thomasknoll

I love it when startups share. Thanks joshuarudd. =)

"why?"

IIRC there are already 70(?) million WP sites, with 45(?) million not hosted on wordpress.com. I wouldn't be surprised if this built in git deployment makes that number grow much more quickly. It sounds like a lot of people already treat WP like a tech stack. So, this could basically be treated like heroku.

I understand the concern, but I don't think the intention of the site is to connect you with "your advisor" but rather provide manageable access to advice, from willing participants.

I have used it, on both ends of the service.

One of those tools where it works well for its intended purpose, but also has additional unintended utility. =)

Still the most under-discussed aspect of launching a new startup: getting the founding team right. Happy to see this network grow... slowly and healthy.

remember the delicious

hint: there are over 3000 pages launched via launchrock, but not all of them are startups.

Agree that endorsements are extremely valuable in a professional network. And, making it much easier to weigh in on endorsing someone should increase this activity. I also might not be willing to endorse every aspect of a person, (so would be unwilling to write out a paragraph of endorsing them), but I would be willing to endorse the one aspect of their professionalism I am willing to put my own name behind.

And, by 'design' I assume you mean the entire user experience, not just the pixels?

Definitely excited to see him have this opportunity to explore a new format. I've had the great honor of being able to be in some videos with him, and his storytelling blows me away.

I originally posted this comment on the blog post, but since it isn't going through, I'll add it here:

Sorry, but I don’t have any juicy arguments for you. I agree with most of the concerns you raised here. It would be foolish for any startup to build their business in the way you described in the hotel example. In my understanding of the suggestions put forward by those exploring the lean startup methodology, the point is to be lean, not starving.

If you have a repeatable sales model, based on actual customer activity, hell yeah… go for broke. It doesn’t make any sense to just grow a little bit. On the other end of the equation, it doesn’t make much sense to front load your sales and marketing team with a budget of $100million based on assumptions which don’t have customer actions to back it up.

All that to say, I don’t understand the point of leanstartup methodology as being cheap for the sake of being cheap. But rather, not dumping money and resources into aspects of the business which haven’t been verified by actual paying customers.

I am very happy to see more companies sharing stories about pivoting in response to customer behavior and feedback. Especially when they are moving closer to real pain.