DarrenStuart

I would go for sql server 2005/8 in a .net enviroment.

I have never had any speed problems. Also if you are going to use asp.net membership stuff it makes sense to go with it. There is a mySQL membership provider but its not great from my playing.

Also the cost is not going to be that much because you can do an aweful lot of processing with one MS database server.

I am sure with some googling you can find some bench marking of all major dbs.

I use discountasp.net for my .net apps as a starting point.

One last thing, finding someone to work on your MS sql database might be easier.

very true but I have seen valid responses down modded because of fanboyism and blindness to other views.

I guess we don't always behave in a grown up way online. I am as guilty of that as the next guy.

I think news.yc has a 5th troll behavior and it's down modding a comment because they disagree with it. I have been down modded a number of times not for saying something rude or stupid just something that others don't agree with.

I tend to down mod rude and aggressive people on here and I also up mod people who I think have been down modded unfairly.

I am not sure if I am alone with my way of thinking.

Can you tell us about the perpetual motion machines type of pitches? seems like a great blog posting or something.

I bet its a bit like American Idol :p

I have already written off YC because of pg's postings on single founders. I don't agree with it but I can see his point a load shared is a load halved.

I have taken my own route and if it works out then I will go out of my way to help single founder companies. My only constraint would be they would have to be hackers.

I am 33 and married but don't have kids yet but I am running my own business to fund my time working on my other startup work.

I'd like to know out of the single founder applications which got funding were they all hackers?

perhaps the founders don't have the skills needed to grow the company further so hired the talent in. Also maybe the investors behind it wanted someone with experience at the helm.

This is common stuff that happens all the time in funded startups.

thanks, for those who want the url its http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN2541395620...

I will give it a go to see if it gets me being more productive.

seems like a smart hire.

well after much googling I couldn't find any reference to it. Can anyone help me out, it appears my google ninja skills are not up to it for this. Paul you invested in them maybe you can point us in the right direction. I am still not convinced this is a problem.

trust me companies that monitor their employees online time will fire employees caught surfing to much after a couple of times. The person surfing the net to long is not working and thats the end of the story for these companies.

Is there any research to back the time-suck problem up?

Companies will just fire users with a problem so there is no business us for it.

Having 2 companies taking different approaches is fine but I am not convinced this is big business at all.

damn hes one well connected guy. If he wasn't I am not so sure people would of gone for it.

seems like a nice guy too.

if it works for you then yes, just have a plan b for the future just incase it goes south.

get it in writing up front. if the company takes off and the founders get greedy you will be kicking yourself that you didn't.

At the end of the day they may be paying you but you are taking the risk that you might end up not getting paid if it goes wrong.

I like the product and as long as they have funding and users I can see them going on to be a player in the market. I don't believe there is not room for a lot of players in the market. They make money from domain name sells as far as I can see.

I am doing a lot of file creation and file look up stuff on my projects to avoid db hits when servering up static data. I am only using the database for crud stuff and then handing off to create the static pages. I have been impressed with the speed and also how easy it is to flip the storage to Amazon s3 if needed.

take on world poverty.

thanks, yes that explains it. make sense now :p

If the idea is extremely simple and your team has talent then you could do a better job with someones idea than they could.

I think build out is perfectly valid way to explain building more functionality on a idea.

google didn't build ad functionality into from the start their search engine it was built out afterwards. I come from a family of builders so this makes sense to me.

I also don't agree with being secretive, ideas are a dime a dozen so no need not to share.

In this day and age its fairly easy to take a concept and build it out for little outlay.

@micro-to-do

micro-html = widgets?

not really but a good read I never really thought about how many reads and writes there were. However I suspect that twitter profile pages and user pages do not hit the database much and most likely store the data for these pages as xml.

I like the idea but it will just end up with tit for tat down modding. It would only work if the down modders idenity was hidden from the person.

I actually think you should get a point for commenting in the first place, this might get more people commenting and joining in.

I dunno, I use plenty of web apps for running my business that are a lot better than anything I have found for the desktop. Also they saved me when I switched to the mac as I didn't need to look for a new version.

if this is asp.net then learn html and mark up the designs. That will free him up more than having to work with your code. I love it when working on a project and someone hands me great xhtml and css and I don't have to think about that side of things.

Microsoft and I would change its name as soon as I owned it.

I would then split it into seperate companies. I think MS is tainted by its past and some people just can't get past that. So if you split the best parts off you could build better brands.

dropped out and coded in.

true, I only come here for the community not to get into YC though.

the Joel Spolsky one is really good to listen to. He has some good advice.

cool, I have dropped you an email.