HN user
This peripheral is a good example of innovation that was way ahead of the market. There probably was a market opportunity when the Beadazzler was the nation's favorite "As-seen-on-TV" gadget. Even if it were to be released today for the Wii/360/PS3, the R&D costs would likely far exceed the revenues that it would take in.
This is great! While I'm a Fil-Am living in the US, I'm happy that technology and disruption are thriving in the Philippines.
I'm also glad that many companies are helping out by sponsoring the event. Best of luck!
Ignore the other site and launch... Full steam ahead! You never know what may happen, and two companies are never exactly the same. Maybe you'll appeal to a different set of customers. I think it's too early to give up especially since you haven't launched.
Definitely a good tip. Looking forward to the other 4.
This is amazing! Kudos!
Yeah. We noticed that a few weeks ago.
Depending on how your company is formed could make a big difference. Keep in mind that YC is investing $10-20K in your company, so it may not be appealing if there are $40K in legal costs to create an entity that they could invest in.
That shouldn't be a problem being from out of the US.
We built http://embark.at - the easiest way to buy and sell cruises online. We're a marketplace that connects people that like to cruise with travel agents who have awesome unadvertised deals. We have a demo video at http://embark.at
While it would be great for founders to get quantitative and qualitative feedback from PG & team, it would be a pretty daunting task for YC partners to give a well thought out answer to the 1000+ groups.
While 1-2 sentence answer from YC could help out your company, it could open up a whole new can of worms that causes some groups to say, "but wait.." or "good idea, we can pivot...".
Their nice rejection letter is probably the best result the non-interviewees can get.
I used to do it. I've played with both static IP and dynamic DNS. Hosting from home works fine for a web server that doesn't expect a lot of traffic. Otherwise, save yourself the headache and fire up a VPS in a few minutes.
Great job!
I recall that Meebo was debating on switching over to Scientific Linux - http://blog.meebo.com/?p=3213
I'm not sure what they ultimately decided to go forward with, but they were considering SL and Ubuntu Server LTS to replace CentOS
Congrats to the UA team. UA took a simple idea of push notifications and made it extremely easy for developers to use. Kudos!
If I recall correctly, the Galileo probe (around 1989) had the same problems from anti-nuke folks that feared a radiation fall-out if the shuttle exploded while bringing the satellite into space.
YC should never be the end of your dream. They're not always right (and they admit it). Keep on trucking along!
If you're hungry enough, being rejected may be the best thing that will ever happen to you. Don't let a YC Reject letter stop you from continuing your dream.
Did you mean billionth?
There will be a bunch of folks at FailCon in SF today. I encourage everybody to get a test.
Love it too!
Really cool! Too much fun!
Great job! Looking forward to hearing the end result. Never quit!
-A
This happens more often than not. So many things could have influenced why you got next to nothing in your stock options. Depending on how much money was taken by the company, your stock options that you received on day one were likely diluted over and over and over again. (Whereas, investors likely kept their percentage of the company by maintaining their stake). It's the unfortunate part of the investment game. Employees (and employee stock option pools) often are the last ones to benefit from the dilution.
But let's say that you created a company from the ground up: 0 customers to 1000 customers in 18 months. Assuming those are good numbers, is it fair for the board to remove you? By adding a new CEO, could they clash with the culture and hurt sales? IMHO, adding a new CEO is like trying to predict the future. Nothing is guaranteed. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
IMHO: A startup, while in its MVP stage, should go ahead and do whatever it takes to determine there's a customer demand for whatever product they are making. In Grooveshark's case, they should stream copyrighted works and find out what their customers want and what they're willing to pay for. Once they can determine a viable market, then it's time to get legal. This also will influence their business plan since what their customers may want to pay will not cover the costs of what it takes to produce their product.
I use Cull.tv -- they have a discovery engine built on top of the You Tube API. Nice interface too.
Life's too short to be stuck at the 9 to 5 job. You have to take risks right?
So one sentence is wrong. Big deal.
http://Cull.tv - Helps me discover new music videos. (Disclaimer: I invest in them.)