525 karma · joined March 28, 2007
Man, I'd buy that in a second.
What do you really want to do? Wordpress can be surprisingly flexible. You might want to try that (w/ some plugins).
There are several Flexcar locations in my city, but the nearest is about a 1.5 mile walk. Not really convenient =(
But with money raised by serious venture capital firms, they definitely expect more control. It isn't so much direct as it is indirect. The VC firms will have control over a significant portion (if not a majority) on the Board of Directors. As such, they'll likely have power to hire and fire top-level managers. Including yourself. Therefore, while you're not obligated to obey them, you'll be more inclined to follow their advice since your job is, essentially, in their hands.
That, in its essence, is why you should 1) avoid VC cash unless completely necessary, and 2) pick your VC firm carefully (don't always go with the highest valuation or biggest name).
Anyone.
It is a question of motivation and effort, not intelligence.
My suggestion: Learn to code.
"on-demand web application to deliver Business Intelligence Extranets"
What's the problem that you guys are solving? How are you solving it? (And don't just tell me, put it on your website)
I don't do a lot of AJAXy stuff, and I don't talk very frequently to clients that aren't standard browswers. If I did, I think I would have a lot more to gain from this release.
What the hell does it do? I've read the elevator pitch three times and I can't figure it out.
These people really don't understand that doing the same thing that everyone else does is not a winning strategy. Ever.
restful_authentication, for instance, puts only the user_id in the session. If a user were to crack the cookie and change the user_id to, say, 1 (which is often an admin account), it could be a HUGE security vulnerability.
I'm not even sure using a "really good" secret password would be a good enough security measure, since the user can do the brute forcing locally. And what about open source projects, where their environment.rb might be public?
All in all, I don't like it.
It really depends on your application, though. If it isn't a web application, and state matters, then you're going to have to go elsewhere.
Buxfer seems to be doing fine as well.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/15/loopt-may-be-friending-...
They seem to be doing pretty well.
I think it is the education systems' fault, rather than your own.
Recommended: Google Payments
Tepid: Paypal, FirePay
Not Recommended: Authorize.NET, TotalTrans, 2Checkout.com
Paypal was the only one I'd done using Rails (the rest with PHP). It was a pain in the ass, but it was also 2005 and Rails was at version 0.13. There is probably a gem or plugin for it now (I implemented it by posting and parsing raw POST requests).
2) C-Corp if you plan on getting any investors. (S-Corps are easier to deal with come tax time, but have significant limitations concerning investors.)
3) Nolo (http://www.nolo.com/) has been suggested
4) Delaware is usually advised.
5) I always use my parents' address. They haven't moved in 20 years. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure your real operating address doesn't have to be the same as what your incorporation papers say.
6) I have yet to find a good resource for this.
7) Set a valuation of the company, and divide it by how many shares are outstanding. That is the share price. You can buy shares at that price. After that, issue paper stock certificates and record it in your general ledger (most general ledger software (IE QuickBooks) has a whole section for "Owner's Equity"). Going forward, don't forget to issue stock for "sweat equity" on a vesting schedule. (I always get confused about the differences in shares declared vs outstanding vs issued. But I think this is right)
8) I always open a business checking account and a business credit account with American Express. Be careful with credit (depending on how careful you are and what contract you sign, you may be personally liable for the debt), but it is usually cheaper than equity.
My final GPA was 3.1. It is not a coincidence.
Now I just tend to do it myself, with mixed results.
Things like Internet search results and job listings are always going to be lagging indicators of programming language popularity. Job search results are lagging because even if most new development is being done in, say, Ruby, it'll take years for the active codebase (that needs to be maintained) to catch up to C or Java. Internet search results are similar- even if 10x more new articles are being written about Ruby, it'll take an incredibly long amount of time to catch up to the massive total that Java has accumulated over time.
What I'd be more interested in is the deltas between each of these statistics on a monthly basis.
My answer is: No, but it is closer than anything else. It is a huge stepping stone towards a truly powerful web applications framework.
Rails won't stop innovating any time soon. There's an absolutely enormous amount of innovation going on in Rails plugins / RubyGems. Eventually the different plugin/gem approaches to common problems will become standardized, and those standardized approaches will make it to Rails core.
Once Rails core has all of these awesome things standardized (multi-stage deployment, more "ruby-like" templates (ERB replacement), fixtures replacement, automatic generation of integration tests, better caching, etc), it will become both great and a bloated piece of crap.
Then, another platform emerges that does to Rails what Rails did to PHP. It will take all of the features of Rails+Bloat, and put it in a sexy package. Then, THAT will be the holy grail.
At least until the cycle happens again.