hacker64

This should disqualify him right away. Bragging about it tells me that he can't tell the difference between right and wrong.

SU does send a lot of traffic, but don't let the numbers fool you. SU users are channel surfing, and usually don't stay for more than 2 seconds. Divide the number of users you get from SU by 10 to get it's equivalent in Digg users. And divide that by 10 to get it's equivalent in users coming from a blog post. If you didn't follow that, here is the simple equation:

1 user refered by your blog = 100 SU users

It's not easy, but it's doable. Asking for the numbers you're suggesting forces us to seek VC funding (which we might do later), but we're not ready for it yet.

I'm not looking for VC funding. He's an angel investor.

I'd say I'm at stage similar to what an 'average' YC startup would've been at after about 3 to 5 months. Not hugely populr, and not at a deadend either. It's a consumer, social, Web site. We don't have a lot of users yet, and we don't have revenue, but the concept seems to be a good one, and I think that's how the investor heard of us and approached us.

That's an interesting twist. Thanks. Is it common?

We have a low burn rate, so a $100K should be enough to allow the two of us to continue working on it for another year, including a small marketing budget, and occasionally bringing in a consultant for the things we need help with (graphics, marketing consultations, legal, ..etc).

It's not as obvious as you might think. Otherwise, there won't be tens of thousands of anandoned startups.

Be a specialist in one area, and learn enough about the other areas to allow you to judge the quality of the cofounders you join or the contractors you hire.

> It would be rare for a cofounder of a non-broken company to have as little as 5%.

Good point.

I always felt that VCs continue to spread the 30% minimum ownership myth to manipulate the expectations of entrepreneurs seeking funding. Good to know that my gut feeling was right.

That's exactly how it works with consumer Internet projects. Consider that even Google didn't realized how valuable what they had was. They tried to sell their search technology in the early days, but only because nobody would buy it, they had to continue running the company on their own. The forumla seems to be:

1. Build a basic version of something you think people want.

2. Try it.

3. If people don't like it, modify and try again. Do that for a few times, and if it still doesn't work. Go back to step 1.

Will there be a software industry in 2200? Or will computers write their own software?

Using RoR is like taking a loan. You build it fast, but then spend a lot of time fixing it.

I use del.icio.us, it's good for what I need. Would be nice if I can set it so that all my bookmarks are private so I don't have to check that litle checkbox everytime. I don't use public bookmarks.

Incubators can be good or bad depending on which one you choose and which stage you're at. There is no easy way to answer this. Although it'd be interesting to hear what others have experienced.

It won't be long before a viable option to accomodate fast growth is availale. S3 does a great job scaling storage, and Amazon is already planning to make EC2 easier to use for web applications.

Try http://thelogocompany.net/ . Haven't used them, but there examples are cool. Or, post on elance and see if someone good bids.

I use elance.com. I post my projects there and they bid.