edash

Kudos, you've managed to demonstrate Jason's final slide perfectly.

Here are some things we use at http://realhq.com — those also mentioned in the article are in italics:

HOSTING

Rails Hosting: EngineYard

LAMP Hosting: HostGator

File Hosting: AWS

Video Hosting: Wistia

Code Hosting: GitHub

COLLABORATION

Email/Calendar/Docs: Google Apps

Project Management: Basecamp

Group Chat: Campfire

Wiki: Backpack

COMMUNICATION

Email Deliverability: SendGrid

Phone Magic: Twilio

Phone System: OpenVBX

MONITORING

Error Monitoring: Airbrake

App Monitoring: New Relic

Server Monitoring: Pingdom

ACCOUNTING

Receipts: Shoeboxed

Income: Freshbooks

Accounting: Outright

OTHER

Web Fonts: fonts.com

Web Fonts: Typekit

eSignatures: DocuSign

Forms: Wufoo

Advertising: Google AdWords

Our favorite products are probably Outright (dead simple), Twilio (enables tons of phone system magic), and AdWords (flexible, powerful, profitable). The two products we're actively working to replace are Backpack (with Workflowy or something similar) and Shoeboxed (we have yet to find an alternative). And we've outgrown Wufoo, but owe them much more than we've ever paid them in monthly charges.

This isn't hosted on Tumblr, it's Wordpress. And Tumblr's done lots of great work around attribution: http://staff.tumblr.com/post/1059624418/content-attribution

The IRS, at least, accepts digital copies of receipts: http://www.irs.gov/publications/p552/ar02.html#en_US_publink...

I've used Shoeboxed since 2008 to keep all my receipts, so I don't have to physically store anything. I don't actually like Shoeboxed. However, it syncs with my accounting application (Outright) and there's no better option which does this.

I hope Lemon works on their integrations—viewing receipts with a single click from your accounting application is the killer feature.

Here's the Reuters version (not behind a paywall): http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/22/us-google-yahoo-id...

Conversion rate is so much more than design:

Where are their website visitors coming from?

What is the messaging that got them there?

What are they trying to accomplish?

Does this product or service solve their problem?

Burying the sign-up button is an extremely simplistic hypothesis for a low conversion rate.

Related: The Love Affair Between Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso

http://gizmodo.com/5727913/the-love-affair-between-steve-job...

Wistia should be added for video: http://wistia.com/

Intercom should be added for Feedback and FAQ: http://www.intercom.io/

HootSuite for social media tracking / monitoring: http://hootsuite.com/

It seems like you first need to decide an even more important thing: Is profitability the ultimate metric for your business?

From the Ludicorp (Flickr) corporate philosophy:

Likewise, a business develops an identity by providing a product or a service to people. To do that it needs capital, and it needs to make a profit, but no more than it needs to have competent employees or customers or any other thing that enables production to take place. None of this is the goal of the activity.

It seems like your original metric led to a focus on quality, and Noah's suggested metric encourages a focus on growth and/or profitability. If you really can focus on only "one important thing" than I'd be worried that your quality will suffer as a result of this change in focus.

Source: http://www.ludicorp.com/about.php

Thanks so much, we'll do that!

That's a strong sell even after sign-up actually. We're trying to sort through Braintree charges right now and it is pretty painful...

Braintree also acts as your merchant account though, right?

I'm really excited to learn more about Stripe, but I have Braintree implemented in one application and have had a good experience. For future apps, why choose Stripe over Braintree?

I think this is a broad generalization. I work on two different projects that both invest heavily in Google AdWords and both have revenue small enough to be considered a "start-up."

If a start-up is focused on a particular vertical, or is a solution people are actively searching for, or has a revenue model built in from day 1, then advertising makes a lot of sense.

Mixergy has given so much to the community...if you're going to be a thief at least have the decency to be modest about it.

Edit: Parent post has been deleted.

I'm sure they've saved way more time (and money) using Google Docs than this one hour outage of the document dashboard cost them today...

I highly recommend the audio version of This is Water.

You get to hear his intonation and his interaction with the crowd...I found it much more moving than the transcription.

DFW's depression was clinical and a lifelong battle.

Your statement is akin to saying "Don't take advice from a man who died of cancer at 46."

Page views and site visitors are usually different metrics. I don't know how the Airbnb stats are calculated, but I'm guessing you've had fewer than 246 visitors—which means your conversion rate would be higher than 1%.

