edmack

It takes your slides (PPTX format), and analyses each one a bunch of ways, to spot common pitfalls. For example, it checks the reading age, how busy the slides are, how colourful (or not) your colour palette is. It also checks if you put too much text on each slide.

It's not fool proof, but is surprisingly accurate for various slide-fails :D

Ha. This is identical to most of my tech backend!

Interesting. One thought is that currently people get free VC introductions by their colleagues, so this could attract the most unscrupulous introducers. However, the incentive structure is pretty robust.

Hey! I had a play with it, some quick thoughts:

* It could be helpful to open a browser tab with a welcome to Amber.Io. There is some amount of welcome text, but more hand-holding and big visual 'this is what we are' would be helpful.

I think there are two key things missing (questions in my user mind)-

One: what does it actually look like? What is this magical new amber button? One image of the button, and the magical benefits it brings would peak my visual memory when I see it in future and set me up to go

Two: The other thing that really feels missing is "how / where can I use this? " if you just presented me with a visually appealing gallery of shopping sites (bunch of names on image tiles, a bit like the W8 metro screen" then i'd be able to start using it now. I currently have this weird uncertainty of where/when Amber will kick into motion.

<end-rambling-thoughts/>

1) No stepping stones. Do the thing you want now. Startups are not that risky, particularly if your very young

2)+3) Having time to yourself, time to develop ones many facets is important. But these questions sound like your deep down inside are not interested in working in a big company. You're in the fortunate position you can probably have a job you genuinely enjoy - do that

4) Try loads of stuff. You learn most in the first 3-6months. Ideally do loads of really different jobs for that amount of time, you'll learn tons about yourself. Always try to deliver great stuff. Quit if it doesn't feel right - people always stay in things they hate for ages. Paul Graham has some great essays on this topic, read them.

Hey - I've been in exactly this position last October, with a fairly messy end. We had to give up on the company.

More than happy to talk it through with you and let you know what worked well/didn't for us. Twitter: @MackMackTweet

Thanks emhart! In the companies I've worked at, I've always sketched first. It's exciting to remove the middle painful bit.

Looking forward to seeing what you think of the beta :D

I'm a big fan of Trello for a visual way to lay them out and share them. It's a nice balance of feature rich but visually simple.