louhong

Very cool to see this. Much needed and I like what the Armory crew has done in the past. Will def be keeping my eyes on this.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Call 1-800-273-8255

Putting this here in the event anyone needs it.

Agree, I think that is a glaring omission.

Great write up Tommy! Love the detail and how you explained the process...I've tried the meetup tactic but not with the follow up you've outlined. Pretty creative approach and I'll have to try that in the future.

It really depends on what you're looking to get out of it. A job, networking opportunities, better understanding of business? Also, look at cost factors, are you paying for it, is your work? How much time can you invest?

Here is a visualized chart of the responses: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/oimg?key=0Apeq0A1yrFZCdF...

I'm in total agreement.

How are they even getting your info? Linkedin?

Nice post g! This is going to be really helpful.

I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Went through the process last year.

Thanks for the question and feedback. First, keep in mind that Sync is a beta product and we’re still actively building it, things are evolving every day. We’re investing a ton of time and money into it, there’s a ton of great stuff happening and more coming.

As for your question, yes, we're planning on releasing a version that will allow for you to use your own tracker - unfortunately we don’t have timing yet for that but it is in the works. We're working hard to make a great product and to support everyone as best we can.

Also, we do have a dedicated forum for the Sync API http://forum.bittorrent.com/forum/106-developers/ in case you have other questions/comments. Thanks!

(Disclaimer: I work on Sync at BitTorrent) Sorry if that language is confusing - we'll try to clean it up. If you build a SaaS product using Sync that's totally fine and you're welcome to sell your service. What we're trying to prevent is people who try to sell something that we are giving away for free. Happy to try to clarify if there are any other questions.

I find myself much more interested in space now than ever been (as an adult) and I can directly attribute that to the work Elon Musk has been doing. I wonder if he's shaping the next generation of entrapreneurs and startups.

Business guy here. Depending on what your product is the approach can vary. For all my projects I try to target the most interested group of users. In some cases I might target linkedin groups, meetups, target specific website forums, etc. In other cases, I've tried the ad approach (fb, google, etc). You can also try direct emailing your user group (depending on where they are) and have them sign up for your product (launchrock).

Although I love HN, the challenge I've found with places like Show HN, reddit/r/startup, betalist is that its sometimes not related to the product I'm selling so a)I'm trying to sell a product to the wrong target market and b)tech sites can often times be an echo chamber and the data you get isn't necessarily quantitative.

Thanks for the link! Do you think you would ever add a physical address to 'Opportunity'?

I've heard about the product from friends so I'm interested in looking at the developer apis. The product looks great - congrats on the launch!

This might be an interesting video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E) - its a video of Tangier, VA where they still speak English from when the town was settled in 1600s.

Another link: http://www.onemorething.nl/2012/10/jacht-steve-jobs-te-water...

Clickable URL: http://www.hntrends.com/

I'll throw in my 2 cents as typical HN 'suit'. For background, I do have a technical co-founder and am working on something currently and we've been working together over a year and are on our second project.

First, I think the OP's response was perfectly acceptable. Its important as a technical co-founder to determine quickly what the "suit" can bring to the table although I do think he left out some valuable skills like marketing, user adoption, team building. He did include 'industry experience' which is critical. (edit: I also recall my co-founder then asking me situational questions like how I would market x app, who would use it, pricing, etc to see if I've thought through the process)

Second, one aspect that I see missing often is chemistry. Over the last few years I've attempted multiple projects with several different people and I can't stress how important chemistry is with your co-founder and/or team. I actually really enjoy hanging out with my co-founder and consider him a friend and we regularly hang out (with each other's families) and that kind of trust carries over to our work. Trust is something you can't quantify so for those in search of co-founders, don't just look at credentials but look at the person too.

My last thought is that although you're a 'suit' like I am, you need to make an effort. There is a general curve that says in the idea phase the majority of the workload is done by the technical co-founder. While true, I do my best to try and offset that. It gives me no joy to sit on my ass while my buddy is coding to 3am every night. How would it make you feel if you're busting your ass pitching, getting customers, and doing cust dev while they are at happy hour? So to respond to this I do my best. I've picked up basic design skills (PS/AI/FW), I've gotten his help to install ruby and learn basic HTML/CSS so I can make easy changes. I alternate every few days from doing something design centric, customer oriented (get feedback/lead gen), to thinking about our product direction.

So my take aways are: ask questions, figure out if you can work together, and make sure everyone is willing to put in the work to make it happen.

This is great, thanks for the breakdown. Never dealt with Noah or the AppSumo guys but I get all their emails. Really nice to know there are guys behind it all and they're being conscientious with what they are sending out.

As someone else mentioned there was a $12k housing subsidy. Since she disclosed that she's engaged to the co-founder, and assuming they are living together, and assuming that he's getting a similar subsidy, they would have $2k a month which is doable for a 1 bedroom apartment. She's also got some expenses (food, internet, gym) taken care of so it is very possible.

Sam, congrats on the raise. Can you elaborate on the pricing for online sales? Would this include subscription services as well or just (one time) virtual good/digital sales?

I think https://www.leanlaunchlab.com/ has some similar functionality in terms of facilitating communication among teams.

I agree that the scope of books that entrepreneurs would find helpful should be wider. I'd recommend some that might be a little easier to get through (just of the top of my head):

-Losing my virginity (Branson)

-How to win friends and influence people (Carnegie)

-Venture deals (Feld)

-Man's Search for meaning (Frankl)

Would love to see this hacked to work with Kinect or the leap.

Small suggestion: Add a stronger CTA (I was thinking after the 3 steps and before the 'next steps'). At that point I was ready to sign-up to try it out but wasn't sure what to do next.

FWIW I think this is an interesting approach. We're trying to approach one specific use case in our own product (I'm in agreement that smaller companies need an alternate solution to larger CRM tools). Good luck!

Two favorite quotes:

"Can you name a great consumer brand that was built by someone completely rational?" - CEO of CarMax

"Never tell me the odds." - Han Solo

This is very misleading - his Quora answer (below) means that been involved (if at a limited capacity) with coding since he was very young.

"Depends what you mean by coding. I've been programming here and there since I was in middle school. In high school I was excused from my foreign language requirement so I could take more computer science classes. The first real class I took was in Pascal, and then later in c++. Independently I started playing with MySQL and PHP, but never did anything significant.

My freshman year at Stanford I took CS106X which was the first year's worth of CS in 1 quarter (it's usually two). I wouldn't say I did so well... I looked around and saw so many fantastically smart folks in that class and decided I was better off majoring in something like business. Looking back I wish I had stuck with it. It turns out that no undergrad class prepares you to start a startup -- you learn most of it as you do it."

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-kevin-systrom-a-qa-the-2...

According to Wired.com the CEO is taking about $400 of the Billion.

Source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/facebook-buys-instagr...