zkinion

very straight to the point blog post, but i do like the quote:

"I promise not to keep ideas in my head, unfulfilled and full of promise - not to let these vague outlines of future actions give me false confidence and security in the abstract. Instead I will execute them quickly and faithfully so that I am again on the brink of the unknown, hoping that these ideas were not the last that would ever come to me from God knows where."

I see nothing wrong with this. You'd be surprised at some of the stuff startups have to do to get out there and get initial traction, not limited to spam and "faking it till you make it".

The only thing that surprises me is that they were putting up fake reviews so late into the game. The benefits weren't that great at that point, and the risks at least mediocre. It just looks like laziness, if anything. Maybe they wanted to artificially stimulate some growth prior to that new funding round and possibly trying to get acquired, and fake reviews are just one of many methods used at once.

Hmmmm, I guess I wasn't posting to news.yc standards. My apologies.

My point was that I didn't see it destroying cisco/avaya any time soon, due to the nature of enterprise software and the sales distribution channel.

Linux is still not the ideal desktop replacement, even today. It has its place on the server rack, thats for sure, but I don't see it replacing windows any time soon for all uses. Something else might.

Asterisk isn't all that special. I used it extensively a few years back with my last business. Its still a bitch to use and get going right, especially for businesses with crappy IT going for them.

It goes back to that PG quote, that went something like: "Somebody can outhack an oracle database and make something comparable in open source, but can't out sell an oracle sales man..." It was basically that these enterprize software companies (pbx certainly is enterprize software), are used to buying terrible stuff for too much money.

sent

Don't fund with credit cards unless you absolutely have to. The interest rates on those are often too high for any legitimate business to make enough to sustain payments once the "teaser" rate is gone.

Excellent read. I think there is something in the air or water in the bay area that has been poisoning people into making startups that have very little chance of ever actually making any money.

Having a good business model does not mean you have to write out a 100 page business plan and have miles of spreadsheets. Just figure out a way to make money. It is even better if you design your startup to both get money AND user traction.

Tossing adsense onto your main page does not normally cut it.

With my startup, I'm using a low cost subscription based model for an online poker site, plus I am upselling microphones/headsets for the voice chat functionality that is being added to the application. The software is still in beta, but is actually working. I also have years of experience in analyzing, getting, and converting traffic.

-Zak

Yeah, I was going to use it for my online gambling (legal) site, and found the dynamic IP problem to be the real decision maker for me. I use smartfox server as a socket server, and renewing a license with a new ip address takes 24 to 48 hours, which means death to an online gaming site using social networking.

The static IPs make it possible to use AWS now. I can finally add voice chat functionality because of the power behind the large and extra large instances.

This is a very nice article; I was surprised.

Too many people out there are depending on some crazy stuff to happen.

Yes, google adsense depends on a lot of things. Its not always the best way to monetize a site at all. The payouts are just really low unless you can bring good traffic to good key words channels.

There's alot of companies out there now just building a site together in rails, and expecting to monetize fully on adsense...

Adsense isn't what it used to be. There are still people out there doing well on it. Just be methodical with your traffic. Continually improve it and learn to understand it.

Isn't this the same thing as jumpbox?

This is getting out of hand.

People are reaching into the web 2.0 hat, drawing out some features or another niche they can build a "social networking site" around.

I understand spending a decent amount of time on YC news, but after a while, isn't there other work that needs doing, like building/running an actual startup instead of reading about others'?

I am extremely adept and comfortable with PHP. I've been using it for years. I'm learning python, but I'm still deciding if I'll need to learn rails or not. Is the time it'd take me to learn rails, really saving me time in the long run? I can do pretty much anything in PHP that could be done in rails. I'll still look into it though. I'm not one to jump on a band wagon, but masses of people don't move themselves by just themselves... not all the time.

An un-holy amount will charge out the ass. Many have few clients, so their business model depends on charging each client alot, almost scamming them.

Web design is not rocket science. With all the tools and stuff available to designers today, there is no reason the "clothes" of a site should ever go over a few ,000'.

