tom

Presently on my fifth startup. Next time I think I might give this a try - though maybe not 48 hours - maybe a hundred. I am looking forward to checking out the live site whenever those 225 minutes are finally up. Crazy to think of launch time in minutes ...

Anyway, the only change I'd make is to immediately send out the first lesson. By tomorrow, I'll have forgotten what it was I wanted to learn.

Also, I know this is nit picking, but brainbankhq.com is a not a great domain IMHO. Head Quarters? Is that a pun? How about brainbanklearning.com or brainbankcourses.com ... something that's a bit more about what it is. What it isn't is a Head Quarters.

Great job so far though.

I'll avoid the "Boston stinks because ... " part and just tell you about a few things that rock here.

1. If you're old enough to sit in a bar (you are, but for others reading this), go to Chez Henri (http://www.chezhenri.com/). Get a cubano (they go great with a Manhattan btw). I've been to Miami (never Cuba though) and never had one as good as the bar menu one at Chez Henri. If you don't eat meat, get the veggie one, still amazing, but not quite as.

2. The Kendall and Brattle Theatres. Awesome REAL movie theatres. Great for dates or just getting away from the next, big sequel of crap.

3. Getting gifts for the folks back home? For some you just have to get Harvard / MIT clothing (it's just a fact), but for those who are a bit cooler, or not parents, grandparents - go to Joi de Vivre on Mass Ave just south of Porter (http://www.joiedevivre.net/). A store where you, as a grown up, will actually want to play with stuff.

4. Get some rockin pizza at Cambidge1. I haven't been to the new one by Fenway, but the one in Havard Square rocks hard. The lines during weekend prime time don't though - so you've been warned. Their pizza is way better than their website (http://cambridge1.us/).

5. Those ten books in your queue not enough? Challenge yourself by reading something in another language. Schoenhofs is an amazing resource.

And then pretty much everything everyone else said. Have fun. Cambridge is a great place to be in the Summer (Winter, not so much ...)

Margins are not huge for this sort of business. This am on NPR they were talking with a baker who said that his flour costs had tripled in the past year, his egg costs had doubled, and all of his supplies now had "fuel surcharges" tacked on. While margins might have been comfortable in the past, they certainly aren't now. These folks are between a rock and a hard place and have had to absorb much of these costs in their margins.

People think you have to be crazy to start a start-up these days. No even close, but you would have to be crazy to start a bakery now!

Building on what Brian said.

A few more characteristics of a start-up: 1. Technology (often web based) plays the key role in the interaction between the company and it's clients / users. 2. The present market either doesn't exist, or functions in a fundamentally different way before / outside of the startup. 3. The start-up is not as geographically limitted as the new business. That's not to say that a start-up can't be location specific, but if it is, it should be a platform that can be applied to other locations.

And a few characteristics of a new business: 1. A new business, like a say a bakery, is another instance of a proven business that addresses the market in the accepted, historical way. There are many bakeries, they are fundamentally no different from each other. In fact, it's likely one of the oldest professions still still actively being pursued. Each takes raw ingredients and makes baked goods out of them. Each then try to sell them for more than their costs. 2. New businesses are often very location specific and often rely heavily on face to face interaction, or local phone/email interaction to complete transactions. 3. New businesses often rely on physical goods or services for the basis of their offering, where with start-ups technology is often the basis for the interaction.

Selling your new-businesses good via an online store, does not automatically make your new-business a start-up. In the case of the t-shirt entrepenuer and the baker, they are most certainly not start-ups, but just new-businesses trying to do business online.

In short, a start-up is a new business, but a new business is not necessarily a start-up.

Facing South (towards Rt 12), standing at the highest point overlooking Silver Lake in Barnard - I can get 1 bar with my iPhone - barely. Yes, AT&T's coverage is essentially non-existent in VT. When I'm up there though, this is a positive ...

I know we've seriously beaten this dead horse, but where is the line between "new business" and "start-up" these days. It would seem to me that everything is being called a "start-up", when in fact, many are just new businesses. I would not call either the bakery or the t-shirt company a start-up, as they are not using technology to take a novel approach to an existing market (or create a new market), nor is the technology really that central to what they are trying to do. One is hoping to set up an online store (hard in the "specialty / gourmet" food world) and the other is trying to market a t-shirt line. These are new businesses, not start-ups (by my definition).

