yubrew

How about reverse vesting instead of normal vesting? This may alleviate some of the tax consequences of someone that wants to leave early.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/07/17.html

There is a Boston Start-up Meetup Group that meets every month. The focus is on anything software/webapp. http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-startup-meetup/

One personal tip, you come off as an arrogant prick because of your "I am holier than thou" statements. These kind of behaviors will drastically reduce the amount of people that will want to work with you or help you.

I work with MDs and PhDs on a daily basis, analyzing their technologies for their start up companies. By far, I am much more willing to put in extra hours for friendly people than those that cram down my throat how much better they are than me.

So you've shown that you have some (impressive) academic achievements, but have you had any business success? Just because you're book smart doesn't mean you will have a successful start up.

Many times people think that they can transfer great success from one domain into other domain. Michael Jordan and his short baseball stint is the first thing that comes to mind.

I strongly disagree with this article. Models like CPC/CPM and context based advertising will not work for social networking sites.

Even contextual ads are a pretty recent phenomenon that are still evolving. Web 2.0 has mainly been fueled by the evolution of advertising from general, non-targeted ads to more targeted advertising (behavioral advertising, search advertising via Overture, contextual advertising via AdSense). Web 2.0 sites can make good money if they have targeted content and a good amount of pageviews.

Now we have these large, sticky social networking sites that do not have targeted content, but very high social value and are tightly integrated with people's lives. The models for monetizing targeted content just don't work for sites like Facebook. There needs to be a new shift in advertising that has not yet come about. I'm not talking about gimmicks like virtual products and gifts, but something inherently even more valuable. Marketing that actually alerts people to things/services they _want_ to know about. We're still a long way from that, but the value available from these sites allow us to take a large leap towards this goal.

If your site gets big, ask someone to host it for you (30boxes hosted one of the most popular apps). You can sell it to RockYou or Slide if it gets too popular. IMO, not a real concern, and when you reach this point, then you will think of some solution.

For now, worry about the real issue: "What is a problem that I can relate to and solve for Facebook users?"

If the team has no defensible advantage, then maybe it's not such a great idea after all.

There is this great myth that a marketer is critical for start ups. However, all the marketing you need for web apps is to verify that there is a serious problem that you can solve/alleviate. If you build something truly useful with a specific group in mind, then marketing will be easy. When people's hair is on fire, and you're the only one with a fire extinguisher, it's not going to be a hard sell. IMO, most hackers have trouble identifying and solving a worthwhile problem.

For your specific application, social networking for climbers, is there really that much of an interest? Is this something that climbers want? Will you be able to compete with Facebook?

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I had a good experience at the devHouse Boston event last weekend, which was my first time at one of these events. It was ~30 people in the Boston area that got together on different 1-day projects. There were a lot of different skillsets in the room, and it was great to immediately get the feedback of more experienced people when problems came up. More personally, I now have a better understanding of skills I need to further develop to be a web app hacker. I also spoke with a couple hackers that I may work with later.

If you're in the Boston area, I may help organize a monthly devHouse event, depending on the level of interest. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30824

I went to a devHouse event last weekend, and it was fun. It was so fun that I wanted to look up when the next one was. To my dismay, I found that there are no regularly scheduled events similar to SuperHappyDevHouse in SF.

The idea is like a 10am-9pm hackathon, where you meet up, do a 1 day project, present finished projects. I think this is a good way to meet like minded people, and improve your hacking skills.

I'm trying to get a sense of how much interest there might be from news.YC'ers for something like this. Any suggestions, comments, ideas on how to set up would be greatly appreciated. If you might be interested in coming, or helping to organize such an event, let me know.

In GoogleReader, the article shown is different from the article link on TC. The GoogleReader headline states "Google To Acquire Grand Central For $50-75 million"

"E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited," Dr. Hogan said.

"hI KATHY i am sending u the assignmnet again," one student wrote to her recently. "i had sent you the assignment earlier but i didnt get a respond. If u get this assgnment could u please respond . thanking u for ur cooperation."

__Most of her students are midcareer professionals in high-tech industries,__ Ms. Keenan said.

fluther is such a hard name to say. http://www.grabagooddomain.com/ (taken from davidw's comment)

There's a free gifts facebook app, so no more money from buying gifts.

Advertising is most definitely the holy grail for social networking sites. Just because no one has done it yet doesn't mean it can't be done.

