maxbrown

Clickables: http://www.stripe.com/ https://samurai.feefighters.com/

Personally, I think that it needs to be at least one person's full time job to be a legitimate start-up, as opposed to a side project where it may be one or more persons' part time gig.

I have a couple side projects that I've sidelined until I can find a developer (I do design/front-end). We could have a joint project rather than you doing free work for someone. Let me know if you're interested.

Marketing! Still trying to drum up some traffic... just a side project though :)

I really like the third idea - it's something I would use. Not sure if it exists already - seems like something that might. Seems like a personal CRM.

Curious to see how your project goes!

At least some of this can be done with MailChimp, right?

Would love to talk with you more about this if you have time - e-mail in my about.

Clickable: http://randomfreeapp.com

Why does it say "Time to get your OpenID at the bottom, next to the sign up button? This could be a major typo/branding issue...?

IANAL or a finance guy so forgive me for not knowing the specifics of this, but can't you issue dividends that are taxed significantly lower than payroll which requires income tax? Or is this only capital gains?

Surprised no one mentioned this yet - go look up Myers-Briggs. It's a personality test that gives you a type indicator... very useful for entrepreneurs to know your type and your co-founder's type etc. It deals with extraversion/intraversion and also thinks like sensing vs. thinking.

I like the idea, but I'm concerned about paying up front for a style-based product that I haven't seen yet. For example, this kind of thing has been done successfully with wine, but I'm fairly certain I'll like the wine no matter what they send. I can't say the same about a t-shirt. Personally, I don't know how you're going to convince me that I will like the shirt you send when I don't get to see it until I get it.

I'm a 20-something without children, and I completely agree with privacy and not controlling your child's life, but I wonder how you would respond to the issue of internet predators. Children without oversight HAVE talked with predators online and agreed to meet them in private.

Being so against privacy, how do you respond to that? Isn't just 1 enough to justify some oversight? Or do you say "It's not my kid"?

My guess is that this was done mostly by hand during Google 20% time. That said, I know there are a number of javascript/jQuery animation frameworks (http://bit.ly/FpVAM)

Sounds like you've already answered your own question - you don't like where you are, so you should be looking for somewhere else.

If you can get a job somewhere else that you like better, take it. If you can't, stay with what you have now and keep learning on your own time.

Never hurts to interview.

Some simple feedback from another designer:

- Might want to have hover states on the other navigation buttons.

- Too much text above the fold, in my opinion. If possible, I would highlight some short, bullet-points near the top (in larger font)

- What is "appwork" in the top left logo and in the title? Everywhere else seems to call it "App Sketcher". I would try to be consistent or make the difference clear.

If you just need someone to be the "face" of the company, you could consider finding a business or legal person to come on board just for incorporating and managing. Offer them some small-ish equity in return.

Reasons to incorporate include 1. limiting your liability and 2. establishing a formal agreement between you and your friends. First, if someone were to sue your company and you weren't incorporated (LLC, C-Corp, etc.) then they would be suing YOU personally and you would be liable. If you do incorporate, someone suing you is actually suing the company - the company is liable and only in specific cases can you be personally liable.

The second part is that incorporating typically puts out the terms of your arrangement with your friends - right now, if the hosting is in one person's name, they could essentially be the sole owner of the company (unless you had a lawsuit over IP, or something like that). Incorporating makes clear that the company owns the site and IP, and decides what percentage each party owns of the company.

IANAL either, but...

While a company's logo may be under trademark or simply copyright protection, you still have a legal "Fair Use" right to use the logo for the purpose of identifying or describing the company.

Most often, this is what logos are used for on a site. For example, "As Seen On... TC, CNN, blah blah blah". They obviously cannot be used to mislead someone into thinking the company is tied to or endorses your site.

Here's an article about it: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/fair-use-logos-2152.html

Aardvark is a good example of this - http://vark.com/

And you're already bailing for the coasts!? But it's just heating up ;) If you plan on sticking around, there truly are a ton of investors in the Chicago area.

What city are you located in? Also in the Midwest and know a few places I could potentially intro you to. Feel free to get in touch.

Figure this is as good a place as any to ask - I'm a graduating U of M senior looking for a developer partner this summer for a few ventures. Let me know if anyone around Ann Arbor is interested!

I'm sure it's not new, it just seems to me to be flaring up recently.

A truly motivated individual is likely to realize that this question is Googleable and will find tons of information.

Agreed. And there are many other HN-related routes too - I've had great responses asking questions of HNOfficeHours individuals.

Making a nice resource, perhaps with some HN flavored info, would be really great were it to be referenced.

Do you think a compilation would be referenced enough to make it worthwhile? Sounds like a valuable side project if it would actually be used.

So maybe a resource of compiled answers could offer a flow-chart of differing opinions?

IE if you want to learn this, start here. If you think this is more important, start here.

Page load was very slow for me (especially the background). Probably worth looking in to

I also find myself most productive from around 10pm till 4am or so.

Anyone venture a guess why many of us are like that?

IMO you should keep salary/hourly comparisons separate. When you're talking about how much per hour, it's typically a freelance/contract rate. But that is going to be much different than what you would make per hour on salary.

For example a freelancer might charge $100-150 per hour. That's like $200-300k per year on salary (at that rate). But a freelancer at that rate doesn't actually make that amount, because you have to factor in downtime (they don't always have work, and they often have to spend time finding work) and they don't have benefits, etc.

IMO an angel might, but not a VC. VCs look for 10x return on their investment of at least 500k-1mm, and a blog needing that kind of investment or providing that kind of return is highly unlikely.

Have you looked at http://www.logmein.com? They have a free version, and it's a solid in-browser remote desktop program that just runs a small background program on any computer you want to connect to. Only issue is I'm not sure they have support for Linux... could be a deal-breaker for you.