Announcing StartupMonth.org (our November "Startup Sprint" project)
When I asked people "who's with me?" on getting a startup out the door in the month of November (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1773398), I was blown away by the response. It seems I hit a common nerve. Amongst the many comments on that post, people suggested various ways of tracking the progress of their projects and keeping in touch with each another (spreadsheets, google docs, facebook groups, etc). I was personally not planning on anything other than an announcement on HN when I had completed my project, but by the end of that day it was clear there was something bigger going on, and that more would be needed to help track it.
So I started to think about what was /really/ going on. It seems that we all feel drawn to be our better selves when we have a common goal, even though we may be achieving it in different ways. What was needed was a site that could help people be accountable for their goal, and draw them together to finish them.
Thus, StartupMonth.org.
At this point though, it was still a pipe dream. I have my own full-time consulting gig, a new full-time job to transition into, a part-time startup, AND side projects that need to be completed (the entire goal for November for me is to finally finish as many of the side projects as possible). I had vague intentions of building a site for this, and even bought the domain startupmonth.org, but was not sure when I would be able to fit it in.
Thankfully, Jon Gilbraith (hn: inm) stepped up and volunteered to help develop the site, and Jake Stutzman of http://www.elevatevc.com volunteered to do the design. So, for the last 30 days, we've been building and designing the site in the very little bits of spare time we had, and today we'd like to show it to you. We were hoping to get this out before November 1st, but had too many things on our collective plates to be able to get it done.
Now that 30 days has passed, there is still plenty of work to do to the site, but in the spirit of StartupMonth we are launching anyways, and will tweak and fix the site as it is used. Shipping is a feature! So, please let us know your thoughts on the site, either here or as comments on http://startupmonth.org/apps/startupmonthorg. We're aware that there are some missing features but everything we need to showcase, post news on and discuss our apps is there.
Also, need to mention the awesome site that the 21times guys have done that can also help with getting your startups off the ground: http://hn.21times.org Ryan reached out to me via email when they were finishing it up - My apologies Ryan for not getting back to you. Would love to chat on how we could integrate and make these complimentary sites.
Cheers!