levirosol

Are these guys important, respected people? Of course. Do they primarily invest in companies within Silicon Valley? Yep.

Is the country, and the world much bigger than the ego's of these guys? Absolutely.

My point is, why should I care about a closed door meeting that happened 2000 miles away from me.

As a startup founder I find myself hesitant to comment on articles / topics like these mostly due to the fact that you never know who you might work with in the future. But I'll make the exception here.

This seems more like a Days of Our Lives episode.

"Hello soon to be WakeMaters,"

I don't believe their first line of copy.

I love the status page they have. I wish more providers did this.

However, I wish I never had to use this page.

This is a project of mine that I have worked on in varying degrees for the past year and I'm very happy to see it go live, even if it's not 100% yet.

I created ScoreYard because, as a parent of 3 kids who are active in different sports, I thought it was ridiculously hard for me to keep track of their ever changing schedules, and for the coaches to communicate out to the parents. Some use email, some use phone trees, some use smoke and a blanket...

Then you add in the complication of me keeping out of town family updated on schedules (they would often be in town for a weekend and want to catch a game), and my head nearly exploded.

Anyways, I started building ScoreYard on my own last year. I had the idea, I had the skillset to build it, but I just didn't have the man hours. So, in Jan of this year I brought on two co-founders. One rockstar developer, and one socially connected marketer.

After bringing on the co-founders, a lot has changed. We basically scrapped 99% of the code I had written and started fresh. Now we're in the mindset of "get it out there" and will be pushing new features as quickly as we can.

Right now we're most focused on getting feedback. We aren't building this in a silo and want do our best at building out features users actually want vs what we think they want. Be it design feedback, functionality feedback, or just bug reports, we want to hear it.

Feel free to contact me directly: Levi@ScoreYard.com

A designer who reads HN will probably be a good fit for us. I'd appreciate any references / referrals you could give me too.

This is what I'm referring to. An IDE should make what I already know easier to get from brain to fingers to keyboard to screen.

Intellesense does this by letting me type a couple chars of a known method, then pressing tab.

It should also make what I kinda know easier to find.

A good IDE does this by letting me find a method in intellesense and showing me the method description.

I wonder if Twitter, Scribd, Hulu, Friends for Sale would agree.

I agree that .Net projects do tend to differ from Ruby projects. But I'm not willing to be as definitive as the author by saying "Ruby and .Net Developers Solve Two Different Kinds of Problems". That's too black and white for me.

Also, the fact that there are IDE's for Ruby (RubyMine and Netbeans) shows that there is becoming more of a desire / need for an IDE in the Ruby world. Even the good old standard of using TextMate mixed with a zillion plugins / macros shows a need.

Getting back to the point of the tweep's original question though; If a person doesn't understand the value of intellesense, they're not doing it right.

middle of no-where.... geez :)

I live in Iowa. Des Moines to be specific. And our start-up community, IMO, is rock solid. We have a number of organizations who host regular events (http://www.technologyiowa.org/, http://smcdsm.ning.com/, etc...) along with a very good supply of technology user groups covering all of the major techs (.Net, Ruby, Java, etc).

As for finding people to bounce ideas off of, attending those events, meeting new people, and just talking about what you're doing has worked well for me.

We also have two (that I'm aware of) co-working locations. These are great because it groups together like minded people who are always willing to listen to ideas you want to bounce.

Starting a blog to bounce ideas off of your users doesn't sound like a very good way to go to me. It would take a really long time, and would be a lot more work. I'm not saying it can't, and shouldn't be done. I'm just saying getting out and meeting people will be better.

We're also in close proximity to larger cities too, so we often get talent coming in to work for start-ups here.

And we have a news site to keep tabs on all of this, http://www.siliconprairienews.com/. This basically allows a one stop shop for seeing what's going on, and where you might be able to meet new like-minded people.

I guess this turned into more of a pro-Iowa post, but I think it gives you some answers :)

I should clarify that, if we find the right person, we are looking for a graphic / UI designer to partner with. The option of revenue or equity sharing is on the table for the right person.

Being able to write code is a step in the right direction.

I'm building a bootstrapped start-up, and we need a designer with a start-up building mindset. I'm not in NY, but would be interested in at least chatting and seeing what you can do.

contact me @ levi@scoreyard.com when you have time.

This is a project of mine that I have worked on in varying degrees for the past year and I'm very happy to see it go live, even if it's not 100% yet.

I created ScoreYard because, as a parent of 3 kids who are active in different sports, I thought it was ridiculously hard for me to keep track of their ever changing schedules, and for the coaches to communicate out to the parents. Some use email, some use phone trees, some use smoke and a blanket...

Then you add in the complication of me keeping out of town family updated on schedules (they would often be in town for a weekend and want to catch a game), and my head nearly exploded.

Anyways, I started building ScoreYard on my own last year. I had the idea, I had the skillset to build it, but I just didn't have the man hours. So, in Jan of this year I brought on two co-founders. One rockstar developer, and one socially connected marketer.

