits? other startupy sites you follow?

It's most likely a set of users who expected something and did not have a good first user experience with your product. Maybe their expectation wasn't matched, they were confused, or they were just browsing. But that's all conjecture, you need to find out from those 25%. Only they can explain their behavior.

Learning about your customers should be top priority. I would definitely follow up with those 25% via a very friendly email, as mentioned in previous comments. Don't be surprised or upset if very few of those 25% reply to your email (would you - for a service you abandoned?). Good luck learning!

I don't know about the rest of the HN community but who else is still actually using Buzz? Why?

I'm currently solving this very problem with a much simpler algorithm and slowly letting folks into my beta over at http://slipstre.am/

I respect your sympathy for and willingness to read what those you follow deem interesting. But I think the author of the blog post is speaking of a problem that emerges at a larger scale when you follow more & more people. Your stream becomes bigger while the amount of time you have stays the same so your options are 1) unfollow people, 2) don't read everything, or 3) put in more time. Personally, I don't like 1 or 2 because I feel like I'll miss out on timely, relevant information and 3 isn't an option for most of us. Thus, the need for a solution like the one the blog post describes. Shameless plug: here's how I'm trying to fix the problem - http://slipstre.am/

I don't think that's a solution because it assumes everyone would agree that X is for personal posts, Y for professonal, etc. I don't think that kind of agreement will ever come about. I believe in filters but all the ones currently out there aren't at the right level of granularity. It's not about the service, the person, the list, or the search result. The update itself is the right granularity to consider for relevance (as this blog post shows).

"I honestly don't see this as a problem. I don't read every Tweet that comes through my stream its kind of random access information, I look at twitter every now and then and if something interesting strikes me I look into it."

Don't you feel like you miss out interesting and relevant tweets with that kind of random access? Imagine if the proposed filters were in place. They would give you the best and most relevant of everything. Isn't that better than random access?

What gave you that impression?

Excellent post! I came to the same conclusions in February and am working on fixing the Twitter garbage problem (what I see more broadly as information overload) with Slipstream: http://slipstre.am/

Would love your thoughts here or over email: arthur@slipstre.am

If I make it out of private beta, I will charge at launch. In the mean time, I don't have to actually collect money to answer my biggest question: do people find my service valuable enough to pay?

I'm trying things solo this time and don't plan on incorporating at all until I have traction. Just seems like too much hassle and unnecessary expense that gets me no closer to product/market fit.

I agree with the message but this post is really lacking. Only 2 sentences are spent on why founders need hobbies and much more on a list that, as one of the other commenters already pointed out, is irresponsibly expensive for most founders. It would be better to hear how a founder with a hobby is more successful thanks to his hobby.

I balance slavish dedication with passion. The more I care, the less I mind putting in more time because it really doesn't feel like work. That works for me, at least while I'm young and hungry for startups.

My approach changes dramatically when I'm working for somebody else because it's hard to find something to care about on the same level as your passion projects.

So the key seems to be passion. Have a lot of it? "Work" more because it's not really work. Have a little? Mind your hours and your rate.

"Now Spolsky says the plan is for the company to launch a handful of very targeted sites running the same software but focused on offering objective answers to technical questions in other verticals."

So is this just a pickier StackExchange?

How do they plan to offer objective answers (or is this just restating what StackOverflow does today)?

Made me raise an eyebrow too but I think Joel's previous business experience with Fog Creek will help them steer things in the right direction. I don't think a bubble-like spending spree is in their future.

I'd like to see a list of recommendations like this for entrepreneurs or would-be entrepreneurs in college (something like http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html).

I wonder what Caterina Fake would say about Joel's list (http://www.caterina.net/archive/001234.html), assuming the hackers he's speaking to are also entrepreneurs?

If Arrington did sell TechCrunch, how would that affect events like TechCrunch50? Would be interesting to see what he would go on to do next...

Was anyone else hoping for a discussion of how or why browsers almost completely ignore MRU for alt-tab? Only Opera supports cycling through tabs in both MRU and tab order (configurable).

Another great technique that I read about recently: be the opposite of secretive http://cdixon.org/2010/03/14/developing-new-startup-ideas/

This was my favorite bit:

"Every time I drive by Sand Hill Road, I see clumps of “fresh fish”, shuffling from pitch to pitch, who equate raising VC with having a successful company. Look, this is hard; if you’re really building something of value, it’s going to be hard, and you have to be prepared to endure a lot. The finish line is liquidity for your shareholders, investors, and employees, not a VC raise."

Neat. Not sure what the following means (I saw it for "Outbox" and a few others):

{ "error": { "type": "Exception", "message": "You can only access the \"outbox\" connection for the current user: " } }

Does that mean I have to be logged in to get at that data?

Anyone know where we can get the full talk? I'd like to see Jack Dorsey and Ashton Kutcher's reactions.

I agree that Facebook could easily screw up on privacy but I don't think they could lose like MySpace lost. If Facebook were to screw up, where would people go? Assuming MySpace, Friendster, etc. are already a lost cause.

If only there were schools that encouraged entrepreneurship while broadening your horizons with more smart, interesting people than you might ever meet again...