HackrNwsDesignr

I agree with Travis, you shouldn't really be worried about getting seed capital. We believe that you can believe in your product enough to make it do well, we've all been there, but the fact is that's not enough. So what is? Like Travis said: traction. If you build the prototype and then get traction you can goto the VC's, heck you might be in such a good spot you can call the shots like zuckerberg did with facebook. There's no harm in doing this first, and thinking you need capital is usually a false hurdle.

bottom line: keep going.

I can see hipmunk fetching way more than 10 million, if they decide to sell. It addresses a huge paint point in sites people have little brand loyalty because people hop around for deals to airlines they _do_ have brand loyalty for anyways. Hipmunk is 10x easier to use with all the same deals on those sites, and they are creating brand loyalty with a cute chipmunk. #win

bummer. oh well. I'm hoping to set something up really informal..just so we have a place to work that is not home. maybe just a group of hackers at a library or quiet place where we can build. nothing fancy.

I think you should try to find someone here who has put some work into a tutoring service, and is clearly moving in a positive direction in tutoring like your project. Give it to them and help them get going on their ambition. Great designs and name, and I hope you find a home for it :)

www.techwildcatters.com does more enterprise projects and not consumer.

Does anyone have a good tutorial link to switching from a regular vps host to something like amazon ec2 or linode?

I would try to go anywhere where parents/kids are. Maybe you could work with a local book store that often does story time type things for kids, or even schools. We had a virtual bank in elementary school to learn about money, why not work with local schools that may or may not have it already, and supplement with your app or offer it?

Congratulations on a great concept and design. Any plans to offer a free trial or demo of the product?

Try http://www.teamlab.com/Features.aspx

They seem like they're as high quality and feature rich as base camp, but free.

how would you get the geocoordinates of hacker news users? I don't see it in the about profile, do you mean asking them for it?

Also, if anyone has ideas of something quick and easy they wanted to have built, feel free to share here.

I'm going to try RoR, I hear it is a lot of fun, and as a programmer I want to have fun with my work :)

I would suggest measuring the work hours you have in a day, and understand at 9 pm you have to start thinking about going to sleep, and getting tired. It's hard to jump from active to sleep, you'll fail. So learn to push yourself to stop at take it easier gradually. By 10 PM, maybe you start actually winding down more. With practice you can probably get to bed quickly, and take advantage of your work hours during the day. Try practicing this regimen for a while and you'll get into the habit of ending your day, not working til exhaustion. In fact you probably functioned that way before you worked too hard =)

Does anyone know if non-googlers can work on Gmail apps/plug ins? I have some cool ideas that would benefit a lot of people in their daily email writing.

I would suggest figuring out what you want to code as a starting point. For example, if you want to build a web start up it might be better to focus on articles in that community as opposed to say articles on how to code better in C or for windows application.

Next, there are lots of articles out there on how to be a better programmer, I imagine its a combination of working on your own things, talking to other programmers who are smart, and reading about some of the people out there who have put time into figuring out what this means -- Joel Spolsky comes to mind.

Of course with anything practice makes perfect, so that's a must. After you've decided on some philosophies, maybe you could work on a few apps every month until you accomplish your goal of 'stepping up.'

I read hacker news to break the tension and build motivation :)

37 Signals BaseCamp is an obvious choice, but it is costly for a start up.

I also was interested in project management software and wanted to find something comparable to base camp that was free. I ended up finding one, it's called http://www.teamlab.com/. They seem to have everything base camp does at the same quality level, except it is free. I'm going to be using it for my projects.

Has anyone else used this?

What does MVP stand for?

Mixpanel is a great tool, and I think their niche is gaining popularity because start ups want an easy way to see their data. Data visualization is very interesting to me. Have you started working on a mobile component?

toast, again, great post and thanks for sharing.

Toast, great advice, thanks for sharing. How do you estimate how much to charge for a project? I'm more of a designer than a coder (though I can technically do both), and I'm always seeing price estimates all over the board on craigslist and other places. Any advice on this?

Do any of the operators of the sites mentioned here need design or logo work? I'm revamping my portfolio page and wanted to offer it to hacker news entrepreneurs. My about section has my old portfolio page, I've also done some work for hacker news entrepreneurs already, so you can email me if you want to see the absolute latest.

Toast,I am pretty decent at graphic/web design, but have trouble finding consulting work in order to make this work. Mind if I ask where do you look? Craigslist seems saturated, and elance seems too much of a hassle with outsourcing companies and others with years reputation on the site.

Marissa Mayer (Google Head of Locations, formerly Products) touched on this problem in a talk she gave. I vaguely remember, but I believe she talked about how a painter was always overwhelmed by his blank white canvas so he would paint a small stroke on each canvas to start with that. Often times having a start point can help spur you into motion.

One way I like to get started with design is by working on the logo first (which is relatively simple, since its plain text at first), and then continue to build around it until I'm past the block. Hope that helped.