colinplamondon

If it takes much longer, it's probably because it's a company that should be raising, or that the company failed to properly prime interest prior to fundraising. Once you begin fundraising, it's extremely, extremely bad for the process to draw out. From the first time you ask for term sheets, you should be able to fill the round fast.

That really doesn't stand out in the App Store listings- the detail work is all to emphasize the 512x512 version that doesn't matter. The only color is in the middle keyhole, which isn't particularly visible at the smaller resolution.

The old glowing keyhole was dramatically better- OP might want to take a look at merging the two, with the new box design and the old glow, to help this stand out more.

We tend not to bomb our own cities.

I completely missed that, actually- good call!

To me, 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB of RAM on a super thin, light, laptop is a pretty big upgrade. I used to be on a maxed out 17", happily switched to a maxed out 11", and am now beyond psyched to get my maxed 15".

Correct. Where "high quality" is pegged to apps like Tweetbot or Instagram, it's not currently possible to make webkit-based apps that are equally performant.

Even examples of "web with native wrapper" apps, like Facebook and OkCupid, are dramatically, dramatically worse than best of breed native apps.

Sorry, that was phrased dickishly! Definitely hit me up if I can ever be of help.

This is a horrifically dumb article. If you care about the first day, you didn't launch a startup, you launched a project. Submitting an article to Hacker News isn't a launch strategy, it's showing off a cute project you did.

A startup is something you fully commit to until you're convinced you tried every reasonable permutation in a scalable market opportunity.

The average startup takes 7 years to get to liquidity. That's 2,520 days. You got one day in before throwing in the towel.

Do you really think your first paragraph adds to the conversation?

I doubt you got ripped off, given that most people have never heard of you.

No worries, my company runs into the analytics problem you're solving all the time, so I totally knew what you were talking about :)

What was the company from Office Hours doing Analytics as a Platform?

Even if the guy couldn't explain it on stage, it sounds awesome, definite pain point we see, and I'd love to sign up for it.

A race-selected accelerator is filtering based on race first, then on quality. It's not business investment, it's social entrepreneurship.

Step 1) Throw out 87% of applications randomly. Step 2) Select based on quality. Step 3) Profit?

Compare that to a quality-selected accelerator:

Step 1) Select based on quality. Step 2) Profit!

A race-based accelerator will only outperform a quality-selected accelerator if there's a race that inherently, innately outperforms all other races. Science has pretty well debunked that one.

As to #2, you'd have to be really, really, really stupid to go with a niche accelerator that no one's ever heard of IF given the option of going with YC or TS.

NewMe could barely get a mention in TechCrunch, and, when they did, the social entrepreneurship side story beat out the "here are our awesome companies!" story.

It's not surprising NewMe didn't get coverage.

Taking part in a race-selected accelerator, instead of a quality-selected accelerator, reflects badly. "If their product is so good, why couldn't they get into YC or TechStars?".

TARP isn't our 'future debt', it has already turned a profit.

Maybe those plugin guys should start charging for their work, so users see their output as having financial value.

A signup form is there to make money. Optimizing against 0.5% of the population at the expense of 99.5% is a poor way to make money.

If they require a phone number for activation, that's straight up annoying to everyone, and a terrible way to make money. If they just ask for the number, you can enter a fake, no harm, no foul

What? It's a whole lot easier to swing for the fences when you're already a millionaire.

Selling 5% of your total shares for $3,000,000 sets you up well for life. Not great, but well. At 4% interest that's $120k/year. After that, it's gravy.

Having a startup isn't slaying dragons, it's shipping something, charging money, and reinvesting revenue into growth.

It's not rocket science- just time consuming.

That's a silly question for someone starting their first business.

Most great philanthropists only dive in in their 50's and 60's.

Elon Musk started a mapping site in his 20's, which put him in position for PayPal, which gave him the capital to launch rockets into space.

If more people focused on making money in their 20's, real money, scalable money, there'd be more shoot for the stars entrepreneurs in their 30's and 40's, and more world class philanthropists in their 50's and 60's.

Innovation is overrated- users don't care about it, they care about delivered value. Half the time the innovators have crappy executions, but are so wedded to their idea that they refuse to simplify, change, and evolve.

That's when cloners come in and beat the living daylights out of them by copying and improving upon their innovation.

There's a fantastic book on this, 'Copycats':

http://www.amazon.com/Copycats-Smart-Companies-Imitation-Str...

Incredibly well-written for a HBS book, lots of solid case studies, and some interesting research into the nitty gritty numbers behind innovation vs imitation.

Sure you can.

Americans are usually more ambitious than Italians.

Kenyans are usually more upbeat than Bolivians.

Spaniards usually spend more time with family than Brits.

Jumping to conclusions is the name of the game when you're giving your the keys to your apartment to a stranger for a week.

Bob Woodward's are actually very good- he wrote a whole set on the Bush Presidency, from 9/11 through the Surge.

This.

After 9/11 there were enormous structural issues with the world order that made it easier for terrorist groups to proliferate. That's why the Treasury Secretary was in all the initial planning meetings- there were two prongs to our response, one financial, one military.

The military one was an unmitigated clusterfuck.

The financial one was a rousing success. We forced the world to tighten financial controls, largely ended anonymous banking, seized huge quantities of terrorist funds, and made it really, really hard for the people trying to kill us to get money and to move money around.

There was a financial War on Terror, and we won it. Just because the military side went so badly doesn't meant there wasn't a real threat.

The guy spelled his name wrong- it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know something weird is going on.

Hacktivists? These guys are breaking into private companies and stealing property. They're criminals.

That's the awesome thing about sovereignty- we get to run background checks and see if someone's been hanging out in Pakistan Frontier Provinces or Yemen lately. If someone looks sketchy, we boot them out.

Coming to an expensive first world country with $600 for 2 weeks is pretty clearly sketchy.

CBPs make wrong decisions sometimes. This wasn't one of those times.

His answer was interesting. A 'no' would not have been interesting.

Thanks for playing.

The $150 is a teaser rate.

From their email:

"A few weeks before we start flying we'll begin selling subscriptions. We will be rewarding our earliest supporters (the first 500), and those who recruit the most friends to PlaneRed with $150/month all-you-can-fly pricing. Obviously, the number of subscriptions we can sell at that price are pretty limited. So please - tell your friends to ensure that you get one!"