YC's Xobni: Lessons learned in the last 14 months
xobni.com
xobni.com
Devs with C#/Java background a red flag? Why is that? Should they use Ruby or Python for the desktop app that supports Outlook as a plugin instead of C#?
If they haven't launched and they got financial backing (huge), that means they have a solid business model that's important
Xobni showed Khosla people that they have some "cool" desktop app (or plugin, whatever) and Khosla Ventures love it and thought that it has a huge growth potential so they gave them money (in the area of millions).
I think that's 1/3 of the whole story. I'm guessing they also show their business model (or at least business plan).
Think about it carefully, this isn't YAW2.0 (Yet Another Web 2.0). This is a desktop app (or plugin). It's not like you can throw in the wild and put Ads. And remember, these guys are playing in Microsoft backyard.
Product Managers and QA? Why not? Who will test the product? uh-huh, it's the QA.
It's not like your ruby/php/python code can be tested just by a simple unit test. It's not like your desktop app not need to be tested (UI wise).
As for Product Managers and QA people. They have a tendency to slow development down to a level they can manage and test. I avoid them both like the plague.
Better design docs, better func spec, better docs, better quality.
If your startup has a room to grow, this is one option to go. You don't just hire all developers and hope your software doesn't have bugs.
Cowboy code a.l.a Agile (the bad Agile) is very dangerous and this is what some people warn these young startup people. The whole RoR (or Python/PHP, whatever) + Agile is like playing with fire; if you know how to stop it, you're in a great shape, if you don't, it'll burn your product faster than any other mistakes.
QA is critical to a downloaded piece of software - you can't just update it like a webapp if you find bugs.
Integrating with desktop email clients was a tough choice for us, until we looked at the market. The majority of business professionals who use email as a critical business tool, and also happen to spend money on software, use desktop email clients.
I'm willing to guess this is true.
btw, the blog header doesn't render correctly on FF/ubuntu: http://abstractnonsense.com/xobni-bad-rendering.png
Should be fixed now. Let me know if you're still seeing this.
Email is certainly a pain point... So I'm rooting for 'em.
But I think what they're building is cool and I hope some of their ideas end up in online email clients.
Rest assured, we are also users of other platforms and the web.