kristenlee

I find it overreaching to conclude that every individual who is employed by the government in a law enforcement capacity chose their job out of a need to control other people. The world is not black and white and there are shades of gray. The police officers you despise hunt down the murderers, rapists, and child molesters that harm society, the soldiers fight against genocidal sociopaths like Adolf Hitler & Sadaam Hussein, and the congressmen you despise fight for things like universal healthcare. With regards to startups the primary motivation for most entrepreneurs, but not all, is to make money, not some noble goal of making the world a better place. Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like do little or nothing to solve the world's most serious problems, they're just toys for upper middle class people with money and time to burn. Finally no reputable news source has reported on this story because everything is based on hearsay on what a "DOJ representative" allegedly said which fails to pass the credibility test for reputable news outfits such as the NY Times, Reuters, Washington Post, CNN, with reporting standards. Before you act on the word, consider the source.

Aaron Swartz was mentally ill and committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness. He comtemplated suicide in 2007 long before any of this DOJ stuff happened.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dying

Furthermore the "glorification" of his suicide is doing nothing more but encouraging other suicidal "hackers" to go over the edge so they have their "story" and inconsequential blog posts plastered all of Hacker News. The focus should be on figuring out a way to get mental health services to those who need it most. Not a witch hunt for every person who had something to do with Aaron's prosecution for crimes he knowingly committed.

Unfortunately this relationship has the makings of a codependent relationship. When you combine a man who is probably insecure since he searches for dates on craigslist and a woman with a litany of mental issues you generally have a codependent relationship. The insecure man needs to feel "needed" and the women needs to be "saved". Most of these relationships do not end well and lead to long-term unhappiness for both parties.

Offering loans at a 330% interest rate is "helping the poor", sounds like exploitation to me. Payday lending has been outlawed in many states due to the fact that it exploits poor people and entraps them in a cycle of high interest debt. The founder of ZenFinance acknowledges that fact in one paragraph and then touts working with a company that engages in those unethical practices in the next. The following states have outlawed payday lending:

Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts (not strictly illegal but highly regulated), New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia.

Source:wikipedia

This program can be very dangerous if you're a woman and your "investor" is a male. I can see all types of exploitation going on. As a lawyer I also know that this type of program may be illegal since it is akin to indentured servitude or slavery. I would be curious to know what the males in here would think if their girlfriend or sister had a dirty old man pouring over her tax returns and demanding she make payments. There's a reason we have banks as intermediaries to make loans, hopefully no women are dumb enough to use this.

EDIT: Another issue is that such an investment would be considered an unsecured loan and could be discharged in bankruptcy. I would take the "investment" and then declare bankruptcy and have the debt wiped out. Student loans have bankruptcy immunity which is why 18 year olds can take out thousands in loans. No intelligent investor would give an 20 year old a $30,000 in unsecured loans. You cannot write "bankruptcy immunity" into a contract either because it can only be granted by from Congress.

Wow, this is really going to change the world. YC S12 is probably the best class out of YC so far. A mobile app that allows me to send a postcard to my mom...genius!!! A billion dollar company in the making.

I started off working on my startup as a single founder and found it enjoyable, especially the coding part. What I underestimated was the emotional challenge and that's where having a cofounder helps tremendously. I was fortunate enough to find a cofounder and while the level of stress is still high, its much easier to deal with having somebody in the trenches with you. As far as the later stages of a startup, very few startups even get to that point so I wouldn't worry so much.

Great app, guys. I love the design of the app and your website. Really fits the whole artistic New York hippie vibe. Keep up the good work and ignore the inevitable onslaught of negativity you read here...its par for course lately.

I agree with the OP, the level of negativity on HN is striking, if you peruse through the articles on the first page on any given day at least half will have some negative "hater" comment as the one with the most votes. You saw the same type of negative behavior on Techcrunch before they transitioned over to the Facebook commenting system, maybe there's something about anonymity that brings out the worst in people.

Business is about competition, every product in history has had competitors so I don't see what the big deal is. If you know a market I can enter where I will face no competition please let me know because I want in.

Empirical Study On Legal Salaries

http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/2008/07/how...

One thing I always tell friends and family is that litigation is the worst way to resolve conflicts. I have filed numerous legal complaints while working for a Legal Aid organization and even the simplest cases with as little as $2k at stake require hours of drafting legal documents, arguing motions, conducting discovery, etc. The more complex cases such as those you referred to in your original post are even more complex.

My suggestion is that you approach this issue from an arbitration angle, which takes legal disputes outside of the legal system. In other words figure out how to get parties to agree to forced arbitration like in MLB when contracting with each other, the only problem with the arbitration approach is that it would only work in situations where the parties contracted with each other, but not in situations where you suing someone who has no contract relationship with you.

I believe that most "freelance" lawyers are grossly underpaid and overworked. Contrary to popular belief solo attorneys only bank between 30k-75k a year on average which is barely enough to survive. Only the top 10% of attorneys work in prestigious law firms with six figure salaries and big name clients. The majority of attorneys in America are either barely scraping by or unemployed.

As a Harvard Law School graduate I want to say that the OP is really underestimating the skill set of lawyers, the law is a very difficult field and the suggestion that it is a cartel is a little overblown. Every legal issue is different, no two divorces are the same, no two lawsuits are the same, no two patent disputes are the same. This is why you don't really see a Dreamweaver/Weebly type app for web application development, no two web applications are the same and each one has different needs and challenges that require the skills of a computer engineer to work out. Same way for the law. The underlying attitude in Silicon Valley that "every problem can be solved with a web app" just does not hold true in the real world, especially for hard problems such as America's legal system.

The facebook thing is an absolute dealbreaker, what don't engineers understand about people not wanting to use facebook for everything? So annoying. If you want people to use real identities there are plenty of other ways to go about it, furthermore it is not that difficult to create a fake facebook profile, i have three myself.

They even copied the pricing page verbatim, I have personally incorporated some 37signals design elements in my own websites but nothing to this extent. 37signals is a bit hypocritical in my opinion because they brag about their design practices and then whine when someone copies it, either you're an open company sharing your inner-workings with the world or you're not, they can't have it both ways.

http://www.curebit.com/pricing

I think jiggity said it best, restrict what you show on the homepage and show all the details on another page, that small change is a surefire way to get users further down the sales funnel.

Intimidating...that's how I would best describe the look of your application. I'm guessing potential customers see a long learning curve ahead and want nothing to do with it. This "intimidation factor" conflicts with your stated goal of creating an alternative "entry-level" project management system. Furthermore two years is way too long to be developing any type of CRUD app.

Mobile. Social. Photos. Oh Silicon Valley, land of innovators such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk...wherefore art thou?

Path just comes across as a Facebook clone, especially the new version. I'm really hoping something "new" happens in Silicon Valley outside of the social networking paradigm. Mobile is evolving but it has yet to have its "killer app".

I quit my job to pursue a startup idea and I ended up regretting it. Getting a regular paycheck every two weeks is something I have learned to appreciate after having to go 8 months without having any form of income. As you probably know, most startup ideas fail and for every Dropbox or AirBnB there are thousands of failed startups that were started by people who were just as smart and just as driven as those individuals were. The fact that you have a 100k in the bank should make things a little easier for you, if you do decide to pursue the startup route I would suggest you put a hard time limit on when you're going to cut your losses and return back to the regular job market something like 8-12 months, whatever you do keep your options open.

Such a fascinating article, I guess there is money in open source software, provided you execute as well as the Automaticc team.