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I know what you mean about bootstrap. On the other hand, nobody I know would have any idea what it is. One of my friends the other day who wants to do a startup had no idea what Wordpress is. I had to pretend not to be completely floored, lest I insult him.

If the blog will be targeted towards more savvy tech folk like yourself, then I kinda see your point. If it's not going to speak to that niche then I say go forth with bootstrap!

edit: and I'm sure he'll customize as he goes.

Seth expands on his thoughts in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKArupEBE6Y

Now in all seriousness, of course the focus should be on product. But having a ton of relationships to leverage doesn't hurt if the end goal is the success of the business. (and I love that video!)

Agreed. Unfortunately, for better or worse, this is often the type of personality that leads an organization. That "salesy" personality really rubs me the wrong way but it can somehow work on enough people and create enough excitement/momentum to move things forward.

Agreed. This is a good deal for someone like me who wouldn't want to spend $35k, nobody knows me and I could take a flier on some random guys. But, if I'm a famous comedian, I'm looking for someone I can trust who has done this type of work before. Not the lowest price.

Before I even finished going through this I used a tip to increase readability on a blog by putting more space between paragraphs and the next header (slides 106-108).

The fact that the author previously worked at Microsoft himself leads him to draw all sorts of (potentially false) conclusions about this engineer.

"He thought that he could talk to me and see what they are and if there’s a match, but also learn a thing or two about startups."

I missed the part where, "Pete", the Microsoft Engineer asks this guy for all his sage advice.

Great, now I'll have to stop using this tool. Rapportive is great, but who knows how long before I'll have to opt out of LinkedIn putting my photo next to ads or something crazy like that. Not that a company would ever do something so audacious...but never know.

Congrats - looks great and learning Ruby well enough in 8 weeks to build this is inspiring. Another reminder that there is no excuse to not learn myself. Good luck.

That's interesting. I've always tested as an ENTJ ("The Executive or Field Marshall). Lately I've been under a lot of stress as my startup has gotten zero traction and something needs to give soon, because I'm hungry (for food!). Anyways, I recently took the Myers-Briggs again and the result was INFP - which some websites refer to as "The Idealist" who are focused on searching for the value they can provide in life. Weird.

Given he is the CEO, I think he's making many more non-technical hires such as Operations, Sales and Marketing folk. The secret sauce is that he's getting info that the candidate hasn't presented himself or hasn't cherry picked people to provide on his behalf.

Of course, I have a major problem with it because it can "blow up someone's spot" as they say - alerting people you may not want to know you're on the job hunt (current employer/clients).

You say Brian only contacts people he already knows but the article clearly states otherwise.

"The hardest part used to be finding someone that had worked with the candidate somewhere along the line, but LinkedIn has made that easy. It will tell you who you know that is connected to the candidate by one or two degrees."

He specifically states he is contacting someone he knows that knows someone you know (two degrees). Not just someone you both know directly.

Maybe you don't value $300 sneakers and see it as wasteful? I do. But, I'm sure this guy would shake his head at someone buying a $2,000 laptop (or something like that) when there is one for $1,000 that is "just as good."

I think they do. But, I also think you're probably smart enough to know what I meant.

Obviously I thought it was called for. Some people are criticizing because it's "illegal" and therefor wrong. Someone below brought up how GrubWithUs illegally inserted flyers into daily papers and they were praised for being scrappy. Another mentioned the legal grey areas of startups like Uber or Airbnb.

And you're right this story is different than the norm on HN. I wanted to relate those criticizing to something they understand like patent trolls who try to rip others down or someone criticizing another for going for it while they sit behind a desk for 40 years implementing 1% of someone else's vision. My point was that maybe they should be rooting for the person that goes for it whether it's a SV startup or selling widgets on the street.

Just because the market is distorted doesn't mean they aren't entrepreneurs. We all know some laws are written/influenced by industry to protect industry. Maybe your parents told you never to break the law but, laws are written by men. They are fallible and sometimes people need to push the limits or break laws to make things change.

