calbear98

Short answer: Ruby/Python for B2C startup, Java for B2B / large company.

This is easy to quantify just by looking at the jobs posted on AngelList.

Use trycelery.com and you can start taking pre-orders immediately, and see how much they are willing to pay. http://customerdevlabs.com/makemoney

Signed up. Good luck!

I don't really have or listen to vinyl, but I'm a music lover and also love album art.

It's not specifically for sole founders, but I'm on nReduce and it's a good way to get feedback from fellow entrepreneurs.

This is a specific niche, so have you thought about ads in industry specific places? Like Infoworld, sites like that.

P.S. Thanks for posting about your experience.

I'm no expert on sales/marketing/distribution either, but... given that you run a paid service, each customer has a tangible lifetime value. So you can offer a referral commission to existing users every time they get a new customer to sign up. Groupon, Dropbox, and tons of others do this.

Gamification, badges, recognition, social profiles. Offer some sense of gratification when they complete a transaction and give something away. Integrate with Facebook, both for inviting more users and for posting on their timeline when they have given something. It highlights their generosity. Focus on having the recipient give feedback to the giver - recognition, express gratitude, how much they enjoyed what they got.

Craigslist has the audience but no sense of identity, community. eBay has the feedback loop and score but no social network.

Market research: someone who can interview potential users/customers, get statistics on the market, create/run/evaluate surveys. UI/UX: someone who can evaluate the user experience and design. Security +1 for code reviews +1 for press +1 for legal +1 for SEO and marketing

What area is your idea in? You don't have to give exact specifics, but you can and should say what space it is in. When looking for a co-founder you want someone who shares your passion and vision about the product.

Also, in your research have you spoken directly to potential customers/users?

I'm a technical founder seeking co-founders as well.

You show a lot of drive and dedication. Best of luck!

Salesforce.com. Twitter uses Scala.

Applied with whathavei. whathavei is your personal inventory and social shopping list in the cloud - track and share all the products you have, want, and like.

It's in private beta testing right now, feel free to signup: http://www.whathavei.com/signup?inviteCode=yc1101

Feedback on the idea and product greatly appreciated. Crossing fingers on YC application.

$1500 per person, you won't find your own place for that price in SF.

Kixeye http://allthingsd.com/files/2012/05/KIXEYE-RULE-THE-INTERWEB... http://cdn1.uptownalmanac.com/cdn/farfuture/TLjMiGusFNsz18B-...

Good? Debatable. Memorable? No doubt.

Yes, absolutely. I had an experience where the design was dictated by an architect who cared more about the theoretical and having UML diagrams looking nice than about actual business requirements and having the code be lean, clean, simple and efficient.

TDD and also code analysis tools can help highlight what you actually need and what you don't.

The converse is true too, if you under-engineer you run the risk of not easily being able to scale up to new requirements.

Over-engineering creates an albatross where you'll fall under your own weight (too much code, slows down development, possibly bad performance, harder to debug). Under-engineering creates a house of cards that is fragile (more buggy, code gets duplicated and patched on, frustrating to work on, hard to refactor).

I hate to recommend doing something you don't really like, but in this case it might be worth it to make your life easier.

smegel is right, all recruiters and most hiring managers will filter resumes based on easily quantifiable criteria, and the school and degree are at the top of that list.

Also, to get through interviews at tech companies like Google, you need to have understanding of fundamental computer science concepts if you are applying to be a developer.

Take a look at Clerky. https://www.clerky.com/

From their web site: Clerky helps startups get the legal stuff done fast.

Incorporation, convertible notes, employee documents, NDAs - everything the typical startup needs. Use Clerky to get your paperwork out of the way so you can get back to building your company.

I've been working for a long time, so having savings already was the first step. Like codegeek said, family situation and health insurance are important, luckily everyone is in support of me doing my startup.

A consideration that was one of the last things to solidify the decision in my mind was people telling me I could get another job easily if things didn't work out. A couple of them were actively trying to recruit/refer me, so I knew I would be in good shape.

A fellow entrepreneur told me, you better be hell bent on what you're doing, because doing a startup is hard. For me I'm obsessed about trying this startup, so I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to leave and give it a shot.

So no precise metrics. Just a gut feeling of: I can't take another day/week/month/year going by without giving this a shot.

You should try to go with the place you'll be happier working at. If you try to pick a job based just on career path, advancement, money, you'll probably regret it. Obviously if you can get both, the better.

You want to be at a place where you get along with the people, learn from them, can be productive as a team.

When the organization has good people, everything else should and most likely will fall into place: learning opportunities, career advancement, good projects, good technology, salary and benefits, fun place to work.

Do what makes you happy. If you enjoy what you do and the company is good, you can excel and make an impact. Having good people to work with is so important so weigh that heavily.

A couple of my previous jobs/companies were very similar to those two scenarios. It was actually at the bigger company that I made more of an impact, had more flexibility, learned more, made professional connections, and made more in salary/bonus/stock.

It's much more a function of whether the organization is a winning, efficient, organized, functional team than the size. Large companies always have bureaucracy but small ones can too.

I'm working on whathavei, a personal inventory and social shopping app for people to track and share information about all the products they own. I definitely want to incorporate information about what people paid for and where they bought things. http://www.whathavei.com/

Let me know what you think about having this app, and specifically about this feature and for cars. Thanks

For used car prices, check out Carsabi. They got acquired already, but the site is still up. http://carsabi.com/

Read this before deciding http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/

A good recruiter might be even harder to find than a good developer. You probably need a recruiter if you really need to scale or are in a desperate time crunch.

Build something.

I can never really learn just by reading docs, books, etc.

If you want to learn XYZ programming language, write an app in that language. In order to get that app built, you'll need to learn whatever is necessary to use the language.

The most important thing is that you separate the different layers of the app so that you can refactor later. Using Spring is a good way to keep that separation.

The frontend layer needs to be agnostic of how the middle layer is implemented, and the middle layer agnostic of the backend.

JSON and REST are universal, so if everything communicates using that, you are in good shape if you ever partner with other companies or get acquired.

You can go with GetSatisfaction, Salesforce Ideas, or a similar app. The most important thing is to let your customers know that their opinion is heard, even if you don't implement what they want. If other customers want the same thing, it may be important enough for you to add it. If they don't, then you can justify that it is an isolated request.