The RentingYourHome guy is definitely a start-up and I feel for him as he seems to be hitting all the standard challenges (too little cash, co-founder leaving, trouble getting/keeping customers). This actually seems like it could be a compelling service, but the actual property owners are a hard group to reach (ie: they are not all farting around online all day) and convincing them that they can do it all online feels like a very, very tough task.

A new baby (especially the first) is an interesting combination of 1. dang I have no time, and 2. I best get working so I can afford to but this little one through school!

Three weeks old today. Wowzers.

All of the skills you mention are valuable if you can find someone with "seasoned startup experience". They're not growing on trees (last I looked from my perch). A couple of questions for you to think about.

Do you have the experience in the space you are trying to attack? If not, you best be looking for someone, either technical or not, who does, who can speak to the market, and investors about the market (or angels FROM the market). Also, what's your next milestone? Is it your first paying customer, or is it a demo that will not be launch ready? What will his/her first milestone be? Is there enough work at present to keep a biz person busy in exchange for the equity? There will ALWAYS be enough todo's on the list of the developers... In short, are you sure you're ready for a non-technical founder?

BTW: my cofounder is non-technical (I'm sure he'd love to see me describe him as such). I asked him aboard before I'd written even a hundred lines of code. Why? Because he knows the market well and has professional experience / knowledge that I, or likely any other hacker, couldn't hope to pick up in any reasonable amount of time. If that's what you need - then get looking ... they are worth their weight in gold and very, very hard to find!

There's no free lunch - especially when Apple and AT&T are the restauranteurs and servers. But, for some the incremental cost is easy to forget because they are getting such a "deal" on the hardware. IMHO the $20 all you can eat was a steal - I was already paying $44 a month for BB service and web browser that did more to tick me off then it ever did to make me happy. But the iPhone 3G at $35 (now that I've been trained to love to txt folks when I used to just email or pin) is just not. Though I'm sure they'll still sell a cubic bucketload.

Agreed. If you don't mind having another window open, Safari's developer menu is pretty powerful.

Amen. Nothing wrong with taking a piece of Google's pie. If folks really want to use Yahoo, set your home page to Yahoo and ignore the search box. Problem solved.

An interesting take on the age old "person can do this" and "company wants to pay someone to do that" how do we unite the two parties problem. It'll be fun to see how the "fuzzy" criteria can help improve matches with some real, more random (ie: not just Biz school folks) user profiles.

Finally, I'm sure they worked hard to get the LinkedIn stuff to work, but there it is again - another site asking for my user and pw ... though I do like that they have a nice note about their privacy policy and how they'll use your credentials. Still, what happens when I update my LinkedIn account? Are they storing user/pw and syncing? Somehow I doubt it. Will they prompt me regularly to update/sync?

But you're not paying $200 less, you're just redistributing your payments over time.

A kid in high school? Try getting things done with a 3 week old! I think the swing should get Founder status with the amount of time the little one spends swinging side to side cooing while I'm sitting next to him hacking.

And while I agree with many or Aaron's and James' points, the largest reason most folks don't start startups - guts. They don't have the guts to come up with an idea, they don't have the guts to build it, they don't have the guts to follow through. And at the core, they don't have the guts to forsake all others for their startup. Not that a lack of these "guts" is any way a deficiency, as really, different strokes for different folks, but it really comes down to guts.

Somehow in the hoopla (or was it that I was actually working while the world stopped for Steve?), I missed the in-store activation requirement. One of the best things about my phone was peeling it open at home, sitting with my mac, and getting it all setup. Having to open the package and wait for someone to do it for me, is a HUGE step backwards. I understand that this is how AT&T makes sure they're getting their cut, but still am disappointed by this step back. But, on the bright side, used iPhones may hold a little value after all. I can dream can't I?

BTW: Much of my surfing of HN is done on the iPhone. Brilliant device when you need your fix and aren't at the keyboard (though I do make a good bit more typos when commenting from it).

Firefox has Firebug. It is such a timesaver for me, I want to hug the developers on a daily basis (well, maybe just shake their hands). But for most of my actual browsing, Safari it is. It just feels faster on my machine...

Simple idea and an apparently nice implementation. It's interesting that they plan to sell to HR folks when their site will undoubtedly make some HR folks lives much harder. This feels like a total "why did this take so long?" site. Nice job.