For start ups, I would much rather see someone with a track record with finished projects. Programs, code, apps, open source contributions, references from people you've worked with are all the things I look for as far as skills.

A blog is nice, because in an interview process, I only really get to know you for like 1 hour tops. In a blog, I can better understand your values, your interests, and what you've done.

Resumes have their place, if you have hundreds of potential candidates to go through. If you are a good candidate, you should have pages and pages worth of experiences, and it's now a matter of picking the experiences relevant to the task.

I like that attitude. Any way I can contact you? My e-mail is in my profile.

Early hiring is very important. I would evaluate you like a potential cofounder, and start you on a summer project to see how you do. IMO, from the founder's side, it is a small bet to place for a potentially large gain if things work out.

What kind of experience are you looking to get out of it? What skills you got, and where are you located?

A lot of people here are starting web based businesses, but may not understand the right numbers to look at. This article is like Webonomics 101.

My implication was that nearly all (99%) of their multi-billion dollar revenues and profits come from advertising, and that there is still plenty of room to innovate in the realm of contextual and behavioral advertising.

Google's massive revenues are due to innovations with online advertising, not with providing good web services. And this will most likely not change.

When you sign up for AdWords, you can decide to display your ads on content sites. It's literally a box that you uncheck, and then you are on google.com search only.

Purchasing AdWords and optimizing it is a science in and of itself. goodkeywords.com provides a useful tool for researching different potential key words. Then you can use G's sandbox or the Overture key word pricing to project ROI. You want to shoot for at least a 1% conversion rate on the AdWords advertising.

I have been out of this area for a couple months, but send me an e-mail if you have other general questions. Maybe I can help out.

It seems like your gut is telling you not to do it, and I agree.

Run. Run far away from this guy.

Now for the rational explanation: What is he offering besides money? It's nice that he is willing to give you money, but does he have any contacts or experience or skills that might put you in a better position? Doing something just because you are cash strapped is a horrible idea.

There was a good convo here a while back for lawyers with software start up experience: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16419 pg uses WSPR in SF and Goodwin Procter in MA.

it cost me $4 for a $30 ticket. That's a service fee of ~13% for an automated process!

An older article. It posts a contrarian view to what the ideal manager should be. In chaotic, rapidly developing environments, individual brilliance is what can make or break a company. In more mature markets, "operational efficiency is crucial and individual brilliance takes a backseat to the importance of building cohesive teams."

Is this your site? You may also want to check out ParagonLake.com

I spoke to one of the cofounders last week, and they were listed in BusinessWeek as one of the 'Top 25 Entrepreneurs' to look out for. Mass customization is definitely a space where the technology is there, but no one seems to have really implemented it successfully outside of jewelry.

Too much clutter. I would rather them drop all the glossy stuff and give me the content I crave. All the pictures I pretty much block out because they remind me of advertising.

That's why I much prefer news.YC and reddit format to NYT; less annoyances.

^ Agreed. Most businesses determine their worth from net present value, comparable sales, or capitalization rate based on net operating income.

A problem with these web start ups is that they often don't have substantial income, and often do not have comparable sales. Two years ago, who honestly thought that $500mm for MySpace turned out to be a bargain?

This is ridiculous. Instead of increasing taxes, how about actually controlling your spending? So many people seem to be under the illusion that more money will help solve problems with their spending habits.

in this respect, our public officials really are representing us. "About 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year." http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/SavingandDebt/P70581.asp

here's an article of how rw/w envisions ask.com developing an adsense competitor: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_future_of_ask.php

Here are the ways you can compete in serving ads: -Good advertiser campaign management and bidding tools.

-Good publisher management and reporting tools.

-Great contextual ad matching technology.

-Transparency.

-High paying advertisers.

-A way to stop click fraud.

-Get top publishers

-Further develop their "hybrid" text ads. meaning having relevant images packaged with text ads.

really interesting thought.

read/write/web had something similar to this idea, about an open source ad serving solution. if 62% of their advertising revenue is coming from 3rd party advertisers, and they're really taking 40-60% of revenues, i see great potential for someone (microsoft, yahoo, start up with a lot of press) to take over.

one quick idea is to state the portion you are taking, much like how e-bay lists how much they are taking from listings. and give publishers statistics on the types of ads served, and click through rates. you could really empower content creators this way.

i would be really interested in this type of project. the first thing i think would be to develop a contextual ad server, and eliminates click fraud. any other takers?