ainsleyb

Definitely. I'm still trying to figure out the best place. Some people are up for the idea of being further away in something really nice, and others want to be in the thick of things. Optimal situation would be to find a happy medium :)

I prefer orange.

Well.. I am a female, so it will have to tend toward the female-friendly side :)

... There are some great poetry professors at MIT, but valid.

 As an MIT alum I have to comment on how valuable an MIT education is. Whether you're from a public school in the middle of nowhere (like me) or from an awesome tech school, there's something of value for everyone. Not only did I finally learn physics with calculus, though I'm not an engineer, but learned a great deal about things out of my major (some of which I'm now starting a company with).

I always say MIT was the best place for me, and I can honestly say I wouldn't have been as happy anywhere else. I got to explore anything and everything under the sun, from D1 rowing and cognitive vision, to understanding hash tables and  how to write malicious scripts. ;)

Looking at the finances, contact MIT financial aid if you haven't yet. There are also plenty of great opportunities on and off campus to work during all times of the year. Your education is an investment and you've got a pot of gold lying in your lap. Find some way to keep it. 

Tl;dr go to MIT. You won't regret it. 

If you have any questions or need any help feel free to email (see my hn profile), and good luck! :)

It's a completely valid point that usually companies will do a single security review and want it to last for a number of months, often a number of years. Continuous monitoring is the only reasonable way to ensure adequate security of a company's website; if new code is being written, new vulnerabilities are bound to be written too.

Prioritizing vulnerabilities by which to conquer first and analyzing which vulnerabilities will hurt you more quickly and hit you or your clients the hardest is also interesting; it's something we (Tinfoil Security) already do, but not something we see enough people think about.

I think there's a fine balance with teams and team personalities. Sometimes a non-tech cofounder can bring good expertise in something you're not very good at.

I'm not a developer, but I am doing a high-tech startup. My cofounder is extremely good at the overall backend work of our product. He's also very good at talking (sometimes I can't get him to stop) and understanding the overall UX the product should have. How have I helped? Well, for starters we established what he's good at and figured out where the gap is. He hates frontend work, so I have designed the site and learned some HTML/CSS to expedite the frontend development. We're also both taking on 500 hats a minute. There are things he's good at (the technical speak) and things I'm good at (the non-technical speak) and things we're both good at (client meetings, processing feedback, making sure the product is working quickly). We're working on a security problem. As it is, we have completely different ideas; he's always been somewhat more of a blackhat, whereas I'm more of a whitehat, so our complementary ideals have been helping us get great publicity and great customers lined up.

I don't think a non-technical cofounder is necessary, but if you can find someone who can or is willing to do what you don't want to deal with (the books, the legal work, the frontend; everyone has something they aren't good at/don't like), who is also someone who can balance your ideals and personality you can get a great working team going.

In that amount of time you can learn HTML/CSS on your own and get a design you really want out of it, while saving $1k+. I know doing a startup full-time means you're probably also bootstrapping. If you think you can put backend dev on hold for a week to build up the front end yourself, here's a great link that helped me: http://htmldog.com/

And as a side note, you may want to be finding a cofounder anyway (single-manned companies are hard pressed to succeed), and a frontend dev would be a great balance to your backend work.

At the moment we're looking at a pay first business model. We will be tailoring results and recommended solutions to your stack.

I have a good technical understanding, but am no developer. That said, I am jumping into the start-up world and here's how I'm working at it:

Step 1: find a cofounder who is as excited about your ideas as you are with his, and whom you enjoy working with and vice-versa. I am still new to the startup world, but am working well with my co-founder. Hiring someone to code every time your product has a problem is not the correct way to go about it. You have to be able to constantly work and change to keep pushing something forward.

Step 2: immerse yourself in technology Really, I don't feel out of my element because I have surrounded myself in my life with technical people and technical things (went to MIT, have taken tech classes, worked at [stereotypical corporation] doing design and working closely with developers, and am learning how to dev in the process).

Step 3: learn your product and learn it well (including the technical parts) You have to understand your product in and out in order to make sure you are able to speak to those who need the product. If someone asks about security: know it. If they ask about a specific API you don't want to have to "get back to them."

Step 4: find a good balance between what you're doing, what everyone else is doing, and what needs to be done. I think the hacker/hustler combo is really valuable At some point the devs will be way too hosed in the development of the [product/site/whatever you're doing] to go out and find funding/sell the product. You need people who are confident to talk about what you're doing and will have fun doing it.

and Step 5: have fun. Getting into the start-up world is hard. You really have to enjoy taking risks, moving around, getting out there, and meeting people.

I'm sure I'm missing steps in all of this, but the steps above really help.