hugo31370

The idea that fundraising now is easy is a myth. I'll give you that it's as easy as it's ever been but it's not easy. It requires a lot of prep work, time, and full time dedication. And unlike 10 years ago, it now requires a prototype of some sort.

If he was going around with an idea asking for money, that would be a tough sell. If you're going around asking for him, that's an impossible sell.

Here are some red flags for investors: - Do I want to invest in someone who's risk averse and will likely give up when things get tough? (and things will get tough) - What's his track record for product execution and how can he prove he can build a product in a reasonable amount of time? (i.e. not two years) - What's his team or reference that can confirm the genius behind the man?

It sounds like your friend is more of an employee #1 person than a founder, which is fine. Maybe instead of looking for money you should be looking for someone who can kick off the prototype and can later help with the fundraising process. In any case, your friend needs to be the one speaking.

Good luck!

thanks! I'll try that

thanks

They accepted Greplin and Daniel is Swiss.

Thanks! Do you know anyone in particular?

I've used mechanical turk in the past for easy tasks. This one requires a little learning and I feel people get a lot faster even after 1 day. My concern with Mturk is having different people all the time, which is a lot less efficient. To give you a number, right now it takes me 1-2 minutes to add a line, whereas for someone new it takes him 5-8 minutes. That's the kind of learning curve I'm hoping for if I hire the same person to do this for 2-3 weeks.

Do you know if Mturk can offer this? Thanks a lot!

I believe it has to be a person. I've used Mechanical Turk in the past and it's great for easy, simple tasks. This one requires a little learning, which means sticking to one person/team would be best because they can quickly get faster and more efficient.

I'm looking for advice on companies or people you've used in the past that you liked. Thanks!

Let me just add a different perspective here. To me there are 3 things I think about when picking the technology: 1. cost 2. scalability - how big do you want to be and does the stack you pick scale? 3. talent - how easy is it to hire top talent going forward

Other than that, I agree with all the comments here. Users couldn't care less about your technical decisions.

Every time a person talk of hours of work as a requirement or measurement a puppy dies. I think she's trying to convey that passion and dedication are key, but the 90 hours reference is unfortunate. Why 90 and not 100 or 80?

Efficiency is they real metric. I know people who can do in 2 hours what for others would take 4 or 5 hours.

Now, I do think if you're passionate about your idea, you're constantly thinking about it, and you're going to spend a lot of sleepless nights in order to build it. I think passion and dedication is a requirement but I don't like the hour mark.

spoiledtechie, I worked in the media business (Nielsen) before I started my last 2 companies (Piictu, Easy Vino) and your speech sounds familiar but too generic. The broadcasting business is so ripe for disruption but it does have a lot of tricks. Your question lacks too much info to give you a good recommendation but at first sight I'd say NO! Don't take money from other broadcasters/competitors. But we should probably talk about it more. If you want, shoot me a skype call (hugo.bernardo). Just to make sure, I have ZERO interest in that space right now. Just curious...

Most likely you won't be able to get in the IPO so the question is whether or not you should buy FB stock once it's public. I'd say probably not immediately. My guess is that the stock is going to sky rocket the first few days (weeks?) and then people will cash out. That's when you should buy.

Then again, if you can get in this round, I'd buy.

From a Portuguese citizen living in the Bay Area. The idea that SOPA can benefit European countries is laughable to say the least.

Everyone benefits from freedom and openness. When I started my first company in Portugal, companies like Geocities, Yahoo and Download.com enabled my startup. Today Google, AWS and Facebook enable startups all over the world.

If you think that thwarting innovation in the US can benefit some other country, you're not seeing the big picture. It's not about moving servers or people, it's about destroying the most prolific tech ecosystem in the world.

I use Listary (friend's app) for the same thing but it's a paid app. GroceryIQ is a good free app for that.

I think your app adds complexity where it isn't needed. Tag tags? Hard to get. The whole terminology is not clear. If you want to group items, call it Group.

A good feature would be to recognize items as you type them and add to specific aisles (produce, bakery, etc). That way you won't need groups.

I also think the icons are not very clear and the delete function should be a simple swipe sideways.

I wouldn't call it a failure but the expectation was for the share price to pop significantly in the first day. There were rumors that a lot of people who requested Zynga stock couldn't get it, so this morning's 10% price increase was lower than expected.

The expectation for "Internet IPOs" is usually pretty high for the first day and people are speculating that investors were either burned by previous IPOs (e.g. Groupon) or questioning Zynga's business model.

