mkull

Google Checkout is terrible for pre-orders and things that do not ship within 5-7 days of authorization of card. I would definitely recommend NOT using Google Checkout for this type of business model, some research might have saved you the frustration.

I believe there might also be an issue with the legality of charging actually charging for the purchase prior to shipment. Most merchants will typically authorize the card, and then issue the capture transaction once a tracking number is availability.

This then will lead you to to the next issue that will be especially painful to deal with using Google Checkout: bad authorizations.

We have had scenarios where we authorized a card on a Tuesday, found out the item was backordered for a week and thus did not ship the item and attemp to issue the capture transaction until 8 days later.

With Google Checkout, a re-auth is needed after 7 days. Unfortunately you do not find out the re-auth failed until AFTER you have shipped the items (and then attempted to capture funds on the order). You are then out of luck on capturing any funds if you cannot contact the customer and get another form of payment.

Happy to discuss this further if you would like some advice.

wrong.. if someone steals the card number, the merchant who accepts the fraudulent transaction is on the hook. Not AMEX

Having followed news.ycomb since launch I wanted to share this little nugget, even though I suspect I might catch some flak for this not being the most topical piece, hopefully some of you will be entertained ;)

We launched November 07, 100% bootstrapped by myself and two co-founders. Finally getting the resources in place to be able to do fun things like this. Not sure if it was worthwhile monetarily yet but we had a lot of fun in the office making it!

Or searchyc could simply ignore robots.txt

So can the cat come out of the bag yet? What was the real acquisition price of reddit?

Thanks, and now I see the TechCrunch Article and all is clear... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/26/twitter-and-y-combinato...

So I can't be the only one, what's an RFS?

+1 for paying attention to international customers

For our ecommerce startup, we did nothing as far as internationalization goes other then offering to ship our product outside of the US and Canada. We were amazed at the response we got and it was one of the factors that helped us get cash flow positive very quickly

terrible.. i gave up after the second ad interrupted him mid-sentence.

Notehall is one of the few web startups I have seen on the show. What are thoughts on the valuations the Sharks throw out? Thoughts on the deal they got?

No ecommerce on the list?

Wharton is pretty well known

Philadelphia, DreamIT is based here and has gotten a lot of local support

completely unrelated article from 2006

Twitter is saying it is a fire -

tjeastmond: Confirmed RT @sfltv: Big power outage at Fisher Plaza in #Seattle due to fire. Teleport and data centers on site are out. #authorize.net

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=authorize.net

Ugg, due to the holiday this is a very slow day for us so it is probably one of the best days of the year for this to happen but it sucks nonetheless

You posted JUST too soon... 10 minutes ago I received:

------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hello,

We have experienced an interruption in power to a portion of our Dallas-Fort Worth data center facility. Power has been restored and our DC engineers are working on devices that need to be manually brought back online as quickly as possible. Further updates will be made as soon as new information is made available. Please monitor our MyRackspace customer portal as this is the quickest way we can get updates out to you.

Sincerely,

Rackspace

oldddddddd

Does the Kiva system work with garments (hanging merchandise)?

I know.. I spent a non-insignificant amount of time looking/hoping for the 'next page' link

we used thawte, but wish we used verisign because they have a cooler 'secured by' icon ;p

seriously

Taking a glance at the partners / speakers / advisors, there are some seriously smart and successful people in there http://dreamitventures.com/node/2

I think the YC crowd is hating way too quickly, there is plenty of room for more then one seed stage YC style fund... especially on the east coast now that YC is full-time in Palo Alto.

my gut is that you make him a co-founder with a strict (and very clear-get lawyer help!) vesting schedule

he also needs to have skin in the game, which means a monetary investment if you have invested monetarily, and he needs to be full-time if you are full-time (as I hope you are!)

I've been on 2 dedicated servers with Rackspace for a year now and have no complaints, there service has been very good thus far and their rates were very competitive.

Maybe I missed it, but what was the startup?

I'm going to go against some of the other comments here say go for it.

The dicey part is how much equity they get, do they get paid dividends, do they only get anything back if you sell, etc. I am curious to see what others say as far as options and advice go in that respect.

My startup was in a similar situation (although it was a close friend who was investing, not a family member). Our situation was different, as they were expected to come on as a fulltime member of the team as well, but that never panned out (they couldn't put the time in due to other commitments).

So now it's dicey because the percentage given to them was based on $$$ investment + an expectation of day-to-day involvement (which never happened). So now its hard to quantify what their actual ownership is.

So I would advise to make it very cut and dry, and put it in ink (by a lawyer). An example of the chop-up (in layman's terms) could be they get say 7% of ownership for 25k with no other expectations from them other then a check. They get paid if you get sold / acquired or if someone buys their share otherwise they get nothing (no yearly dividends / bonus or profit sharing etc).

I disagree, I thoroughly enjoy Seth Godin's posts more so then the average comment or post here on HN. His posts are short, but to the point and memorable.

Hey Dave just adding what I sent to you by email for posterity...

http://www.ecommerce-blog.org/ http://www.varien.com/blog/ http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/webtogs-diary-of... http://www.seomoz.org/blog/17-new-rules-for-successful-ecomm...

I'd rather see a daring fireball link with some commentary then a direct link to a pdf

ahh found it, scrolling halfway down the page:

"What We Do

MutatioMundus does seed funding for startups that are going to radically change the world in a positive way. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It will pay your expenses, research and development, and prototype development while you’re getting started."

very interesting, this needs to be more obvious!