Scott_MacGregor

I like Consolas. It's monospaced and designed for programming.

NANO USB flash drives are useful for laptop backups.

With an equal number of founder elected Directors and VC elected Directors, if your outside tiebreaker director is brought in by the VC's you will be in danger of losing control because you cannot control the situation.

Especially if the tie breaker is planning on doing some additional business with the VC in the future, you may not have a truly neutral person casting the vote.

So, how is founder control typically structured?

For instance, do founder Stockholders get 2 votes per share to elect Directors with, and VC's get 1 vote per share with a guaranteed VC director seat on the board? Or are Directors elected by founders getting 2 votes on a particular decision item A and 1 vote on decision item B, and VC Directors get 1 vote on A and B?

Does anyone know what is currently going on with this?

You should have found "one" who was interested (hot to work on your project) while you were there, and "closed the deal" right there.

Separate the wheat from the chaff, and ABC (always be closing)!

If you thought to get their e-mail (in my opinion, the best way to "initially" communicate with most coders) pop them an e-mail and see if they are still interested. Not everyone is a phone person.

It might be more productive to isolate genes that relate to a low IQ, and then discard those from the sample. When looking for a needle in a haystack it would make the haystack smaller.

WARNING: Trojan.JS.Redirector.cq caught by my software comming from this site.

WARNING: Trojan.JS.Redirector.cq caught by my software comming from this site.

I think it would be nice if this were a co-founder meetup/founders networking & drinks.

Broaden the horizon a little and include founders who are not looking for co-founders among the networking time.

Try it as an iteration and see if it improves the quality of entire evenings experience for everyone.

Maybe think about building separate robots for each task (tub, etc...) that can be permanently attached to wall or the ceiling near its work spot. Tasks could be accomplished using special arms for each sub-task. A lifting arm, a chemical spraying arm, etc...

It would take the "where am I" "where is the target" out of the robots equation. You could simply hardcode the desired movements into the robot. Then if you wanted to sell them you could build a learning routine into the code so the public could easily use it after bolting it to the walls in their houses.

Why not just write it into Federal law that a site can act as its own registered DMCA Takedown Agent, instead of having everyone go through additional red tape and pay a $105 fee to run a blog.

In a way it seems like the fee to register is a freedom of speech issue. Pay an inconsequential tiny fee to run a blog, or potentially suffer huge financial losses. Kind of like the old Poll Tax from years ago.

It seems like being proactive as builders and maintainers of the internet, and getting a new field added to the WHOIS data for a DMCA takedown email addresses would make the process easier to administer for the complaintants, and more in keeping with Freedom of Speech that the United States is founded on.

I think if you can make money with it, then it's a good business idea. I say go for it, and make a commitment to make it work!

Sorry guys, it looks like this article is behind a paywall. I didn't realize it at first, but there is a workaround.

if you Google

FCC moves to ensure ‘net neutrality’

It will bring up the correct page from ft.com (Financial Times). Just click the link from Google and it will let you behind the paywall for free.

All the software is doing is checking that the clicked link comes from Google. If so you are behind the paywall and can read it. If not, it throws you onto a generic page.

Here is a cut and past that will bring the article up (at 5am Austin time)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=FCC+m...

Call the bank that issued your card immediately, and tell them what happened. They will probably cancel the card number and send you new card. Give them all of the information you found out about the illicit user too. If you wait, the user may max out your credit limit and it will stay maxed out until the bank settles the disputed items.

Yes, I noticed it too.

I don't know what the backend is, but if it's on a single shared machine it might be too many inquires on the hardware at once. Maybe ask the hosting company to move it to a machine with a lower load.

These guys sure iterated into something desirable. I think they have a great URL name too. Very catchy and rememberable.

One thing that I get as a "take away message" from the company is "austerity". I think this was reinforced by the founders speech about the business at Startup School 2010, and articles like this one in TechCrunch stressing the founders homelessness: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/21/airbnb-brian-chesky/

I may not be the only one with this perspective. If you look at the picture that Venturebeat chose for the article, it is someone sleeping on the floor in an empty room. Which to me does not seem exactly like the kind of PR message that is congruent with hospitality.

Based on his speech at Startup School, the founder and CEO Brian Chesky seem s like a very charismatic guy, which is great for a CEO, but from a business perspective, it seems like it might be time to think about changing the message that is sent out to the public and leave the old message of austerity in the deep dark past.

Good job Brian, and congratulations on the financing!

It looks like the startup climate in Midwest is starting to get focused. With the state of the economy right now that is a great thing for everyone.

One thing that swayed us as a company to move to Austin was the great business climate offered by Texas. One of the stated purposes of the Texas government is to "get out of the way" so a company can focus on the competition, and they seem to do that very well. That along with the favorable tax climate (no personal income tax, and a relatively high threshold before any corporate/franchise tax kicks in) made Austin seem very attractive to us. You don't even need a business license in Austin. Basically, you can keep and reinvest a lot more of what you earn.

Maybe Kansas City can take a look at what Austin has to offer and use some of the positives to build an even "greater" startup atmosphere than you guys have now.

Here is a YouTube speech by the governor of Texas outlining the Texas philosophy about startups. He pretty much hits on all of the points that we found attractive when locating here. Maybe you guys could use some of these ideas too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbOtHDshfj4

Here you go:

http://contracts.corporate.findlaw.com/finance/loan/4422.htm...

http://contracts.corporate.findlaw.com/LCsearch.html?entry=c...

Do not try to "wing this" yourself, have an attorney do it.

