electric

Have you got a product idea? If so then start building something right-away and talking to people about it -- promote it, attend barcamps, democamps, etc.. Eventually you will find someone who believes in it and will want to work with you on it and refine it, i.e. a co-founder.

My present founding team consists of people I knew, trusted and was friends with prior to starting work on my product. But they did not start working with me at the same time I started out.

They should've bought the URL: http://www.opensocial.com/ !!!

Yeah like move into telecom.

Please go see a lawyer. I highly recommend it to avoid a lot of pain later.

Interesting buy. Does this mean Cisco is getting into the telecom game now?

"make up more than 100%"

How is that possible?

>Markus Frind is a moron

Not a very nice thing to say... really.

>who was in the right place at the right time.

You can say that about everyone who is successful.

What if there is a cultural mismatch between the two companies?

Alexis is writing the Hollywood version.

Aaron's is the indie flick equivalent.

Wrote my theses in LaTex. It's excellent for large documents.

That's a little too binary for my liking. I wear the analog variety.

"I can't imagine a person who would possibly need more than 10GB for email"

Careful with that one... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_predictions#Computers

;)

I agree that the tie is back. I wear a tie to my lab everyday. Sometimes it gets in the way as I fiddle with the calibration knobs on my oscilloscope, but people take my research findings a lot more seriously these days as a result of it.

I think hackers are a critical component of technical teams and therefore should be rewarded with equity/options.

"It's an online rolodex! "

LinkedIn is.

No, he's smart.

"Now I wanna go back full time and get a PhD."

why?

87 + High school

What I was saying is that paying for the education that gives you the tools to start a startup is one of the biggest impediments to starting one.

"So you're saying that college, while expensive, is still worth it? "

Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. You meet like-minded people there who are excited about technology - potential co-founders. You learn about technology.

I've been through 3 universities, and the relationships I have built at these institutions have helped me to this day. I'm running a startup btw.

Regarding the businessweek comment, I can only say that if the desire and willingness to start companies was a meaningful trend, it _might_ have been noted as an option.

I would disagree with this: "1) that doesn't appeal to BW's audience" starting businesses _does_ appeal to businessweeks audience. ;)

"So wouldn't those people drop out earlier?"

No those people would not drop out earlier, because they likely did not know they wanted to be startup founders until they had enough technical knowledge and/or more importantly built those relationships with students around them which led to the creation of a startup in the first place. Perhaps your experience has been different in which case I cannot argue with that.

"when you could do something fun for one year and have a 10% chance of more than paying off your debt"

For precisely that reason -- that the likelihood of success is only 10%. And it often takes more than a year to build something meaningful.

"Also, employers are impressed by people who start their own businesses."

This is not always true. It depends on the role the employee is being hired into.

What Paul ignores is the fact that most people out of college are faced with seemingly insurmountable debt as a result of having to pay for an education - esp. in America (and to a lesser extent in Canada). This is one problem that will prevent startups from happening at such a rapid pace as he anticipates. In fact, most graduates want to find stable jobs to pay off their debt -- startups are not really on most graduates' radar. On a somewhat related note, Businessweek had a survey of the top ten desirable places to work for new graduates -- three were govt. agencies, one accounting firm, google, etc.

Are you assuming that every would-be 40-something founder makes 300k? That is rare.

Also, a company may be formed by tech people who get laid off and motivated out of necessity. What is the risk for them in this case?

Time to "monetize them eyeballs!"

An excellent piece. The Mercury News article is also worth reading.

I actually like the simplicity and usefulness of this website. Congratulations Aaron -- well done!!

It surprises me that the co-founders of reddit did not have a vesting arrangement in place in case one of them decided to drop out halfway for whatever reason well beyond their control. It's good that things worked out well for them.

Did Aaron bring anything to the merger other than his future effort -- like some code that was ready to drop into reddit?

Yes I think the professor realised this -- he was one of the founders of lavalife IIRC.

I have seen the show and my observation was: The dragons are really mostly into funding sauce-makers, innovative clothing accessories, etc. and they apply the same principles to startups -- doesn't work well.