406 karma · joined March 11, 2012
Needless to say, he was not hired.
It was interesting to read about the various decisions made along the way to the first iPhone launch and remember the real-time launch back then. Even though the first phone had limitations, they were able to do enough things "right" that you could feel the paradigm shift within a few minutes of using it. Coming from a mobile software company at the time (and having access to all the top phones of the time, various Blackerry devices, Moto Razr, etc) it was easy to see that Apple had really made something extraordinary with its software.
One point of (hopefully) constructive feedback is that it wasn't obvious from my first interaction with the temporary doc that I was able to create checklists and bullet points. Once I saw that those are possible, I quickly guessed the keystrokes, but it might be helpful to add some graphical guidance.
Me: I have an idea for "foo"
MIT reply: "Here's a list of 10 reasons why that won't work"
Stanford reply: "That's neat, and here's 10 reasons you should work on it"
One might see the Stanford response as unrealistic or patronizing, but one of these creates a culture of positive ideation (and hustle-culture startups) while the other leads to a lot of discouraged entrepreneurs.
We sell discounted postage with print-at-home labels at https://stampnik.com/
disclaimer: founder of Stampnik
These single-subject, old school design websites make me nostalgic for the early web.
p.s. Coming across this site made me want to build an entire grade-school curriculum based on "silk". There's so many subjects to cover, including: Biology (worm lifecycle, climate) History (trade, Silk Road) Chemistry (why silk is so strong) Arts (what can be made of silk, production process)
I personally have a mix of app launchers, brightness/volume controls and a play/pause button.
Since you'll eventually have to understand all the legal aspects of operating a business, you might as well start off that way.
In your case of a 50/50 split, make sure your agreements also have a clause that deals with disagreements. IT's likely you'll come to a point in your business where you do not agree and 50/50 ownership can make your business stall. Codify how those disagreements are solved before you get there.
In my case, I used the InCorp service to file my DE docs since I needed an expedited service and they could walk the documents over on my behalf. In the past, I did that portion myself.
Thanks for building a great service and down with the fax machines!
California does add an extra layer of burden and compliance that I did not expect, but if you plan to have employees in California you must incorporate there as a foreign entity (also my case).
I've also heard from a fellow entrepreneur who has a distributed workforce that you need to incorporate in every state with an employee. This is certainly outside the scope of my checklist.
I've heard that for pre-funded DE corporations you can basically ask your registered agent to formally "resign" as your agent and then the corporation is orphaned. The proper way involves filing paperwork to dissolve the entity along with paying some filing fees.
Thanks! Glad you liked it. This checklist is what I've been going through for the past many months with my startup. Creating the list was a cathartic process and my original audience was meant to be friends who are building their own businesses. Glad to see it's getting more attention now.
I'd be fine with it getting added elsewhere as a more usable checklist as long as there's a link back to the github repo. I plan to update the checklist as I learn about new requirements and/or get pull requests.
I've seen and heard multiple co-founder friendships fall apart once things started to get "real". Good luck!
Should really be titled "How I won a Facebook hardware hackathon"
The future of UI (for the general public) is probably voice-based like "Hey Siri/Google/etc, I'd like a sandwich" and a sandwich is ordered and delivered to you. "Tweet 'Who's down for a sandwich party?'" and a tweet is tweeted.
Whenever I hear or read someone argue that "command line is the future" I think of my dad; barely able to make a bookmark in a browser and not really knowing how folders work. And he's been using a Mac for decades.
Q: How can I mitigate the risk of holding startup shares that are illiquid and whose value can drop to zero?
A: There are investment firms that will help you buy employee stock options and then split the proceeds with you. One of these is ESO Fund (esofund.com) and they are very nice people. They can help answer your other questions as well.