There is no reason it could not use a database, but not that I know of. The email messages end up in a directory in plain text. So for instance if you are running MS Server 2003 with the MS email server setup, the system admin (with the proper permissions) can go in and read your emails with notepad. Same goes for Linux email servers. Maybe Gmail (or another huge service provider) uses a database on the backend, but as far as I know email is just directories and text files.

Internally an email server uses directories like Windows or Linux. There is nothing really unique about directories. Externally though it works in a different manner.

The "http" protocol is an internet standard that is set aside for a specific purpose that does not include email. You could probably modify an email server to allow posting the messages in an email mailbox to an apache web server directory to be able to use the "http" protocol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol

Email has its own set of standards about how it works so that one email server can talk to other email servers and the DNS system. The http protocol is not part of this. So it seems like the email would need to be sent via standard email protocols and then moved to an Apache webserver directory as a copy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address

Email is pretty simple, if I were doing it I would set up an email server and an apache server on Centos5x and play with it. You can probably make it happen.

Postfix/Dovecot is a popular email combo.

Find a medium sized piece of code in a language that you already know. Pick code that is that is "good" well written "tight" code that is already written by someone else.

Spend a couple of weeks getting to fully understand how the code works. Then spend some time playing with your own modifications to it. Work on making it do something new and unique. Then once you are comfortable with it, pick another piece of medium sized "tight" code and do it again.

Pick something of a size that that seems challenging to you personally. Be it a single dll or an entire OOP application. Pick something challenging, but not so big that you cannot get a hold of it in your brain and learn from it in a couple of weeks.

After three or four of these self directed learning exercises you should have a better understanding of how to write "tight" code.

At that point, (with some additional experience under your belt) pick up an advanced programming guide for the language you have been studying and read it cover to cover.

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/tight+code

With such a good service as Google, with all of their products/offerings, you would think if this study is in fact accurate (?) that Google would go after the other approximately 50% of the market. From a dollars and cents viewpoint it would seem like a good business move.

Going heads up against Bing without such a large portion of the market seems like unnecessarily making life harder for yourself. A high-quality service like Google offers is useful to everyone, and seems like a neutral moneymaker to me.

You might want to talk to your company attorney about the possibility of the company buying back his shares by executing a note for the balance, rather than all cash. Maybe talk about the possibility of having the note come due upon some particular event, such as replacing the investor with another investor of equal or greater value. If the investor is hesitant to go for that option, you could talk to your attorney about the possibility of having the company make payments towards the note balance on some other future event as laid out on a timetable.

If you look in the Attorney engagement letter it probably has language about their duty is to represent the interests of the company only, and not the founders, shareholders, officers or other individuals or entities associated with the Company.

It seems like he wants to willingly pull out as employee and investor/board member, as long as he gets his investment back. So working out a solution for the payment for the shares (with the help of the company Attorney) might get the ball rolling on a solution for you guys.

Good luck with this.

Welcome to Austin Facebook people.

Austin really is great town for nightlife. If you are looking for a good burger for lunch, you might want to check out the Whataburger chain. From the outside they do not look like very much, but the food is really good at every one I have been to.

Also, I have not seen anyone here wearing a cowboy hat here, except Willie Nelson.

I am not a Twittery type of person either, I would rather have people tweet about me and what I am doing than do it myself. Although a lot of people do find it fun and fascinating.

If what you have in mind for your startup solves a problem for people, that seems like something that may be on the right track to make some good money.

If it makes money, then it is smart! If you think you have a money maker, then go for it. You can always iterate as you move forward.

He might want to use some of it to buy a nicer house. Real estate is low priced right now. If he waits, the house prices may outstrip his after tax cash gains from investing.

I like HopeHit.com best.

In addition to technical competence I also look for a high level of intelligence and commitment in people, and personality wise, people that I can work well with and that can work well with me as well as work well with the team.

In the article it said, "It’s also possible for an executive to be highly effective and profoundly influential while being totally despised. The latter is far better."

With me, this type of person would never make the final cut for two main reasons. 1. My concerns about team productivity and unnecessary turnover (most people vote with their feet when working for someone like this). 2. I believe that with a little extra effort I can find people who can do just as good of a job (or better) who will not be despised, making it a lot easier to attract A-Level talent to the company.

People talk, twitter, and post online about things like this. Word gets around. How many A-Level top performers would choose this type of atmosphere when there are better alternatives. Why put in a game room and other perks and then hire someone who the team will despise. That amounts to shooting yourself in the foot.

At first I didn't get the name, Weezic. Then when I loaded the site I realized it was a play on the name Music. I think the name is clever and catchy. Also I think that the index page looks professional enough to release to the public at this time. You guys did a good job with the looks of it.

Classical music online seem like an overly narrow a niche market, so I would say even though you guys enjoy classical, with such a catchy URL as Weezic it seems like you could expand it into other genres as you iterate.

I think your URL name right now is more valuable than the site. I think you can build a good business around it. Maybe tie the business in with Winamp somehow. Winamp /Weezic kind of works for me.

Having a musical note as part of the logo might be a positive also.

Just for a heads up, here is a 7 minute candid talk, by the Governor of Texas on you tube from 2008, about how Texas views taxes including its sales tax.

With all of the discussion about Rackspace and etc... servers creating a nexus to the state of Texas for e-commerce sales tax collection, I thought since we are in the Austin area I would give everyone a heads up on some of the Governors thinking behind it.

The Governors name is Rick Perry, and he is currently up for re-election right now, so he might be more willing to listen to your views now than later. Texas is very business friendly, and as Californians that is why we chose to locate here.

Austin is the heart of the Texas start-up community and the government here is well aware of it.

If you are concerned about the Red Tape or cost impact of the "Sales Tax" Nexus situation, here is the Governors contact page where you can send him a message and any suggestion you may have: http://governor.state.tx.us/contact/