Don't pay 20-30k. Leave that for big/unsophisticated companies.

p.s. A lot of designers do suck. With developers, many can get the task done "eventually", but with designers, many can't get what you want... ever.

BAN THIS SPAMMER!!!! ;)

I'm all for it. I'm in the SF area until Sunday.

During the day is the best time, probably Friday or Saturday. Lets make it then. I have no idea where a good meet up place is, so someone familiar with the area should choose.

also, email me at zkinion@gmail.com if anybody wants to have a cup of coffee/hang out with me during the day.

The main way to do this involves hacking/cracking firmware. Go onto p2p and you'll find ready made images for a variety of phones. However, it is a painful process for each phone, and phone model type. You're basically working on many to get one, instead of working on one for many.

Is this the same group of people that I met at startup school, who were showing their stuff to Mitch Kapor, or a whole other group of people working on the same thing?

Is this a free-411 service for euroland/oceana? Is that why the name is strange/hard to pronounce-to-type? That might be a viable startup.

How do I reach your website through my cell phone? Maufait.com?

Yes, this very much confirms my theory that startups must do unorthidox methods to gain traffic, especially when the users of the site impact other users.

spock is worthless without other users on spock. What is a phone book/directory without people? If they can break through the chicken or egg problem that many others have faced in the past, they'll be very successful because that same problem will arise as a barrier of entry to competitors.

Having competitions, paying users, or even sending spam are all viable methods to getting initial traffic for a site.

is it just me/my browser/whatever, but all those links to his success series seem to load right to his latest blog posting...

I've tried in safari/opera/firefox. All are redirecting to his mainpage. grrrrrrrrrr time to break out the ole IE for one last attempt.

You might get alot greater response with some kind of presentation/video/plan on what you actually want to accomplish.

"business-type" and having a Jobs to match against a Woz are two completely different things.

Business type qualities can be shared across several non-business types easily. When you see startups without the business type succeeding, its because it is there amongst all of the co-founders, inside of them.

I knew it was only a matter of time before somebody tries to make a "shell" that allows one at least semi-functionality across several different social networking/blogging sites.

It'll be successful as long as they can get a decent operating ability [can post as well as read "updates"], with out quickly being blocked by the sites themselves. Once the servers are kept away from the social networking sites, they must continually get new blocks of IP addresses to leach out the content, which really isn't all that hard.

(There's no magical javascript that will let the user's browser load what part of those site that you want. Normally the server goes in on the back end and acts like a proxy, spitting out content to a different interface. I always thought this approach wouldn't work for long without the social networking sites eventually blocking the servers, but then again, look at how meebo did it with all the messaging clients, and didn't get blocked.)

This is based off of the idea that many people will be members of several social networking sites at once. This notion of "facebook will have more users than myspace" doesn't mean that the users are completely different people. The majority of the users will be on both. I myself have a facebook and a myspace. Most of my friends just stay on myspace, so I find myself logging into both sites all the time.

I bet this will work. :)

to...?

Business and VC funding are not American Idol. There's almost always a chance to keep a door open to future prospects, upon failure, thus gaining an ever growing list of contacts and resources. This is part of "follow up". Unless the entrepreneur is dead or in jail, the door can be open.

Some of the stuff he says isn't so bad. It's good to just go out and create something. Too many people do seem to rely on YC.

However, the money YC gives is really insignificant. I doubt many people even applied for the money at all. Its really more about the network and mesh of people you get with it. Anybody can work and save up 6k, its not that hard.

I didn't apply because I want to be in the San Fran. network isntead of the cambridge area. If this round was in the bay area, then I would have applied, and been accepted :).

Sweet jesus thats nasty.

I suppose if you go step by step its not that hard. Better to have it all ready and leave them looking for stuff to ask for instead of trying to get it all really fast in a panic.

Why don't you "flesh" it out here? Maybe it'll help solidify your idea in your mind, or more than likely, evolve it.

Just throw it out there, even if it sounds stupid in your own mind.