Several commenters on this post claim this is an issue of safety:

"The ability to add nicknames/maiden names etc is of no use to people who actually need to keep their identity secret for their own or their family's safety."

"There are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons for someone to need, not just want, to use pseudonym."

I'm sorry, but you don't need to use Google+. And for the love of Peter please don't if you'll endanger yourself or your family.

Wanting to remain anonymous on Google+ is like going to a dinner party and insisting on wearing a mask. Yes, you'll reduce the chance that people will know who you are—but you're also super freakin' creepy. If you don't want to be recognized...stay home or go to another party!

And if you don't want to share your real identity online, I'd recommend not using social networks altogether.

I wasn't defending Noah's behavior. I was defending Noah.

I didn't get hot sauce on me and I wasn't at MicroConf — but I will defend Noah. I've met him on several occasions and he's been friendly and helpful. He also gives time and energy to many people and projects without wanting anything in return.

I'm not defending his presentation; that slide offends me too. But I know that he deserves better than to wake up seeing this on the front page of Hacker News.

The author could have used the slide as a jumping off point for greater issues like gender equality in tech, or the pros and cons of being offensive in a presentation, or even a discussion about the word "bitch". Any of those topics would have forwarded the point more than writing a long ad hominem attack on someone who surely didn't intend to hurt or offend anyone personally.

I'd say this is the idea Hipmunk is going after...

Boomerang for Gmail does this...

How many Walkman's or Discman's did you buy before the iPod came out? The market for portable music devices went up exponentially from the 90's to the mid-2000's when the iPod achieved mainstream status. I bought two iPods in three years before the iPhone made 'em useless.

Consumer behavior isn't set in stone.

Source: http://www.in-stat.com/press.asp?ID=1366&sku=IN0502148ID

A good "business person" should be well-versed or at least dumb and ambitious in most of the following:

  - Hiring
  - Usability
  - Accounting
  - Copywriting
  - Customer Service
  - Project management
  - Business development
  - Knowledge of the market
  - Website optimization
  - Online advertising
  - Fundraising
  - Analytics
  - SEO

And the biggest job of all is to make money. This is a skill that requires practice and time just like any other.

Most of the people schlocking their half-baked, consumer-oriented, web 2.0 knock-offs at these events are looking for "technical co-founders" because they have no money. If they haven't made it before, I wouldn't trust their ability to make it in the future.

I recently did some fundraising and employee grants with an LLC and it was more complicated than you'd think...

You should make sure your grants have a "distribution hurdle." If you don't have a distribution hurdle, the options you're granting may be taxed as income immediately upon receipt. This would leave your employees with a big tax bill.

You should put everyone on a reasonable vesting schedule. With vesting, everyone is in it for the long-term and the shares given directly correlate to the work performed and the value provided to the company.

You should talk with your employees and agree in advance to the work being performed in exchange for shares granted during the vesting period. There is no clean way to include this in the operating agreement or grant notice, so communication is crucial. If either party is ever dissatisfied with their side of the arrangement, however, they can always leave. And if you've set up vesting appropriately, both sides should still be happy even if you don't reach the end of the vesting period.

Why would you want to prevent employee grants from diluting in the future? It breaks the alignment of incentives. If everyone dilutes equally, everyone has the same incentives regarding future investments. An investment would only be accepted if everyone thought the trade-off of money for equity was worth it based on the current valuation.

But if you DO want to prevent dilution, it's a fairly straight-forward clause you can add to the operating agreement. I'd suggest setting a ceiling or an expiry date for the dilution prevention clause. This ensures that if things change dramatically in the future, you won't be handicapped by your non-diluted employee grants.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. This is for entertainment purposes only. Don't sue me etc.

I'm slowly moving all my domains to Name.com. Once your account is setup and you've purchased one domain, all future domain purchases take a grand total of two clicks.

It's a F*CKING thermal mass the same way that Twitter is a weekend project.

Weekend projects come and go with hardly a whimper. The hard part comes when you want to turn that weekend project into something people will actually use (or in this case, pay for). Creating a compelling brand, crafting a marketing message that resonates, designing the product so that it "feels" good to use, engineering something durable and long lasting, scaling to meet demand et al? These things require a heck of a lot more than a class in thermodynamics.

Regardless, the market has spoken and 300+ people saw enough value in this thermal mass to support it.

I think the new startup Tout (toutapp.com) is working to develop something like this.

HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2361409

In the current iteration, it seeks to fill the middle ground between an email client and a full-blown email marketing application.

I'm sure Gmail integration is a natural addition to the product over the next few months...