It feels like a lot of these "lessons learned" posts are just beards for a startup launch announcement. In this case, it's not clear at all how the author could have any lessons to share, since the site has _just_ launched and he has no basis on which to evaluate his past decisions. Parts of the article are simply incoherent. For example, a talk by the Rails guy convinced him that free services were a mistake... but his site right now does not even offer a paid option. It would save time and noise to have a special section of the site for this kind of thing; I'm sure a lot of us are willing to poke at one another's projects, honestly presented.