However, I think there's one thing that needs to be reiterated, for everybody who's reading hacker news and thinking about starting a company:
The world probably does not need yet another incarnation of project management/collaboration software.
If I had a dollar for every first-time entrepreneur who told me they were starting a new project management tool for team collaboration app, I'm probably have enough to A-round my own company.
That's not to say it's not possible to succeed here – Trello is a case in point – but one has to realize that Joel has been in the project management space for probably close to a decade. It's even probable that he would've failed except for the fact he has such a large online following that just happens to be his target audience.
To use the example below, if 9/10 startups fail then probably 49/50 of project management/collaboration startups fail.
By all means, do a startup, but at least give yourself a fighting chance.