It's market BS. I wouldn't call it a failure and I'm sure the people at Zynga are pretty happy with the $1B they just raised.

Here's the perspective of a founder who has worked for big companies. I don't like the "Us vs Them" logic applied to startups - whether it's employees vs founders or founders vs VCs. Everyone is trying to make money and the reason why the upside is bigger for some is the same as in any other business - because they take more risk.

The founders should get the biggest upside, then investors (and among those the early investors more), then early employees, then all other employees. The founders risk their reputation, personal life, money and often friends' money to start a company. Investors put their money at risk at a stage when it's not clear if the company is going to succeed. And early employees put a bet on a company that can be gone in less than a year.

If you're not an early employee, you shouldn't bear with any corporate risk, which means that you should earn your market salary, no discounts. Because of that, the equity share can't be high because you're not really taking much risk.

Some people are more aggressive taking risks then others and that's why the market works

You say "why enrich other people?". Well, everyone is enriching someone else. If you own resources so valuable that others are willing to pay lots of money for, someone will make you rich. Find a way to make yourself indispensable, as a founder, investor or employee, and someone will make you rich.

Focus on what matters, age isn't probably the main concern. Maybe a 35yr gap affects the expectations that each founder has in terms of dedication and outcome, but shouldn't you be talking about it anyway independently of the age gap?

My advice is to focus on what matters and forget about age. Is it a good personal fit? Do you have fun working together? Do you have the same expectations? Can you agree on equity share? Do both founders add value?

In brief, just make sure you can be good partners.

My first advice is, you should get a lawyer to do that (I'm not a lawyer).

If you're a C-corp, ideally you haven't issued all stocks you're authorized to. Usually you're authorized to issue 10M stocks and you then limit the number of shares outstanding. If that's the case (say you have less than 5 million shares), you can just make your co-founder sign a stock purchase agreement on the # of shares you want to give her/him.

If that's not the case and you own all 10M shares, the company will have to buy back shares and then transfer them to your co-founder (via stock purchase agreement). The downside is that the company will have to pay for those shares (usually we're talking about a few hundred dollars).

Do not quit!!! It's all about your comfort zone. Getting out of it is a daunting task. What you feel is not new. You need 1. assume you're going to struggle getting out of your comfort zone, and 2. find small tasks that can help you transition to a new stage.

Just don't quit! I'm happy to chat about it. If you want just shoot me an email.

Everything can be negotiated, and non-competes are no exception. A non-compete can be more or less restrictive. Everytime I sign one I try to make sure it's reasonable. That means that you should agree not to compete in the same space you're working on. Everything broader than that you should try to negotiate.

So for any non-compete that reads "anything you do on your free time belongs to the company" you should try your best not to sign it. Negotiate! It makes sense. If you work for facebook and you're building an alternative social network on your spare time, it's reasonable for facebook to claim ownership (because you're likely using inside information). If you're developing a new music distribution software, then you should be ok.

The commitment discussion is secondary. Either you perform according to expectations or you don't. If you don't, the company can fire you. Non-competes are not tools to measure your performance. That's my understanding and the argument I'd use to negotiate non-competes. Non-competes regulate IP. Labor law regulates performance (i.e. commitment).

- San Francisco - Product design and vision, Business Development, Fundraising, Basic Coding (HTML, PHP). Looking for co-founder with back-end (Python) or mobile (iOS) skills - Working on my idea (easyvino.com) - We're building a private sommelier that anyone can use to pick wine at restaurants and liquor stores. It's a recommendation engine that automatically classifies wine and consumer taste and offers a recommendation based on pattern recognition (i.e. Netflix model) - Looking for someone who can join full time. We have a prototype almost ready. We need to take it to the next level (add features, scrap online data, connect with some major wine databases)

If interested, email me hugo@easyvino.com

That's great! That's a generous offer!

I used dribbble.com several times and I love it. You have to contact the designer directly and close the price beforehand but the results have been awesome.

There are no real thresholds. As entrepreneur, you're the one who sets the timing for each stage. Managing beta vs launch has several goals that go beyond media coverage. 1, When talking to users it's a way to tell them that your product is not quite ready yet. It's expectation mngmt but it works. Users are more likely to help you fixing bugs if you're in beta than if you're live. 2, When talking to investors is a way to gain time. If you're live you need to show traction. If you're beta you can go a little slower. You can use your beta stage to create some buzz so then when you officially launch you can actually see decent traction. 3, When talking to the media, it's about getting the big 'launch' coverage and possibly allow for an exclusive. If you're already launched there are no real news.