dalerus

Good to hear. I figured as much.

Huge potential conflict here unless the 18F consulting team that drafts the requirement is firewalled away from the bidding team.

I think once they clarify this, it would be all good.

This. Only need your phone number to use the Messenger app.

> My cofounder has several more years of work experience, and more closely focused on mathematics and machine learning. I have some experience in these fields, but am more of a general software engineer. Because I am bringing the money to the table, we intend to make the equity split 51/49 in my favor.

Cool, as long as you both feel the even contribution. The 51/49 will also only work if you're both clear that the 51% has the deciding vote on disagreements. Otherwise, just a 50/50 split.

> We are currently working nights and weekends and making good progress. We both work very fast-paced, demanding jobs in Silicon Valley, which makes it hard to sustain our current pace without burning out.

Sure, I get that. Just make sure you're setting up times to talk to investors now. Showing your progress and trying to get customers.

> Would you suggest that instead of cannibalizing our existing funds, that we just stop contributing to our 401(k)s and save more cash for our startup? Or should we continue to save for retirement at our previous pace?

I'm never a fan of holding off on saving for retirement. Keep putting it in if you can afford it.

> I am definitely in favor of doing this, but like you pointed out, the MVP could take twice as long even when working full time.

True and you will know best of the time frames here. I have no idea what you are building. ;)

It this becomes something that the T&C require, I'm probably not buying a ticket. Unless it's someone I felt I really needed to see, then I'm at the mercy of the T&C. But I'm a rule follower. :)

Interesting. I guess I didn't think of the comedian angle. Still, I'm on the adapt or die side of this. When I am paying $200 to attend a show, don't take away my phone.

I went to a show earlier this year and the artist had everyone put their phone away for one song. Was great and the audience generally accepted it for what it was, a moment that the artist wanted to share with the crowd.

Just don't treat us like little kids.

Having bootstrapped a couple of times:

1) I would double your estimated time to build. Worst case, think it would take 9-12 months.

2) Personally, I wouldn't get too into the finances of my co-founder. I'd just want to know that what are bringing (financially, sweat equity, and/or key industry knowledge) are equal. If I'm bringing 50K, my partner should too.

But to answer your question, if I was that co-founder, I would. I would look at paying off the debt and lowering the overall amount we needed to get to MVP.

3) Numbers look more than reasonable. Actually, I know a lot of people that would never have that much to bring to their own startup.

4) Don't touch the 401(k) or Roth.

Are you sure you need all this money and time to get your MVP ready? If you're bootstrapping, why not stay at your current roles and code in the mornings, evenings, or weekends?

Get your MVP done, get it into the hands of customers, and see if you find a fit. I'm not sure you need all that time and money...

I guess I don't really understand the problem artists have with phones? Are they worried people are watching their performances rather than attending?

I only go to a couple of shows a year (on a good year) and not once has a phone ruined my enjoyment of the show. Personally I don't take out my phone more than a few times, mostly to grab a photo for Instagram, and maybe text or tweet between openers.

It shouldn't affect your prospects too much. Just keep your skills sharp while you an building and running your startup.

I've built and failed at two startups. And after those failures I've found one of the most fulfilling jobs I've had in my career. I've learned so much about business building, managing, sales, and finances over the last few years. Use those skills you learn while building to help find your next role!

I'll build something in the future, once I've had a few years to recover from the startup world.

I work in international development. If you're looking for a career abroad and interested in working on solving interesting problems, the development sector is a good place to be. Pretty good pay, decent benefits, home leave, no issues with immigration.

Devex.com has a decent listing of jobs and companies to work for.

The first couple of times I called and confirmed that he did write the check. Also the banking systems keep copies of signatures so I checked the signatures as well.

Once it became a regular thing, we made a note on his account.

That's correct. I worked at a bank for years and once a month I would get a check written from the same older gentleman on half a sheet of yellow legal pad.

He apparently thought buy checks were a scam and he saw no reason to buy them when he could just use a sheet of paper.

I've spent too much time rolling my own solutions and building stuff for clients. Now I just use Squarespace, simple, easy and I don't have to deal with any of the maintenance stuff.

I second this. I've been playing around with Meteor for testing side project ideas. Super simple to get up and running.

Awesome! Thanks!

I use Nozbe to dump all my todos in via email or in the app. Then organize every morning. It's based around GTD concept but can be customize to your workflow.

I needed an easy place to dump everything. As work uses Trello and my startup uses Basecamp.

I did at a large firm. They even had a no-remote policy at the time.

I asked my boss to do a one month test, one day a week working remotely. I documented my production levels for those remote days to prove that my productivity could increase by working at home.

After the month test, I proposed one-week a month and then increased to full-time remote after about three months.

I would take a system that told me the reading level of the article before I click through.

Email to the landlord, they send a maintenance person to fix the problem.

When we had a property management company, worked the same way, but they usually had someone out quicker.

No, IE 9+

I went and worked full time at a company. Spent time with my family and enjoyed the fact that every two weeks a paycheck would be in my bank account.

After that, I started another company.

For some reason I thought this would be a shipping container management platform.

Having said that, I like it. I'll take a look and see if this could solve some of our problems.

Great read. I love to read anything about Carmack, it just blows my mind that he re-wrote all his engines from scratch. I can't even fathom developing at that level.

That font you are using is awful for readability. I would really recommend changing it.

I went to school for commercial photography and like most young photographers, if you can't land a good job in the industry you freelance.

The years I spent being a freelance photographer taught me a lot about running a business, but I ultimately fell in love with the freedom. Years later I read Tim Ferris' 4-Hour Work Week and knew I wanted more work/life balance than I was getting working for an agency.

I run a small agency and I'm in charge of hiring our developers. I took a look at your GitHub and had a few thoughts:

1) Add a real readme to your projects. If you don't have any shipped work, that's ok, but you do have side projects I can take a look at. Help me out though, I want some information on what this app should do and I don't want to go diving into your code without that background.

The first repo I visited was cupcakes, because, well who doesn't love cupcakes? But I was disappointed when I didn't see any real information about what this app was aiming to do.

2) You should be able to get a Jr. level position for at least 70k, so don't sell yourself short. Now if you have a lot to learn, be willing to take less and get your foot in the door.

3) Focus on one language that interests you. I don't hire generalists. I look for developers who have spent the time to learn a language, not six. You can always learn more later, but you'll have an easier time if you can pitch on the language or area you know really well.

Other than that, keep applying to jobs, keep growing, you'll land something. Good luck!

It's a huge problem for us, we manage analytics on a large group of sites and reporting back to the client has become a huge pain.

We have to setup custom filters for all of these. Google does have a feature to automatically remove know sources, but it's not turned on by default. Here's the announcement: https://plus.google.com/+GoogleAnalytics/posts/2tJ79CkfnZk

We also run Piwki on all our client's websites as well and they block this junk automatically: http://piwik.org/blog/2015/05/stopping-referrer-spam/

I think this is an overcorrection in the market. My wife and I purchased a house, that we couldn't afford, and lost it when the market turned. We lost most of our savings and have fought for years to get back out of debt.

We've both agreed that for us renting is the way we are going to go. I hated homeownership.

Did you track open rates? I would be curious to see what those numbers look like.

But why does this site need edge technology? It's a landing page for your game engine.