dmarinoc

They do not only have money. They have a strong influence (and almost always the last word) in most of end-consumer buying decisions.

It's strange so little companies focus on them

Instead of facebook, I'll bet they will repeat the same strategy like when Google acquired Youtube

Ops... I didn't mean to be rude :)

Nice to share the experience... and thanks for tell us the status of the applications :)

Soon someone with a chicken costume and a sign will stand in front of YC's door.

Past evidence: http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/17/dont-parade-in-front-of-tec...

Or Quora ;)

Sure,

Feel free to write us at gang _a_ ducksboard.com

No decision yet... we've been reading good and bad experiences from SaaS providers who offered a freemium plan.

What features do you think would be interesting in a freemium plan?

We are planning to offer an edition aimed to be deployed on-premises... no estimations yet, but expect it around Q4.

Thanks for your interest :)

>> Ethernet in the walls is a definite yes of course.

Why Ethernet instead of PLC? I know EthCat6 is faster and reliable... but you can get now 500Mbps from some PLC kits, and no maintaining is required

I found investments in the same space but not direct competitors

Thanks!

Check this post from Joel Spolsky http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BetaTest.html

It's more focused on desktop apps, but it has good insights

Thanks :)

For ranking, instead of textual relevance (which will be hard to achieve :/) and # of quotes (it can be easily hacked/spammed or new announced books will have a huge weight on the ranking), I suggest you to check timelines: if a book is quoted once/twice/... a month regularly, I'm pretty sure it worths reading it

I'll love to read about the architecture behind the site... yep, technically curious :)

just curious... how do you parse (and find the titles) from SO and HN? Only checking from publishers/distributors links?

Keep the good work. I love it :)

My only suggestion is to offer a ranking and order the results by # of quotes

More important than the commission will be negotiating all the other clausules (involvement, support, time period, exclusivity...)

In other sector (Cloud IaaS) I've been offered all kind of offers raging from 5% to 50%.

It will always depend of what this insider will do for you. If she is really good, only makes introductions and "helps" during negotiations, I won't pay more than 10% (per my experience in my sector, yours would be different).

We didn't start to code until we had 15 "strangers" willing to pay for our solution... and the sense of idea validated I had it after talking to 30 people and had 100+ surveys filled.

It happened to me once. And worst part is that it happened to me when I was negotiating a seed round :/

So, I ended up stoping negotiations with the BAs and focusing on raising a personal loan to buy him his shares.

Finally I was able to buy him out and signed with the BAs (who were extremely supportive in the process because they saw me manage all of this professionally... and I didn't use their money for my battle).

So, if you really don't hit it off with him, my advice is only one: "the sooner the better".