vammok

> A lot of affiliate marketers start out very consumer-focused in order to build a strong brand that consumers trust. They later find it very hard to resist the temptation to maximize revenue by making bad but profitable recommendations later on.

spot on! this is one of the reasons why we want to entirely avoid any sort of lead-gen or affiliate business models that depend on revenues from sellers of software or services. we're planning to make money from buyers with higher value tools that help them after the discovery phase -- for example, providing insights into pricing, helping automate the RFP process and potentially helping them manage billing etc. early days though!

It's a shame Measy was shut down.

Abacus is a pretty solid product, but the market seems a bit small...

Not YC, but from a Dallas-based incubator. I flew out multiple times on business AFTER getting into the US, and every time I flew back in, I was granted an additional six months stay.

I'd say 10k would help, a lot. If you have this quanta of money in the bank, you can cover all initial expenses via debit cards, and not using credit cards will immensely speed up your reimbursements.

I was once asked in a consulting interview why my responses to an optimization case study were so dispassionate and rational. I didn't get an offer but one of the interviewers later thanked me for not leaving straightaway.

Edit: He had used 'baritone and coldly logical', I think.

Just a novice posting...if Google isn't extracting patent licensing fees from anyone, is it because it chooses to do so or is it because it wants to but can't, owing to a lack of patents?

I don't know enough to take sides, but I do know that non-specific software patents are 24-carat BS as 'defensive use' is super subjective. I just think that Google could and should have stayed away from Nortel bidding, or at least voiced concern before losing out to a consortium. That ways, it could have avoided the 'sore loser' argument entirely.