mjnaus

It looks like they copied the content from a post on Smashing Magazine from last year: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/23/online-calendars-...

Guess there is only left to say that when and if Yammer's model works, Twitter only needs to copy it and call it a day.

By the way, I am thinking about implementing a similar model for my soon-to-launch Twitter for the homeless (incl free iPhones).

Is USA the new Google killer?

Damn, did someone actually read this whole thing?

The title should have been: "Freemium might not be a good business model for most consumer applications". That title would have made sense...

It's so funny, it deserves to be put up twice!

The author clearly mentions this in his post, so I don't see why that is an issue.

Amazing... the sheer volume of news.YC folks jumping on the defense wagon here. If I wouldn't know any better, I would say that 37Signals personally offended some you.

To do some reflection... I can't help but wonder how many adjustments a company such as 37Signals is going to have to make to their operations compared to the average overfunded "innovator" from Silicon Valley...

I know for damn sure who to put my money on.

Correction, your interpretation is that it says: Economic conditions vary. In bad times you can't take as much risk. Bad times are here. Stop taking risks.

That said, the presentation says what it says; it talks about the what happened, how we got here, how it's gonna be like what (their) companies are supposed to do now.

And what they're supposed to do now, is exactly what any sane company (outside of SV perhaps?) would be doing from the minute they open shop.

After only looking at your the title: the world changes every day... go with it and get used to it!

1) Loving what you do will definitely make it a whole lot easier to stick with your project and reach your milestones. However, it says absolutely nothing about how great a business your idea will make. I am sure a bunch of kids loved making a tool to throw sheep at their friends at Facebook... does that make it a good business idea?

2) Same thing, it will help execution but it says bupkis about how well your idea is suited to become a successful business. I am sure we could find at least one person willing to pay for throwing sheep at their friends, does that say anything about greatness of the idea? Try starting with 20+ customers.

3) It's getting boring, I know, but the same thing applies here. Your execution will go one heck of a lot easier if it's dirt cheap, but it says nothing about the quality of your idea.

4) Hardly any great business is build by a single person or started with a great team in place. As ideas mature and evolve, so do the people executing the idea.

"You can’t have a hope at success unless you either know how to run your business or have people who can do it for you."

What happened to "learning as you go". As your business grows, so do you and so do the people around you. Granted, do you need to do your research before getting into a certain industry, but having it all figured out from the get-go is unrealistic and will put a serious brake on execution.

What happened to being cash-flow positive, having good growth, having an active and growing user-base?

I think Stan is just pointing out that a startup which is not making money should not be called a business. And when we consider a startup to be a "young" business, the author has a good point.

90% of the "startups" we see passing by here on HN, should be considered projects. And some of those projects might turn into a business (startup) some day...

Are you not living in the same world as I am? Didn't the Nikkei index loose close to 10% again yesterday? Panic doesn't restrain well unfortunately...

When someone falls for a scam, you blame the victim for not figuring out he was scammed soon enough? Fair enough, other financial institutions around the globe should have done their homework better, but that doesn't change much about the fact that Wall Streets money-grabbing and greedy mentality isn't to blame for the current mess...

Photoshop CS3

If you need your investors to tell you to buckle up and cut costs because hard times are ahead, you're probably not the most suitable person to run a company and you might want to consider getting out asap...

Well, one benefit could be: homeless people waiting in line at a local shelter can update each other on how the line is coming along and how many more are going to get a place to sleep that night at that particular shelter.

Another usage could be status updates on comfortable benches, bridges and rooftops.

Of course usage will be free and include a free iPhone (since most homeless are not very well connected to the cloud).

I can not provide any more details at this point since we are about to close a major round of funding, up in the 1* million range. Expect to see us featured on TechCrunch during the next few days.

By building a Twitter for the homeless

Seriously, is that a bird in his hair?

Steve?? Ballmer?? No. 1? Come on!

Really? Then I must have had "THE idea" at least 20 times this year...

Ideas are a dime-a-dozen.

Lawyer this, lawyer that... For every case that went wrong in the past, I am sure there is at least one that went well!

I was in the same situation as you are; what we did was quite simple actually. Together with your investors, agree upon a valuation for your concept (this is basically the hard part; don't try to come up with all kinds of revenue/profits predictions, just come up with a number both you and your investor can live with, dont't over-rationalize it) and give your investor equity for his money. Done!

I am sure many of you can come up with thousands of reasons on why a lawyer should be involved; however the simple approach worked fine for us.

I am going to go against everybody else here and say: "do it"! I would prefer having friends and/or family involved in my venture over some random smuck any day! There is a downside to everything, but come on! Making it sound like mixing f&f with business is a sure recipe for disaster is cow dung.

I second that, some tweaking the recipe and Capistrano does a neat job with PHP sites as well!

Uhhh, it's a blog...? Ring any bells? Used by people to produce content, share ideas, etc...

If this service requires 3 million marketing dollars to take off, maybe indeed it's not that great of a product to begin with...

Having 12 people working on this full time is just as ridiculous as sitting on 3 mil...

3 mil?! For a shitty site like this? My little cousin could build and maintain this during after-school hours!

Bubbly bubbly bubbly....

Can't wait for this bubble of big-nothings to burst and things to get back to (more or less) normal...

Come on, this is just bullshit. How the heck does some spend 26 years and a small fortune on putting together a simple table and buying some balls?

My 14 year old nephew could have build him that table for 10 bucks and some ice cream...

So does your comment...

Playing it a little loose with the term "genius" don't you think?

It sounds more like a desperate trick to bring in irrelevant traffic.

Yeah, well... Guess they have good do something to keep those visitors coming...