jlogic77

I was part of LaunchBox Digital class of 2009 in DC. We entered the program as http://www.ubernote.com ended up presenting "KeepFu" and ultimately are back to UberNote.

In the program itself we had a lot of really good speakers. Tim O'Reilly was probably my favorite. LBD had a great connection with the local DC tech scene. We got to talk with a lot of good startups from the area. Not to keep name dropping, but it was pretty cool to pitch Steve Case one on one in a meet and greet.

My biggest complaint is it went too fast. There is so much going on with the speakers and advisor meetings that it was difficult to be productive on the startup itself. Everything was geared towards demo day and the pitch.

One of the most beneficial things was the peer reviews. I sort of wish we had more peer to peer discussions as it proved very valuable.

Overall it was great experience where I gained valuable understanding on the funding process and some awesome connections. Pitching, going through investment meetings, and connecting with people pretty much sums it up. Entrepreneurship truly is a journey and the program gave me a look into a areas that were previously harder to access. Even though we didn't secure additional funding for Ubernote, we are still bumping a long and LBD will always be part of our story.

That's what happens when you depend on solely on a user community for everything. You can't control it and the sooner digg realizes that and deals with it, the better off they will be.

They've created a monster and are trying to control it by cheating.

You would think that they could have come up with more creative names than ddX and such... If you are going to create shills, at least come up with some better names and change up some of the account creating dates and such. No wonder they are having such problems as a business.

Aside from the items you've mentioned you should also consider these items:

Proving your market - Attracting and registering large numbers of people prove it's something people want. If you can't give it away for free, there's a problem. (Good for funding)

User feedback and "The up sell" - With the right features that non-paying customer may be a paying customer waiting to happen. You'll also have collection of emails of people interested enough to try your product, where you can up sell them to paid later. (Good for your product)

Scalability - Testing your product in the real world with real traffic patterns, live servers, and people depending on your service is very valuable. (Good for funding AND your product)

I'm a huge believer in the freemium model. Just don't give the cow away and try to position your premium product where users feel like they are getting real value when they have to take out their wallets.

It's a good idea. I like the idea that this can get around the high transaction costs per transaction, but the points system is a little confusing. The one line of code thing is cool and should be easy to get publishers to try it.

I run 3 monitors.

1. Open Laptop 2. 22" Widescreen LCD connected to laptop 3. 17" LCD to a desktop computer

Desktop and Laptop share a keyboard and mouse using Synergy. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ which makes it seamless to use!

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think the business / enterprise world works that way with updates about what people are doing and all.

Maybe some companies will "claim" their names on the site, just to reserve their name.

That's what I thought too, the startups they chose should not require them to have $18,500 to be in.

As much as I don't think too much of their picks, they still don't have to pay $18,500.

I really talking more about expense accounts and other fringe benefits that don't necessarily benefit the business.

CEO pay is a very good indicator. You should also pay attention to perks. Not all compensation is in terms of pay.

A CEO to taking a lower compensation says to me they are taking the company seriously. It's another way they have skin in the game.

If they aren't willing to sacrifice a little for the end game, may mean they are either purely in it for themselves or don't have confidence in the company. Either one is not so good for the company.

Haha.. At least he's honest with both TC50 and DEMO.

You could say the same about a lot of sites out there that launch, but knowing your site is going to get this much publicity and you don't do anything to at least grab some emails, subscribers or have some content that makes you want more... What a waste!

To have the top 50 companies seems does more of a disservice to the people named in the top. 50 is just too many! After that it just seems like you lose the attention, impact and intensity of being on top.

What is the success rate of the companies that have participated in the past? Does anyone have stats on that?

We are in baltimore http://www.ubernote.com. We are also attending the twintech event. Also just saw this and was thinking of attending. http://bootcamp.umd.edu/index.html

I've used Camstudio and really liked it. Works brilliantly on a dual monitor setup. Have your script and outline on one monitor, and drive the screencasts on the other.

Growth is tough in general. A team getting larger forces a leader or leaders to emerge. Not everyone can lead or manage. Not everyone takes direction well. All separate skills from just being able to code or design.

Larger teams is where politics come in and where I don't want to be. Ideally I only want to work in smaller teams.

When trying to figure out pricing another thing I have done in the past is preserve your premium pricing. It somewhat adds on to #8 and how "Everyone Loves a Bargain".

You can use this in the beginning phases of selling a product or service. Give an intro price. Make sure you let the customer know that this is a special so you can preserve your premium pricing. Give a "Special" 15% discount for the first purchase... or for the first month. Then as business rolls on, you can go to your premium pricing.

No one likes a price increase, but it's not seen as an increase if you are removing a discount.

I understand that they do have to charge money to attend the event and for the "demo" pit. The obvious reason is the money to cover expenses and profit, but another reason is to increase the barrier of entry with pricing.

They are becoming victims of their own success and have some need to keep the floodgates from coming down on them and taking away from the value they intend on delivering. Too many sponsors, too many products and an overloaded venue (which would also make their wifi gripe even worse) all would make the conference worse.

If they were truly out for the startups and themselves... turn this event into a funding opportunity, where a larger sum of the money is not just given to the winner, but turned into some sort of angel funding. Arrington and Calacanis are avid investors, so put some of these profits to a mutually beneficial cause. That would be a change to the model! Otherwise, they will turn into another DEMO.

Is it going to be better than just putting the code in a search engine like google or something. Most of the codes I come across are unique enough that I get a direct match pretty quickly. Also what helps me is seeing related forum posts and other comments on resolving the issue, the definition in on itself is often useless.

That's a tough one that I'm looking at too.

My thoughts on advertising is you need A LOT of traffic to make it worth your while. Or extremely good targeting. Which makes the ad model work for targeted blogs and sites with loads of content with some good SEO.

This is a great article on the topic in general: http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/170/Startup-Pricing-Mod...

This is also a fantastic video:

http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/david-heinemeier-hans...

I like the idea of having client meetings in one day. I never feel like I accomplished as much when a day is broken up by client meetings.

Most of my work I do remotely, so in similar fashion, I tend to dedicate a client visit day, where I'm out and about on sites.

I wonder what types of questions the founders are asking of Google pre-aquisition? As a founder, I would think you are concerned with what is Google's "vision" for your product/company. I could also see just the shiny things being enough to make me not worry about the vision.

Also, there are successes. Writely - > Google Docs seemed to be a pretty big success. I'm sure there are others.

Found this in the TC Comments. http://rapidshare.com/files/137276513/Documents_YCombinator....

Eh... does it really need to be classified anymore? It pains me to say I am working on something in the Web 2.0 space.

Patiently waiting to have a copy

I'm still down and have been for at least the last 20 minutes.

Without sounding like a broken record... Quickbooks.

It's also easy to just give your accountant the qb file for taxes. I'd advise to stay with the non-online version. When I was looking at it awhile ago it didn't have everything I needed, also you always want access to your books.

Thanks, that helps!

What do you mean launching your startup here? I'm new to hackernews, how does one do that? Is it just a comment like this or submitting a press release?

Can you just use those as a "Contacts" base? Think of those networks just as sources for contacts.

Let users, point to a network with their profiles as a source for contacts. Allowing for many of these to be setup, i.e. one for each network/profile so a user can even use multiple accounts on a network (if they have that). Also allow for your own internal contacts base that is NOT hooked up to a social network.