zkinion

IP agreements are the least of your worries. They don't matter that much and are really really hard to enforce. Basically it matters if you steal some kind of trade secret of a lot of existing clients/contacts.

Not having enough time to properly do your startup should be your main concern.

C-corp is fine, don't worry about it.

Resident agent == US citizen or service. Any other officers/owners can be offshore.

Yeah, the largest problems with dating sites today is the "creepy" guy issue, and the problem that marginally attractive girls are in the minority, and get literally bombarded by guys. Hopefully, this can eliminate these problems with the bidding system. Women are still typically the choosers in modern socity, and this lets them have more filtering.

All they need to do now is get past the hurdle of locality. Okcupid and plentyoffish haven't even done that really, outside of california or really condensed areas. I'd be using it right now if it had more women in Vegas. Once that milestone is gone, amazing growth can begin.

Mr. Forman seemed like a nice guy when I met him at the startupschool reception. I wish them the best of luck.

Nice. It was fun hanging out with them. It was like a whole other startup school, by watching them work.

Yeah, theres a ton of startups in all these areas. One must find a totally different approach or do something different.

This looks nice. Mobile is lame right now because you can't develop anything and have it go across all the carriers. Hopefully this can fix it. I'd love to get to know the developers of this.

"Business" is almost always about how you present yourself/your ideas. Jobs is a genius at presentation. I thought I was great at presentation,

It's helpful to think ahead and prepare multiple pitches, including the elevator pitch, the casual pitch, and a full blown presentation, including difficult questions that will probably rise up. Some questions will be difficult, and are more of a test of the presenter than the actual idea. This shows the amount of thought and foresight a presenter puts into the plan, as well as the dedication.

I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN!!!

At startup school, at the end, Adam was giving some advice of making a bold statement at the start, then scaling it down telling you how you're going to get there. That was great salesmanship, and GREAT advice. Most of what I heard during startup school and from talking to other entrepeneurs was vague ideas, just a jumble of thoughts.

In business, presentation counts for alot. Don't forget this. Ever.

Sites that depend upon users to somehow benefit other users (most web2.0), can be faced with a chicken-or-egg situation when starting up.

Where do these first users come from? These tricks aren't "ruthless" at all. Often, it is necessary to use unconventional means to get the ball rolling.

Just like huge mainframes are dwindling, the same trend can follow across other types of hardware.

Why do you have to take an offer at all? It normally takes anywhere from 1-2 years to make a site successful enough to justify selling for a gargantuan amount. In 3 months, how much growth can you get to show enough promise of future growth/monetization?

Looks great. I can't wait.

Founders at Work :)

and Felix Dennis' "How To Get Rich"

adhd and add are overrated. so many people have it. i was even diagnosed with it. its just so easy to fit into the DSM/IV description. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM_IV

Most founders with families in the startup stage of business don't see them that much anyways. Plus you have to network alot so you're always seeing people.

However, there would be a lacking of intimate contact. You can bond with other founders but that only goes so far. Society as a whole is becoming increasingly isolated. Many people have hundreds of friends on their "friendspace/mybook", but deep down have no one to really confide in.

I read the whole article and still didn't see how show stopper ads would work. Does it just go straight to the ad seemingly out of nowhere? Thats the equivalent to a popup/under in the web world.

I used card service international (owned by linkpoint), which had some hidden charges but wasn't too bad in the end.

That was over 2 years ago. I don't know what is good now. ccbill, epoch, ibill and many others are all 3rd party and charge sometimes near double digit discount rates when all the fees are factored in.

Interesting article, but I wouldn't always believe those charts right away.

A graph of a coin toss can even look non-random...

Yeah, this article hit home. I've got funding/idea/biz plan and have been looking for some co-founders/employees, but everybody I have met thus far would be bricks (dead weight) in the equation.

I'm going to meet as many people as I can at startup school, but will probably need to go further than that. I've had a startup before, and learned alot from it, but I wasn't in the "startup community" at all. As far as working for a startup, many founders won't want you networking for your own stuff, they want you performing tasks for their function. So it has to be done either covertly, or in the open with the founders blessing.

Management really isn't that difficult. Its just unfamiliar because we've been told what to do for a really really long time, and finally having to tell yourself to tell somebody else what to do might seem strange. Its all in thinking outside of your head and paying attention to what is going on, and seeing things from other's perspectives.

I've done the copy/paste/find&replace stuff before with legal terms. It's done alot more than you realize. Even lawyers do it sometimes. Once you start growing/getting users, then its probably better to find an honest lawyer.

:(

Yeah, I remember this. It's classical.

I wanted to send the male escourts to their place...

Yeah, this is nice. The existing aff marketing networks are filled with all sorts of shysters. Shaving sales and unjustified termination of accounts before payment is sent is very very very common. This will put alot more honesty in the affiliate marketing area, which is a cesspool now.

I've had to setup cc processing for my past business before. Its not that hard at all and can be done cheaply. You can use curl in php and send all in the background so that the user doesn't have to see some generic "check out" page that looks nothing like your site.

The big thing to watch out for is hidden charges, cost of chargebacks (You'll get a few of them no matter how great your service is, mostly out of "friendly fraud"), gateway fees, etc.. These costs can rack up really fast and can turn you upside down. I'd say almost 90% of merchants out there are paying too much for their processing services.

Finally, go for a dedicated merchant account, not some 3rd party trash thats basically a reseller. With a dedicated account, you get paid almost right away into your bank, instead of weekly. Also, a 3rd party biller is many times more likely to wait until your balance gets high, then terminate your account for some make believe breach of service, possibly destroying your company in minutes. Theres very little you can do to stop this, lawsuits take forever, and even big name billers will do it to you. Be careful.

shennanigans!!!

Hiring top notch employees is kind of like dating. People want a company that is seen as desirable by others much like how people seek a mate that is desirable from others. Unlike the dating world, alot of special attention early on to woo the prospective employee doesn't come across as "creepy" :)