bomatson

I can appreciate this insight on Zynga, but I'd like to offer another perspective:

First off, have you seen the way Blizzard's stock performed during 2008? It was one of the few that continued to grow...

Rovio has more than just Angry Birds direct sales, it has a TON of merchandising opportunities with the characters (think Pixar). Plus they have a huge base of users that is excited to see what's next.

I'd also contend the rock stars analogy is backward - It is FAR more risky to assume a sole person can continue re-inventing themselves over a entire career. Granted, it's hard for game publishers, but at least there's a team and a more defined process for the innovation.

lol. Facebook for cats.

Reminds me of Pets.com

Aside from connections, any partner who can help you get to market faster with $ from real customers is going to be worth it.

Obviously there's a lot of BS "biz" folks. A good barometer is if they have taken the time to learn the skills needed to get their own ideas to market (coding, design, w/e)

It's fine Giles, most are pledging for the sticker anyway ;)

Good luck, Kurt! You'll be missed in LA

Out of curiosity, what is your monthly burn going to be with this plan? Seems ~ $1500 / month (which is great)

Nice. Why NYC?

Timing definitely has something to do with it, but also consider the headline.

Yours was "787 spells 7-8-7", which is not as simple to understand as "Dreamliner spells out...". Instantly, this headline catches enough of my attention to click on the link.

For headline copy, sometimes it will help to search Digg/Reddit and see which keywords people have already clicked on the most. This applies to email subjects, website CTA, etc.

Alex - Great job handling this, I received the bitches e-mail and got a good chuckle out of it!

Hope the traffic sticks for your team

Thank you so much Michael, Rails Tutorial has helped me go from zero Rails knowledge to deploying apps. Please keep it up!

Thanks for sharing

How much time have you spent doing tutorials / projects vs. pair programming? 50/50?

Thanks for this perspective. I would have loved to see this earlier, it could have saved me a lot of wheel-spinning with personas (which are valuable in limited cases)

I think I count 15 buzzwords

You're absolutely right. There's not even a gray area between the companies supporting vs. opposing SOPA. Black and white. SOPA would be a huge backstep for anyone trying to innovate or sustain on the web

hahahah not too persuasive, huh?

right on, great product btw! Would love to see it at an event or in a co-working space

Hustling is more than listening to customers. Making deals, negotiating, CLOSING smells more like hustling. What kind of manifesto is this?

I'm into it, will most likely pick some of this up if they do some bootstrapper's pricing

Hey guys, thanks for the help and I much appreciate you making the adjustment. Be careful about posting forced copy on social graphs, I'd learn from Chill here http://www.observer.com/2011/08/facebook-is-slightly-less-ch...

overall tho I like, ravn - congrats on the pivot folks

WARN - if you sign up w/ FB and say "you've been there" on an experience, it will automatically comment on your wall without permission saying "I just did this, check it out"

Thanks for the post. A lot of time entrepreneurs get stuck in a mindset that assumes dev/design must all be within the U.S. Definitely not always true and most times it depends on the company culture

Good luck!

Very intelligent, calculated marketing (especially Lean city-wide events, $30 bucks per event and you get the book). Congrats, Eric!

Entrepreneur, defined: "A person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on financial risk to do so"

http://bit.ly/uMwlXV

Much respect for entrepreneurs that see it through the whole road, but it doesn't make all the other brilliant entrepreneurs just 'unemployed'

Haha true, but I'd always rather see 50 than none

key word was 'just'. I played soccer and it was great, my point was to diversify opportunities so kids can learn on their own what motivates them

Grooveshark 4 life

I love this story. Awesome awesome

I made plush South Park characters and sold them to my mom's fitness/spinning clients. Learned a lot about pricing, investing, selling, creating at 10.

Highly encouraged to give children opportunities like this and not just have them do soccer

I believe his point is more about focus: building for relevant use cases. You can have the underlying, big conceptual vision you are talking about. That's what drives the emotion in the product.

But the execution can't directly reflect the vision or few will understand how it solves their needs.

It's all about the search for a model that is ubiquitous, right? A lot of small points of value that build into huge influence.

Looks great. Citing a specific use case (whether in a particular area or event like a concert) would really help your intended audience understand how the app can be valuable.

Awesome concept