kolya3

"Dropbox helped me convince my old boss that I could work from home."

Can you talk more about this? How do you use Dropbox for telecommuting and how did you convince your boss it was an effective tool for telecommuting?

Honest question, is this solving a problem and who has this problem? I pay about $30/month for electricity and I already know it goes up to about $80/month during the winter months. $200 seems like a lot of money to pay for someone to tell me what I already know.

It's not that bad... keep a "safe list". Every time you add a friend either add them to the safe list or don't - it's right there on the add friend dialog. The "safe list" gets to see everything, the other list gets to see nothing but the basic info on the profile. This way you can friend anyone without offending them a rejection but at the same time keep professional contacts at arms reach.

Also a good argument against using company email for personal correspondence.

"AA searched their exchange database for the text I posted, found the guy, and fired Mr. X on the spot."

I'd guess that using signup codes is not about merely creating the illusion of exclusivity. I think the real reason behind using signup codes is so you can track your marketing efforts: where did I spend time/money and how effective was it? Without it you are flying blind.

Last thing I put out though haven't tested on the dance floor yet: http://soundcloud.com/nickolay/nickolay-funky-zippa-ruby-sky...

I use Reason 4 exclusively. Never had the time to figure out any other piece of sotware. Now that ReCord works flawlessly with Reason, I won't need to.

If you're famous and concerned with PR, shouldn't you have people who shop on your behalf, for whatever it may be?

If the founder/ceo has been in his industry for a while yet all the people working with him at the startup have never worked with him before. Huge red flag. Ask yourself: why can't this guy attract people from his network? Why don't they want to work with him ever again?

What would validation prove? These guys created a website so you can talk to experts on web design. They are not claiming to be experts on that topic themselves. Even if validation meant much it would seem unfair to hold the owners of this site responsible.

"Costs continued to balloon, and a business model that required the start-up to spend 10 cents to earn a penny was never fully re-evaluated."

It's really inspiring to hear that someone with THIS business plan got funded. Makes you think, how hard could it be to get funding? ;)

Before getting angry, consider the positives as well. There are roughly 3 camps of people reading your book online:

(1) This group will use your book as a free reference because it's available but _cannot buy your book_ (think poor student, 15 year old with no credit card and other priorities, third world country - too expensive). You didn't gain a paying reader but they are not hitting your existing stash of cash, just potential earnings. On the plus side, they know of you now because of your book. Maybe you can actually get paid for a speaking gig.

(2) This group will peruse your book online a few times but _will buy it_ because they prefer to have a hard copy they can read in their cubicle, on the train, etc. A win for you.

(3) This group can afford your book and _would have bought the book but now will not_ since it's available online. A loss for you. However I have a hunch (though no data) that this group is a minority especially when it comes to the well paid (and often reimbursed) group of engineers who are the market for your book.

I want premade food delivered to my house every day. I want it to cost around $7/meal. I want it to taste better than cardboard. Perhaps, I'm asking for too much and perhaps my price range is too low.

I found MagicKitchen.com but they have bad reviews.

Grocery shopping, cooking or even picking up food from a restaurant is a huge time sink. I would gladly commit to a recurring monthly charge from a service like this.

Here's the "tech" part, to make this HN friendly: I want to be able to pause delivery online, shuffle my menu around and maybe even change the delivery address for a day or two.

Quick summary: Guy starts a successful business but outsources the accounting to his wife's friend's brother. The accountant books unfinished business as money in the bank. Economy sours and the truth comes to light. Guy goes out of business.

So the "dark side of entrepreneurship" is losing your business because you outsource a critical component and don't bother to double check the results?

I often wonder if the high 90% startup failure statistic is a result of negligence and lack of common sense. I hope to put my money where mouth is and find out on my own in the near future. Can anyone on the other side of the fence chime in on this?

Same as the iPhone.

You can crowdsource QA through uTest.com

I worked for a startup 4 years ago that started off with this very premise: enabling users to buy tickets to events in real time. The company very quickly changed focus to just being a ticket search engine, due to the assumption that the money was in helping people find the best price not shopping with their friends.

Don't let that dissuade you though. You might be on to something. Planning trips with a group is a painful experience considering conflicting schedules & budgets. Once users clue you in to their intended destination and budget you could find plenty of ways to monetize this.

I just asked a friend to review it for you:

http://chords.fm/Chords!/forum/topic/53/future-direction-of-...

What blows my mind is that no company I have worked at has ever set performance goals on day 1. It doesn't make sense. We set goals at annual reviews so why not on day 1? Why blindside an employee during the first annual review?

I talk to everyone on my team 3 times a year to make sure I'm giving them what they need from me and vice versa. The informal manner helps in keeping the whole process relaxed and the feedback genuine. The 4 month period in between gives ample time to improve things without stretching it out for a whole year. Iterate, get feedback, iterate, get feedback. It works for startup business plans so why wouldn't it work for self development?

Thanks for responding. What would you say is the lasting profound effect on your day to day life?

Can you talk more about your experience? How are the last 3 days "heaven"? What was the "profound impact" on your life?

I recently went overboard with effects while learning jQuery. Suddenly things that took days to write could now be implemented in minutes. Extensively using my own product I realized just how annoying these effects become. Once the novelty wears off you realize that usability suffers. The glitz cuts into the users' productivity. I'm now going through my code and removing a lot of these effects.

Not sure if all press is good press. Sure I know their name now but now I know to avoid it too. And in the near future, when I'm considering options for my own gig I'll probably go with UserVoice or SuggestionBox instead.

The sidebar font uses the same blue as the facebook "Log in with Facebook" above. (1) This makes me think that clicking these links will ask me to log into Facebook (2) Overall feels like you're phishing for my Facebook username/password. You need to explain what your site is before anyone will feel comfortable logging into Facebook via your site. Furthermore, WHY would I log into FB through your site? Are you going to pull in my friends list and send them spam on my behalf? Are you going to post in my activity feed? These are all questions that a user will have and you need to be very clear about upfront.

Jokes aside, that's a much more memorable name and I think you should stick with it. I can never remember the real name and only come back to your site when it's mentioned on this forum.

Why fill in the pool? Just turn it into a sub-garage room and market it to the buyer as a wine cellar or a "food riot panic room" :)

I highly recommend Omnigraffle Pro to anyone trying to diagram their app ui's, flows, etc. It's way better than Visio. The site cyunker is linking to is a goldmine of stencils.

Interesting point: "At some point, it may be required that the rest of the team that started the company with the CEO may need to be changed out for an executive team with experience at the “growth-stage” versus just the “start-up” stage."

While I've definitely worked with founders who weren't fit to run a big company (lack of focus, lack of common sense, blind to customers' needs - you name it...), the "experienced executive team" that replaced them seemed to go out of their way to run the company into the ground. I have now seen this happen 3 times (both at companies I've worked at and friends' companies).

Exactly - this is #1 on Reddit's home page right now.

My favorite feature of GrandCentral is that you listen in while the voicemail is being recorded and then jump in at any moment.

When setting up with e-junkie can you do it in such a way that their name doesn't show up anywhere? (on the payment page, on the credit card bill, etc)

I wouldn't want my customers seeing "e-junkie" anywhere where they are giving me a credit card number. It sounds shady and may make some customers put their credit card back in their wallet.