Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Founders taking the leap?

36 pointsriskish32 comments

I've been to events here and there, and I have found that the ycombinator community represents the web start up mind set very well better than most places. I wanted to start this thread as a way to exchange instant messaging addresses (IM) with founders that are just now taking the leap to start a web start up with their own experience. This can be a good way to stay motivated and help one another.

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hang out with us on #startups on freenode :)

Went full-time last August to work on an FPGA test/design tool http://www.plunify.com

Probably sounds very focused ;) but there are so many things that can be done in this space.

Feel free to message me at harnhua (at) gmail (dot) com

Call me stupid but what'an FPGA application? You reference it tons of times on your site. Is it one of those things where if we don't know what it is, the software probably isn't for us?

Will be working on my startup fulltime come August. It is a twilio for video calls, basically. If anyone is interested in the telephony or the video space, I'd love to talk. Gtalk is joshua.allmann

Hi! I'm building a bunch of businesses, like http://genevine.com , http://branchr.com and http://supportbreeze.com. Get in touch - mark@markbao.com email+msn, marktbao on AIM, @markbao.

Mark, a little advice. Focus is underrated and oh-so-powerful. Pick one. I'd choose branchr.

I disagree. My intuition is that if Mark was to focus on only one of his startups, it would only become about twice as successful. I think it makes sense to work on them all simultaneously if they all seem equally promising.

Mentions of the "80/20 principle" make me wince, because both 80 and 20 are stated with 2 significant figures too many. But the idea behind it--"there's a lot of variation in the effectiveness of activities you classify as 'work'"--is correct. If Mark does just the most promising tasks for each startup, he'll be doing pretty damn good.

Your comment is a good example of a HN user suggesting a simple heuristic for answering an important question, which I find annoying. Another example would be Paul Graham's advice to make a product that scratches your own itch. Your domain expertise should definitely be a factor when choosing between two startup ideas, but I could probably think of three other factors that are at least as important.

I guess I could live with the simple heuristics if they were accompanied by detailed justifications explaining why they're better than most conceivable complex heuristics, but they never seem to be. Simple heuristics are sometimes correct, but there are so many people spouting simple heuristics just because they like simplicity that simple heuristics have a large burden of proof to overcome, in my mind at least.

YC batches startups. Why can't we batch our MVPs? See what looks the most promising, shelf the others and go for it?

Parsimony.

Why is parsimony good?

- Simpler principles make better mantras.

- Occam's razor--all else equal, you should assume the world is simple.

I can't think of anything else.

Both of those considerations seem weak compared to other factors.

I'd pick Supportbreeze (if any picking needs to be done). Support needs to be fixed.

Focus is not underrated, it's under-utilized! And I would pick genevine!

focus is overrated early on, but yes once you find the one project that is an obvious success, you should try to focus on that 100% full time

Thanks! That's a concern I have as well.

I'm building Salon Software at http://getmochi.com

My AIM: its495time My MSN: dickason@purdue.edu My Twitter: @flashmen

Would love to talk to ANYONE especially people building subscription-based software for industries that are 'sleepy' or slow to adopt tech.

Hey, I'm working on http://codeboff.in. It's just a landing page for now but there's a blog at http://blog.codeboff.in.

My IM is karanvasudeva@gmail.com.

I quit my job 3 weeks ago to work on a Gmail migration app. It's in beta:

https://apps.improffice.com/migrationbeta/

Get in touch @123Edu, eduardo at improffice dot com

I'm working on a project, bringing front end code to unsavvy designers, I've got the guy who designed SimpleGeo's site doing design work, but I'm looking for a technical co-founder

AIM: lachygroomgle (don't ask!) gTalk: lachygroom@gmail.com

I'm building HelloFax.com.

You can ping me at joseph (at) hellofax.com.

Looks great. One suggestion: create a desktop client for less tech-savvy people. All they have to do then is right-click that word document, and select "HelloFax it!" (or "Send it as a fax").

Thanks for the feedback! That's an awesome thought. Makes me think of oneway: http://goto11.net/oneway/. If you need to fax and run out of pages, ping me and I'll refill your account.

Love the site! Feel free to connect with me if you're ever wanting a hand sometime in the future :) Got my details above (or below!)

Thanks for the offer of support! Feel free to contact me if you need a hand as well. Perhaps we could find a way to help each other out. Where are you based?

http://ThinkCode.TV is the first project of my startup and it's not a web application, but feel free to get in touch. My IM is acangiano@gmail.com.

I'm quitting my day job to work full time on http://braintrusthq.com and http://toutapp.com.

originality goes a long way... try not to rip off 37signals' http://basecamphq.com/ website so closely.

I understand your point, but they don't own the hq suffix. I see many sites these days with the join or get prefix. The fact is, as any of you know who've spent the hours at your favorite domain query tool, it's getting near impossible to find anything. I see more sites using dashes or resorting to .net, .org, or .me (myself included). It's just the current state of things.

Very cool! What kind of revenues are you seeing?

Does it have to be a web startup? :-) How about an enterprise software startup? Anyway, my IM address is motley.crue.fan@gmail.com (XMPP/GTalk).

...or mobile start-up. Really, just about any software driven start-up would be a fit.

Cut off everything else and became full-time in May. Building a chat site. Contact @andrewbadr on Twitter or gmail in my profile.

I am building http://wacchen.com

My IM is: voidfiles@gmail.com

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