frankdenbow

yea you're right, we have to work on it for sure. You can blame me :)

Did you feel the stress at the time or was it a slow creep? In my case I felt like I as dealing with it fine, but realized a drastic change in how I was thinking after it was over.

Had to share, it weighed me down for too long.

I needed enough time distance to really analyze if things were making sense or not. As a generally even keel person, I didnt notice how stressed I was until I signed the offer and realized, oh yea, I was holding back a lot of my thoughts and potential.

Love that this message is getting out and resonating with so many people. If you're interested in seeing some more talks from companies in this realm, we have videos at http://inflectionconf.com/blog

The point is that they grew their business mostly out of revenue. Yes you can get into a technical discussion of what a self-funded company is, but it generally misses the point. Setting yourself up so that you can be sustainable out of revenue at times requires a different approach and mindset which is at the core of self-funded companies.

Large whiteboard with a 100 day mind map of goals. Daily journal structured to write out what I'm doing towards each goal that day, then daily 1 min video check in repeating those goals along with a general assessment of how I'm feeling/things I'm thinking about. Has been transformative to do things this way.

Happens for companies in StartupChile frequently

> Accounts Receivables as a Service

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/kinder-gentler-debt-collec...

> Adwords for Outdoor and Transit Advertising

ADstruc, ADquick

> Modern Firefighting

Really intrigued by this one. I would go further and say disaster relief in general, as living in Puerto Rico showed me how ill-equipped we are to deal with finding the status of people with no communications, and getting aid to the right places.

outsite.co, Common.com both do this

She also started GirlDevelopIt and has been a staple in the NYC community for a while. Happy to see her on here!

One of the biggest issues is the holdup of supplies at the port where there was damage to the facilities. Getting logistics in place when there is a limited supply of gas/electricity/communication makes everything more difficult, along with the government bureaucracy.

For anyone who is interested in helping increase the ability of first responders and folks on the ground to better respond to events like this, consider building tech and startups that aid in volunteer management and distribution, communication systems when power and cell towers are down, logistics networks to get supplies to places in need. Much of this stuff is not innovative tech, someone just has to care to retrofit solutions that exist already to the needs of these scenarios. Heck, the Red Cross volunteer signup page is just a wufoo form. So much can be automated and modernized.

Made a simple site with some resources on where to donate money/goods: prmaria.com

Disclaimer: Living in San Juan and hearing reports from the ground

Check out https://www.getrevue.co/

Because it worked well for Google and Facebook

They are likely referring to this: http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-co-founders-freshman-r...

My take is that they've built something thats super valuable and useful to society, the fact that it pushes the boundaries of current legality does not automatically make the place toxic, it just pushes the world to be slightly different in the future which is a good thing.

Not every company is Craigslist or aspires to be. It can be argued that if Cragislist had more employees they could do more for their users.

They each have associates/partners who look for startups in the usual places and share deal flow with other investors.

... but Universal Music sold their shares early http://fortune.com/2014/06/04/universal-music-group-sold-ube... facepalm

I believe SeatGeek would also be in this category

I've gotten great value out of the PH postings that went well (quality users / feedback). For me PH is more democratic than, say, a PR outlet where it is completely up to the discretion of the person I'm pitching to feature me or not.

I've had some submissions tank and not make it out of upcoming and had others make it to the top. The goal with PH seems to be to make sure quality stuff is making it to the top and they seem to do a decent job of that (not all the top submissions are some VC backed product with advisors pimping them, mine is bootstrapped and I posted them myself).

You're never going to make everyone happy but I'm sure they will continue to do more to give people a voice without destroying the community.

If you're in NYC you can check out the Academy for Software Engineering, a cs focused high school. We do mentorship there via iMentor. There's also CSNYC.org which works to support cs education programs to get spread within the school system and to train more teachers on cs topics

Yep, thats what Thumbtack.com does.

Its not ignorance or bad intentions. Its not a startup factory, its a fun weekend to push yourself and learn some skills. Stories like these get voted up on HN but they are not the norm in my experience.

With Techstars now being involved, I can see them putting in more clear language about what the outcome of the weekend is as there will always be people who miss the point.

Sucks that people were doing that but its good to hear that you had a good experience.

I handle it by speaking about it at the events that I facilitate and speaking directly to the folks who are behaving outside of the parameters of what the weekend is about.

This type of situation is pretty rare for me, though as on average theres probably one group out of 20 at the events I go to who have this type of setup/issue.

The idea of the event is to get people to work together for the weekend, see if they like working with each other, expand their network etc. Its not to do work on someone elses startup. I've seen many teams that randomly formed at Startup Weekend go on to build a real startup afterwards.

Sorry you had a bad experience on the weekend. I've been a volunteer for 4 years so I have seen all permutations of teams that come to startup weekend (been to at least 30 events).

People who come to SW and look at is as a free way to get something built for their startup are not the target. It makes it a bit predatory and you get the reactions that you experienced. I try to warn people of this but some folks have their own ideas.

Coming with a team already formed also isn't ideal. The point of the weekend is not to start a company, its to work alongside other people and go through the exercise. With that mindset, you won't be disappointed when you "lose" but you'll gain some experience and grow your network. Thats the main point of going to the event.

If someone already is thinking about equity and contracts while doing a SW, run the other way. Its the wrong attitude for starting a company in general and in my experience generally ends up badly as they focus on the wrong things at the wrong times in other ways as well.

The front door application to YC is the same that it was before. YC is seeing that they aren't interacting with enough minority founders and are doing targeted outreach to groups so that they can speak to more of them. Adding more minority founders to the funnel, as they would if they wanted to see more hardware startups and talking to places that serve hardware startups.

Pandora has a statutory radio license that requires no negotiation, which is why you have restrictions on what you can play. The cost is less to them which is why they have survived.

As a self funded founder I feel you that the stories about what we do are unheralded and we have different challenges than other businesses (good ones that force us to find the right answer quicker).

There are businesses that are not self fundable, though and will take massive amounts of investment to make happen. Uber is one since they need to get critical mass of drivers/riders in many cities to take over. uBeam is also one of those companies, as a whole lot of R&D has to be done to take it to market. They have a thesis and if correct will have a big impact and can only be done with some real investment (can you imagine self-funding this??). This seems like the perfect thing to invest in.

Its super easy to poke holes in other peoples business but we are also not working with all the information. Let her work!