"The reason this man is capable of making a profit is because he has almost no competition. It has nothing to do with entrepreneurship, being a good salesman, having a good idea, or really anything positive other than the giving spirit of some New Yorkers."

So he's found a niche market and exploiting it. Good for him. And it's not a good idea because it was just so obvious right? Or, because some guy in a suit says it's wrong? If someone cracks down on him fine. Till then he isn't hurting anyone. You should be rooting for this guy instead of against him. That even if he gets shut down at least he had the guts to put himself out there like that and hope he finds something else if this drys up.

Some of the comments here are really disappointing. Can't believe some people here are focusing on the fact that it's illegal to sell candy on the subway instead of this guys' hustle and trying to drag him down. Good to see the worlds current/future patent trolls and paper pushers have found HN in time to rip on someone making his own way.

This is so awesome!!! I love it! My apologies to the community for little substance here, but having a choice between just AT&T & Verizon would be terrible for us consumers long-term. My sister's BF just got a T-Mobile phone and I was just explaining tonight how I hoped this would not go through.

Yes, the fatigue of everyday people (including my own) to these types of things is disappointing. Who can keep up with all the funny cat videos out there though...

While it's clear SOPA isn't going anywhere, my concern is that the "next" SOPA won't be so extreme and hence, the outrage will be muted. All they need is a foothold to build off of. Luckily they were dumb this time and tried to go big.

Ah, got it. Thanks.

''It's a nice feature for Macintosh users,'' said P. J. McNealy, a senior analyst for Gartner G2, an e-commerce research group. ''But to the rest of the Windows world, it doesn't make any difference.''

Who is this Gartner research group? Ok, I do know who they are but it feels like whenever I read one of these "blasts from the past" articles they have an analyst in there making some statement that is way off mixed with terribly inaccurate predictions.

Exactly - at least for me. Emotion has to enter into it because it's about whether you're ready to move on when the money makes it a fairly close decision like this.

"Too many founders let emotions and egos cloud a decision that is really a number crunch. Once you accept that there will always be richer and wiser people out there, you'll find that they didn't get that way by taking dumb bets."

Maybe I'll always live in a crummy apartment and have Ramen for Thanksgiving but I completely disagree with this. How I choose to spend the next 3 years of my life is hardly just a number crunch. How I spend time doesn't just have a numeric value attached to it. I respect the author's analysis and to each his own. But, for me it's much more about learning, growing and building than a straight math problem. If at the end I don't die with the most toys I'm really OK with that.

I read a statistic that 68 characters across is optimal. Don't recall where but I just go with it.

I've never used an illegal drug in my life (edit: not that it matters). But, I really don't care if someone smokes weed. I think it takes a certain dysfunctional personality to get worked up enough to go after someone selling pot so aggressively.

The real problem is that the people with the dysfunction are the ones attracted to positions which give them power over people. Some join HOAs and torture their neighbors about the height of a fence or color of paint. Others, like the law men in this case, abuse their discretion and the American taxpayer. It'd probably be a lot cheaper to get them all therapists.

The Easiest Way to Meet Your Rewards Checking Account Requirements.

Thanks for spelling that out for me. As for being simple - I have begun teaching myself somewhat recently while looking for a good match w/ someone more technical. I can really only handle html & css at this point - sad I know. Anyways, this was very easy for me to setup. I've already got it going on my site w/ sandbox account.

But, going to hold off for now and just use hosted payment pages for a bit. Will likely use this in the near future though - thanks to the Recurly team.

I think Braintree does it, kind of: "By using our Transparent Redirect (TR) and Vault, merchants can achieve PCI Compliance in days. TR and the Vault will eliminate the handling, processing or storing credit card data so you can qualify for the Self Assessment Questionnaire A, the shortest of the four SAQs."

http://www.braintreepayments.com/services/pci-compliance

edit: So, w/ Recurly I wonder if it's the same thing and I'd need to do the Self Assessment Questionnaire A when using recurly.js