dshanahan

I agree that I slipped in between 'founding' and 'working' a bit. The conversation that inspired the post was agnostic to the distinction, obviously, but you're right there are differences. I think it's most useful to actually explore the 'employee' experience, as outsiders will most likely end up there if they jump from traditional work - this is what I'm seeing most often anyway.

I wouldn't go so far as to say working in startups leads inevitably to bitterness for the people who are made for it. I did certainly write the post hoping it serves as fair warning that you should expect it to suck a lot.

The only people who feel this way are the ultra-early adopters. Assuming most sites aren't meant for that audience, I don't think it's actually worth worrying about in the process of getting an early iteration out the door. Sure, as a site/app scales it should think more about branding but early on it's more likely a net benefit to have the kind of UX clarity that Bootstrap provides for most web users.

The only thing I'd add to this concise post is that once you settle into the mental discipline of sifting through your experience with these filters running automatically, other people's problems become frighteningly clear in the same context. I find many people are wasting the energy they wish they'd reserved for fixable, controllable problems on a long list of things they can't control. They're not "working smart" energetically.

Where do you source your blogs?

This is what excited me too. Elements of TurntableFM-like 'social listening' might be interesting in a new environment.

I agree this is a problem that's near the "Deviation barrier". I also agree it's narrowing, and admit that what I was suggesting is a 'low-tech' solution. I suppose I was simply offering that I'm seeing empirical evidence that this is a pain point in a particular market that's large enough that people look willing to pay to try and fix it.

This is a problem we've assessed a bit at http://foodtree.com - there are some efforts in this space but none seem to have the penetration to make it useful at scale. Our approach is to help grocers "spread their great story" as an incentive to start mapping their inventory, both in the "where it's from/who made it and how" perspective and the "what store near me has OBSCUREITEM available right now" perspective, which is your problem but only to store level. Getting to that level right now is tough with food retail chains, but they're moving in the right direction.

So that we don't have to wait for them, we're trying to enable crowd-sourcing as well; "I saw OBSCUREITEM here in case you're looking for it in town".

Again, very aware this is only your problem at the store's front door, but maybe it's nice to know someone's working on it? :)

Really like this post; articulating something I experience and something I see a TON of entrepreneurs quietly struggle with.

I share your intuition that it's not entirely a machine-ready problem; productivity tools (using that term WIDELY) have certainly improved, corrected in innovative ways for all of our typical human tendencies, and in some cases work really well for "some" people.

I've been consulting lately on a project focused on providing human coaching to this specific problem for big-thinking tech entrepreneurs. Also definitely not for everyone, but after chatting with a number of investors about how they might 'enhance' their influence on their portfolio founders, this was something that always seems to be a "lightbulb". It's most surprised me that entrepreneurs themselves seem to be very much interested in the idea: "Yes, if my investors provided me with a productivity/well-being coach I'd take full advantage".

Thoughts?

This is where I sit on Kevin Rose. He's mostly a product guy, and he brings past success and a big 'test-market' following to ANY product he touches.

I'm hard-pressed to discredit someone who got Digg the attention it got, then maintained and built a personal following that he unquestionably influences, and THEN spearheaded a product that you may not love but did get 150k users and was damn beautiful to boot.

I'm not a fanboy, but Kevin Rose is on a short list of people who can really fuel a product and it doesn't require technical knowledge or even 'having the idea' for that to be valuable.

I do this this is accurate. Going to Austin during SXSW can be really valuable, exciting, and inspiring. Paying for a badge and doing the panel circuit isn't worth the money or time away from what's outside the CC.

Yeah, it was a pretty huge pain in the ass. I hammered the CEO of the ISP and he gave me some boiler plate response. Honestly, I'm running a startup and the music blog is a fun side project so I didn't pursue it. I sent word to some of the other bloggers that I know have high traffic like I did and that I know share downloadable content. I wanted to know if I was behaving differently than they were, and I wasn't. They were all pretty nervous about the whole thing.

Music blogger in general are huge proponents of driving money to artists; either by putting them on the map or literally driving sales. If you're lucky enough to collect attention on the aggregators you can be pretty sure that your posts will get traffic, so finding a young band with little exposure is hugely gratifying.

Then the record label gorilla lawyers get in the way. Really sad state of affairs.

This happened in a different way to me. They didn't take my domain; they threatened my ISP and they deleted everything on my domain, include six other sites that lived there - the music blog was a subdomain.

The thing I couldn't believe was that I'd never posted a track I hadn't gotten approved by the artist; I'd estimate 70% was sent to me by promoters, artists, or the label themselves. If it wasn't, it was likely found on another blog and I only let readers download content that was available for free from the artist themselves.

Totally ridiculous. Trying to get a response for their grounds was impossible, and I eventually had to switch ISPs and rebuild all my sites.

As someone who wrote my senior thesis on Napster this is gold. I agree with SP on his assessment of every attempt in music since Napster, although I remain unconvinced that Spotify is the next-gen.

Just pulled.

Awesome site man. Wondering if you'd considered a revenue model? I checked for affiliate links before coming here and seeing your post.

I re-read my answer to your question and wanted to clarify; the fact that funding wasn't secure was clear before I moved to Van. It was included as a contingency on the (simple and short) term sheets.

All I can offer is that it wasn't buried in fine print. It was clear and it was something we all had to deal with as soon as we arrived in Vancouver. I think that it was unfortunate is one thing, but that it was 'shady' is misconstrued.

Hey guys, so that's my post. I'm the founder who was here with Jamie, who I consider a friend and think is a really talented and genuine guy. I've watched this story grow and I think even Jamie might agree that it's been hard (and largely inappropriate) to communicate all the specific details which might inform such a wide audience on the events around here.

I was specifically emailed by 'icey' to jump in and be a resource. He/she asked me specifically regarding the stated financing situation prior to my moving to Vancouver from Chicago and joining Bootup.

It was contingent on closing the round. I'm not sure what to say other than that was clear. I took that risk knowingly.

As someone who made the same decisions that Jamie did as a cohort member at Bootup, in reference to your comment I don't think this is accurate. We knew the deal, which was contingent, and I moved from Chicago with that knowledge.