rohamg

Snapchat is a product, not yet a business.

me too. except add "needy" after "worthy".

Quora's approach of first-party sourcing "enforced" with social transparency seems to work quite well for many subjects.

Actually, no. In the UK pardons are usually given when there is a presumption of innocence. In Turing's case, he was in fact guilty of a crime according to the laws at the time.

Onion browser on iOS professes tor based anonymity

What about something like http:// tubes.io

You don't see the contradiction in your post? Startups arent fresh air and flowers, the ones that succeed are the ones that power through the tough times for uncertain reward. You need to love the thrill of the risk in and of itself.

i'd be interested in taking em and building some kind of open/transparent/legal something on top of it..

Hence "Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price" :)

it's an achilles heel that tldr's two-sided marketplace relies on one side being busy/hurried enough to sacrifice content for convenience while the other is expected to have available time and generosity of heart to write meaningful summaries.

for me at least, the problem isn't "too much to read", it's having a sense of the quality of an article before deciding to spend the time reading it. hence why i skim HN comments before deciding to click through.

I have set up and run cloudflare on all our sites, very happy with it. Super easy to use and gives me piece of mind.

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fyi all Verizon iPhones are unlocked and compatible with intl GSM networks http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57519467-94/verizon-has-no-...

to be honest I haven't seen this. the lessons are same as always: stay lean, stick to the customer, iterate to market fit. if you do all three of those things your seed investors are quite likely to back you again (if you chose wisely among seed investors!), giving you more time to find that market fit. there's always growth capital available for companies that have found market fit.

so, yes - there are many companies flaming out, but those companies would have flamed out anyway. for good companies with good teams, i'm seeing multiple "seed" rounds which sometimes add up to what would be considered a pretty healthy series a. any of those folks if they're worth their salt will back you again (at the same valuation if need be), as long as you fullfil all other expectations, giving you plenty of time to achieve product market fit, at which you bring in multiple VCs, bid up to high valuations, and lock in the gains for your team, angels + early seed investors.

with the increasing ubiquity of angellist and ramp up of crowd-funding activity, there will be tons of capital for some time to come. is it hard to raise follow-on financing? fuck yeah. who said it had to be easy? was it "easy" to get that first check?

the real story/"news" in all of this is that the combination of readily available risk capital with the dramatic increase in capital efficiency by companies means that many, many successful companies will be created, grown to profitability, and exited without any participation from a non-seed VC.

but if your target audience is the long-tail (especially folks without websites), odds are a good proportion of them won't even know what Stripe is..

you don't use any accounting/bookkeeping software? freshbooks, xero, etc?

i just saw freshplum- if you did helium as a way to <ahem> get freshplum into the air and with quick notoriety.. then i take back everything about being the next paypal - you did exactly the right thing. also i agree with others - bundle your pricing and state one clear %.

very cool.. the Odio family always up to big things :) love the simplicity + the design + the use-case. releasing this as a wordpress plugin would be killer - the entire shopping cart space is very muggle-unfriendly. that said, you're going to have to do alot of volume to make 2% worth your time - payments are coolest when tied to a marketplace, but your diff advantage is to not be a marketplace. you're going to have a tough time recouping the $$ you'll have to spend to gain the mass-market mindshare you'd want to drive that kind of volume. at the same time if the business turns out to be the bees knees, big guys will be quick to copy and out-spend you in marketing, while small guys (eg ribbon, gumroad) can quickly add "embedding" as a feature. i love the product (and the name!!), it's just a tough slog to "be the next PayPal" these days. quick feedback: your "effortless for everyone" is exceptionally well done, i would move it above the more standard 3 column descriptors.

for the record i think Dave is absolutely right it's easier than ever to build a consumer audience (albeit at times a niche one = time to pivot). at the same time, i think Fred's point is focused on the fundraising prospects for each type of business, and in this i think he's right: the "powers that be" (aka the later stage investors who, as Dave rightly points out, sometimes don't know whose tail they're chasing) are demanding enterprise deals right now. in response to Dave's point on the difficulty of scaling sales in enterprise, two trends are making that easier: a) BigCo interest in startups from every angle is very high and b) individual interest by traditional "enterprise types" (mba's, executives, etc) to get in on the startup pie is increasing as well. not necessarily a good thing on the macro level, but paired with a killer product it can make scaling more straightforward.

Framed through Naval's vision of individuals as micro-enterprises, Dave and Fred's perspectives line up pretty nicely together. The line between consumer and enterprise is blurring in more ways than one.

Which, let's be honest, all worked out very well for the early investors.

While I think you're right re:data (got my up vote for that!), Safeway club card is a bad example- 1) it's basket-wide and 2) almost everyone uses it. SW CC is good old fashioned price discrimination, which is designed to capture producer surplus from customers whose willingness to pay is greater than the market price. Many other examples incl. airline tickets: the extra charge for first or for a flexible ticket isn't because it costs that much to keep your spot flexible in their model, it's simply to price discriminate and be able to charge as high as the market will pay. Nothing wrong with it, but the key difference is that the sale itself does matter.

fascinating breakdown, thanks for crunching the numbers Dave. a few new additions to my rss reader are in order.

i'd also like to see which articles are returned to most often (ie used essentially as references), so repeat visitors. this could also be a measure of quality. i bet PG would win here hands down.

the lookmark blog post links to "datagenics" (typo)

"It is not really about monetization. It’s about engaging your users and giving them ways to advance in game play, measure their progress and add an extra layer of fun into the game."

The author nails it right here but is wrong IMHO about the % of games that can handle virtual currencies gracefully.

Sometimes I just want to enjoy a good game without being herded repeatedly with a cattle-prod into purchases i don't want to make.

Too often, in-app monetization is a hack-job that takes away from the gameplay experience. One reason why the vast majority of "hardcore" games are pre-paid.

Our consumerist obsession with free has hobbled our producers' ability to create quality. I get excited about the new crop of companies helping gamedevs pay the bills without nickel and diming their players to death. I hope they will lead to a golden age for quality social games.

Panacea is when more artists can give more music away and still profit. Freemium based on consumption, or increased reliance on alternative revenue channels. Either way, IMHO the technology exists today to disaggregate the middlemen in music, lower the price point for customers, and still net profit to artists. In particular, I believe almost every function of a label can be crowd sourced or productized. Vested interests are what have gotten in the way.

An escrow account? :)

It was a great game!

Another great link for context: http://seoulspace.co.kr/2012/09/03/understanding-gangnam-sty...

But, especially at an early stage, the rate at which equity can enter your name is determined partially by the name itself.