After bringing on the co-founders, a lot has changed. We basically scrapped 99% of the code I had written and started fresh. Now we're in the mindset of "get it out there" and will be pushing new features as quickly as we can.

Right now we're most focused on getting feedback. We aren't building this in a silo and want do our best at building out features users actually want vs what we think they want. Be it design feedback, functionality feedback, or just bug reports, we want to hear it.

Feel free to contact me directly: Levi@ScoreYard.com

or is it just a coincidence that I saw a few dupes today, and then my post went through?

btw, i did remove my post since it was a dupe.

Wakemate has done very poorly in setting my expectations. Therefore, I will set my own.

I'll get charged the remaining $45 in 4Q 2010, and receive the product in 2Q 2011. It will break in 3Q 2011.

$109/mo

$100 for rent at a co-working space $9 for unfuddle $0 for heroku

Agreed. At first glance, that's what I thought. Trying to figure out why, I think for me it's the list on the left and its use of blue followed by grey. it looks like a google ad.

I'd also say it's due to the logo being the only color on the page (+1 for the monocolor comment), and the super huge font with no effects (add a shadow maybe?) and the word "best"

I've really enjoyed using Heroku. Hopefully this doesn't become a trend.

Sounds freakin tasty to me.

"Maybe it's for farms and the like"

I think that's a valid statement. It's not a new law, and based on the article, there certainly are a number of additional rules that go with it.

It would be interesting to see how this would impact the start-up community in a state w/o a law like this, who then adds a similar law, but with say, a 5 year timeframe instead of 10.

I answered the question, it's not an opinion. My startup has no women founders. so why downvote?

pretty much how my first interaction went too.

I also thought it was odd that the "you should upgrade here" balloon pointed at my status bar.

before i would sign up (and 2.99 seems fair. doubt i would pay more) i would want to see some reports, and i would want an android app that is equally as easy to use.

To build on my comment below "...I think it's a good design. The #fail didn't come until i clicked the (bootstrapped) link and landed on a FAQ not related to the promotion..."

After spending a few minutes on the site I found in the signup form, when i hovered over the tiny little ? icon what the criteria is for this promotion. Great, I qualify. However, the signup form is VERY painful. Do you really need all that info? The only thing you probably need are Company Name, Email and Password. Assume everything else and give the users a way to set those once they've signed up.

This is just my 2 cents. Overall your design, and the product itself looks really good. The signup just seems to be a weakness.

Below the fold? Really? You can't scroll?

The whole concept of a fold is ridiculous to begin with (for the most part), but then to give feedback that the "here's how you get our paid app for free" link is not front and center? Really?

In the 10 seconds I spent looking at ScrumPads home page, I think it's a good design. The #fail didn't come until i clicked the link and landed on a FAQ not related to the promotion. I'd be interested, but I couldn't find more promotion details. Because of this, we'll probably stick with Unfuddle and their ticketing system.

I will say that yes, this HN thread is a promotion, and therefore, the URL should take us to a new landing page highlighting the promotion. Not to the general home page.

Just now seeing this thread. I posted my thoughts regarding the reply here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1072131

This is spot on. I purchased the WakeMate with the understanding that it was planned to be released in Jan. I am 100% OK with the fact that manufacturing issues is causing a delay in meeting their Jan 25 commitment. Shit happens. And for a 10% commitment on my end, I don't feel at all betrayed due to the push back on date.

It's the whole "Premium Analytics Features FREE for EACH month their delivery is delayed" that rubbed me the wrong way. When I read that, my first reaction was "Wait, did I miss something?". I then went to the wakemate site and saw no mention of this paid plan. That's when I realized I was being taken for a ride. Bait and switch anyone?

This is the response I got last night before any of these HN threads started:

http://twitter.com/wakemate/status/8102380070

It's disingenuous to tell me you have new features when I don't know what your existing features are.

So, I guess we'll see what we end up with.

how exactly do you do this?

"If you want to email someone, have them send an email to your maskur.com address, so their maskur.com address will appear in the "From" field, or ask them to mask their email on this page."

at that point, haven't you already communicated with them? either by phone / in person, or via email?

agreed, however, the mobile app market appears to be very fast and finicky. Unless your building an application that is tied to, or supports another, already existing application, it's primarily a craps shoot on making money or not.

of course it's possible. Is that sustainable for your average single app? probably not.

However, with 15 some odd phones releasing in the near future, if you're doing mobile development, you have to be putting more focus on Android.

This brings a tiny tear to my eye...

Lack of functionality was holding me back. Then it was no mechanism for feedback. I'm still thin on functionality and copy, but I have a feedback mechanism now.

www.SportsLeeg.com

Getting over the "first release" hurdle is tough. So many "what if"'s remain. Once it's out though, motivation goes through the roof to keep things running tight and releasing often. I find myself releasing 3-4 times a week now. Even for small stuff.

agreed.