NEPatriot

More like never trust anyone who says yes too quickly.

You should checkout squareup.com/features - I don't work for them. No monthly fees. 2.75% + $.15 if card is present. Though I think they are in beta and people in the forums were complaining about not getting the hardware last I looked about a week ago. It's for brick and mortar operations.

Step 1: Give the problem a name. In the war of art that name is resistance. You have to grapple with it every day. Attack it - make it your enemy.

I'm with you and see this as the solution to this mess as well. Give me a high % no monthly and lower my risk, once I've gotten some business and scale we can do the monthly thing.

The things that you avoid most are the ones you must attack the hardest. Read the War of Art by Pressfield.

I suggest keeping a list of items you executed. Just anything that you accomplished in your project. So that way when you get down you can stare at the list and be reminded that you've already come this far and done this much.

YC batches startups. Why can't we batch our MVPs? See what looks the most promising, shelf the others and go for it?

Force people to pick a side. Galvanize them to love you or hate you. But be genuine about this.

"Getting out of the building" is not a task you want to outsource. Speaking to initial potential customers is critical to the start up and must involve the founders. Once you establish product/market fit outsiders can come into play.

As would I. Kind of like a crossfit.com or dailyburn for education. Social, community based learning.

Checkout venturehacks' interview with Sean Ellis. The site seems to be down so I can't link it. It should be one of the popular posts called "how to bring a product to market".

I would say that in creating something one's skills are almost irrelevant. Does it matter the skill of the creator if the art is beautiful or the application just works?

What about painting? Or any art form?

Would he ever consider angel investing? Or in any way connecting startups to money?

I wonder if they hired psychologists for this?

I deal with it by setting aside time. Setting a date night. And agreeing ahead of time that we will spend 3-4 nights/week together.

Success is tied to internal driving/motivating factors. Julius Caesar wept in front of a statue of Alexander the Great because at his age (30) Alexander had conquered the known world. He compared himself to Alexander and tried to live up to that standard. Likewise if John Doe truly wants to be the next Bezos 500k/yr isn't enough. The comment above supposes 170k users, not 17.5% of 500 million users.

I don't think so. Their stated objective is to change the world's social networking platform. Not start a lifestyle business or pet project. If they had gone into it with a hobbyist's approach 170,000 users is success.

I agree strongly. If I can paste my url into a demo site, and and get a taste for how easy this would be for me to a/b test my next question is what do I have to do to make this happen? A blurb telling me all it takes is copying and pasting one line of code takes care of that. Maybe show a video showing how easy it is - how long would it take? under a minute?

Anyone else notice the spelling mistakes? "For example, if you looking at a page on your computer than you want to take on the go (something I do all the time), you can now just use a Chrome extension and with one click, it automatically appears on your phone." you're, then.

checkout zimride.com for the carpooling idea

Perhaps include some translation samples

I think you could aim this at non-native English speaking folks who write tech support emails in English.

Customer Dev talks about stating assumptions - you should definitely have the ability to quantify the results of the assumption validation process. I think if you combine this with A/B testing you have a very powerful tool on your hands.

You can scare the general public pretty easily. All it takes is one example of what could go wrong and all of the sudden there is a boom.

You could always establish relationships with local mom and pop local growers who can do all the shipping for you locally and deliver pots/soil as well - As a potential iteration.

They also have trending channels (click on the tv icon near the play button) - which don't seem to be working for me. When I click nothing happens. Prob an MVP thing.

Not necessarily. They can always IM each other during dinner.

I just look at YC companies for great functional simple design

Talk to pet lovers and see what they need. I have a dog and here are some of my issues... what is the best type of dog/pet insurance out there? What is the best type of dog food out there? Where can I get a toy my dog won't destroy in 2 hours? Where are some of the best places to take my dog around Boston? Am not looking - but is there a place for pet owners to meet other single pet owners? Joel Spolsky mentioned in his mixergy interview that he wanted to create versions of stackoverflow...