I got the message and was asked if I wanted to forge ahead anyway. So that worked for me. Glad to hear you're working on Safari 3 compatibility. For many new Apple owners, Safari is it.

Great news for these guys. Always nice to see a totally new take on an old idea that actually works. Kudos. And Kudos on being close to profitability - no small feet!

Ahhh, a sales guy. :) Bit of a brain dump here, but I've been on both ends of this - the hiring end, and the sales guy end (and the tech dev end - wait, can you be on three ends?)

Like any sales jobs, have numbers. Show what you did, where and why it's relevant. Don't be too salesy in the interview. Show they why you are committed to THIS opportunity, not that you could sell ice to well, folks who live in cold places. Show that you've done your homework on their market. Show them why you're more than a hired gun. Be ready to pitch whatever they throw at you. Know their competitors dead. Seriously, do all your homework. Also, building on what was said before, it doesn't hurt to familiarize yourself with the founders / head folk's previous work lives. Google is your friend.

Be honest with the co and yourself. Self select who you interview with make sure its where you want to be. Large corporate jobs can bounce back from bad hire easier that a small co. Don't snowjob them, be honest, and make sure its a good fit. If so, work as hard as you can to get the job, and bust arse like never before once you do!

While a one pager will work for some very, very small sites, there a compelling reasons not to do this. People have been trained to look for navigation cues such as Contact Us, About Us, What's New, and Home. These are standard becasuse they work, are easy to understand, and give the user LESS content to sift through. The example site is really missing the boat usability wise. Also, it doesn't feel right to NOT have the standard navigational options. It leaves me, the user wondering what I am missing.

Well, the PS2 is cheap and approachable. The games are generally no longer $40 and $50 and good games can be had for under $20. The PS3 and 360 are still very expensive machines. Not just in initial outlay, but in keeping up with the Joneses. At $50 or $60 for every new game, that sure adds up fast. Let's not forget, that $400 is a lot of money to a lot of people.

Interestingly, the one thing that really jumped out at me from the first installment was the fact that YC has 22 groups this summer. Wowzers - that's a lotta people. Agree with the first commenter at G&M - give us an RSS feed though ... The odds of me remembering this, despite it being something I'd like to read, are low to say the least.

Dang, did I end up on "tech gadget news" again? I totally meant to to Hacker News. I am not good at the internets ...

What? Twitter went down? I'd demand a refund immediately ...

Hmm, well I wouldn't call it hatred ... at least not out loud. The thing is, for these fans, for Sports fans in the US there generally are places to do this sort of thing. Most of it happens via blogs or blog-like sites (http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/, http://www.bostondirtdogs.com/). I think that sort of format works well for this (threaded comments or not). Most of the Red Sox / Yankees stuff is "around the water cooler" talk. There's no challenge finding discussion (save maybe finding a Yankees fan around here, but I'm not sure I want to talk to Yankees fans about this rivalry). Also, you really need to clean up your navigation. There are 5 horizontal levels of navigation and that's a lot of work to try to find what I'm looking for. You might be trying to do too much. Also, the "passion room" might have different connotations here than you expect...

Ok, honest review coming. No hard feelings.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but what's the "start-up" part of this. This looks and feels like another comparator, this time with micro-communities built around it. A neat spin on an old idea maybe, but I'm not sure what benefit I get from joining. I hail from a big time "rival" area - Boston. I do not like the Yankees. Seriously, I think it's coded in my being to not like them. But, what's in it for me? Is there a pain that your soothing? I'm not seeing the point. And yes, the inconsistent margins bother me. I'd fix that no matter what. Your menu, header and body should be a consistent width.

Have you folks looked at what's actually available with the AppleTV for rent? Not a strong selection either - and they're hitting you every time you want to rent a movie or buy a TV show. For a series, that really adds up. I think the all you can eat, one time fee for this additional point of consumption is great for prior members. I for one am happy to add it alongside our Tivo and AppleTV.

This is a neat little app. Not really ground-breaking, but hey, that's not a pre-requisite for success. That said, I think this is just a web base comparator, not a startup. I must be missing something, but what pain point are you soothing? How is this new? The fact that you have categories? Are you hoping to take all the results data and try to pull something useful out of it? Or is this just a "hey, let's learn rails and make a facebook app" type thing?