The Perils of Starting a Company in a Weekend with People you Don't Know

The author asks, "Seems to be uncannily similar - no?" and shows screen shots of his mock up and the other team's product.

Similar? Not really, I'd not assume they were from related teams if they article hadn't pointed out the one on the right was from a couple guys that split off. The mock up on the left is primitive and uncompelling and I had no idea looking at it what it was supposed to be. The one on the right is better designed and it is instantly obvious what it is supposed to do and how it works. It makes shopping lists from recipes. It's got actual lists rather than latin and has a useful delete button for ingredients you already have.

So it seems clear the other guys were able to come up with a better UI on their own than with the UI specialist. Yeah, sucks, but dumping that guy was probably the right decision.

Looking at the other guy's completed working site at sautenow.com, it looks awesome and the interaction design is smooth and intuitive. The graphic design is excellent.

The whiteboard storyboard/workflow doesn't look all the same. It seems to have a popup menu for selecting meals? Hard to say what the long box/small box means, seems to be a popup. Very different from what they went with on their site.

As far as the basic idea of adding recipes to a recipe box or shopping list and then getting a list of ingredients and what recipes each is used in, allrecipes.com does that, as do at least a dozen other similar sites which have been around for many years.

This was probably exacerbated by Neil and Vivek working on it full-time, while the other founders were not. One can feel a little weird if one is going full-time and one's partner is going part-time, and there's an equal division of equity, even assuming everyone does the same amount of work.

Do go on.