donofrip

Doesn't this already exist? I don't like to base my comments off things I see in movies, but I seem to remember the characters in the movie Eurotrip getting discounted flights to Europe because they were acting as couriers.

I look at this and can't help but think how important it is to entrepreneurs. "Why" is fundamental, the building blocks for your implementation/execution, the "how".

The fundamental question for a venture is: Why are we doing what we are doing? Expressed market demand. We can make money providing the supply for that demand.

Interestingly, "why" is also where all "how" questions eventually lead when you dig deep enough. How are we going to provide a solution? Through a mobile application. Why a mobile app?

If you are not asking a why question, you haven't thought enough about a particular topic. And if you think long enough, all your "why" questions should eventually lead back to the fundamental answer, "because there is demand for this".

I don't completely think that this is an execution issue. Do we really think there is a large market out there for "flattr-ing" blogs and other sites?

I don't know how many people would pay for/donate to something they're getting for free.

Something about not buying a cow when you're getting milk for free comes to mind...

One might argue there is a market for a product that could deliver a solution to this problem... A company could provide a drop-in solution to sites that requires little overhead to manage. Is there anything out there like this now?

I'm partial to the idea of an open chat room with users providing insight (a wiki-sort of solution). We use this in internal chat channels at my bank. It is helpful because you can pose a question (ex. how can I do X in excel) to a "room" full of experts in the particular subject (ex. an excel specific chat).

Love to hear other ideas.

Interesting. Could it be that they are looking to raise equity to make it easier to acquire competition?

Makes sense to me that they need to diversify their model to compete with some of the new ventures in the market. It might make more sense of Yelp to acquire the platform and the product knowledge than build it in-house. If they have equity in the market, it might be easier to acquire these companies with stock than through a private cash acquisition.

Not sure if that's true, but I'm throwing it out there for debate.

I think the idea of suing for only a dollar is to show that it isn't about the money. I can relate to the frustration experienced when you can't get in touch with a human being through a website--especially when its a non-web based company.

I doubt FB would setup a call center--imagine the call volume! That said, maybe an online chat with a support person? Or an open chat forum to ask questions to other users with a few FB specialist who are also available?

Maybe they already have this... I have no idea.

I agree--a personalized website is the value add. The issue I see is what is the breakeven on something like that? It will obviously cost something to put up your own site (not just money, but time). If I'm trying to sell stuff in a jam, do I think I'm going to get more page views on my own site than on CL? Is it going to be worth the extra time? Am I getting a better price for my stuff?

Also, it will be a bit of a pain if I need to update it each time something is sold.

Things I would consider adding: 1) ability to pay for the item directly on the site (you could partner with paypal on this, or offer the merchant service directly for a cost to the website user)

2) waiting list for people interested in the objects.

General issue I see with this: can you get people to pay for this when they have a free option? If you're going to offer it free, can you generate enough page views on individual sites to validate ad revenue?

Sorry... just my opinion.

The farther out you go on the lines, the cheaper it will be. Be careful though. Not everywhere in Queens and Brooklyn is safe.

Living farther out isn't that bad if you manage to find a spot near an express line. I'm sure you're friend in NYC will know the tricks.

Good Luck!

Just quick off the cuff thoughts:

1) I'm not sure this is a scalable idea. 2) Isn't this what Craigslist does?

I think keeping your expenses down is important. Even if you are independently wealthy, running a tight personal budget will help you think more frugally about your business expenses.

I live in NYC, and you will be surprised at how expensive it is. Take a look at some of the surrounding areas. Around Hoboken (as Hoboken itself has gotten expensive), parts of Queens and parts of Brooklyn are all relatively cheap. You can find parts of Harlem that aren't too bad, and if you're willing to go very north on the island, there are actual houses that are pretty cheap once you get above Harlem. I would definitely suggest living together if you don't think that social issues will be a problem (which would be a bad sign for your startup regardless). I think getting yourself a little farther away from Manhattan might also help keep some of the social distractions from popping up--it can be tough to code late into the night when you see/hear people out and about having a good time.

That's just my opinion and how I would approach the subject... I'm sure people will have different suggestions.

sign up for beta here: http://www.zangzing.com/#!227-Yrving-T-Santa-Cruz-CA

Anyone read Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston, YC partner (http://www.foundersatwork.com/)?

The first chapter regarding PayPal discusses how the company was initially founded on the concept of being able to use your Palm Pilot to pay for lunch. Actually, it initially was a security company that focused on protecting your mobile electronic device. Once it was "protected" they realized you could store money on your mobile device. Eventually they realized that at the time the online electronic payments market was much larger than that for mobile device electronic payments.

Interesting to think PayPal may have been decades ahead on this.

Posted yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2480450

I'm currently reading Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston (http://www.foundersatwork.com/), and one of the stories seems to apply to your dilemma.

If you have the chance I would suggest taking a look at chapter 3 which discusses Steve Wozniak's early days with Apple. He talks about his hesitation to leave HP where he was an engineer. At the same time, Jobs was pushing him to come over and work on their new venture full time. It wasn't until Wozniak realized (through a conversation with a friend) that he could move to Apple and continue to be an engineer did he agree to make the move. In the end, Woz knew he loved being an engineer, and he didn't think that the time and effort it would take to run/manage a company was something he would enjoy (in fact, he knew he would not like it).

It sounds like you love learning new programming languages, something that is not afforded you in your current venture's structure. Maybe you should consider bringing in a partner to help you manage the business while focus on programming. Or maybe you should hire a programmer to handle the routine stuff for your site. Either option could free-up a considerable amount of time that would allow you to again spend some time each week learning something new.

I'm not sure if that is an option, but it is something to work towards maybe.

Does this extend to partnering?

I'm working through my network to find a programmer that I would be comfortable partnering with on a startup. Am I going to be insulting him/her if I can't pay them? I would expect to split the company with him or her if he/she agreed to team up.

This is really helpful. I'm a non-technical founder, and I'm glad to hear that there is hope.

Do you think having applied previously was a positive or a negative for you? Do you think it matters that these applications were for different ideas? I'm just trying to figure out when I should apply--if it is better to wait and develop something fully functional before applying or applying now with the caveat that I need the funding to help develop the idea.

I am planning to apply with a technical co-founder, but I have concerns about how we could effectively develop our product without some substantial financial backing. I don't want to put something out there half-assed and have it fail because we didn't have the right tools, only to then have someone with the resources to execute steal the idea.

There has been some debate regarding PG's "naughtiness" criteria for founders. Maybe irreverence would be a better word? To truly believe in their venture, founders need to have a certain irreverence for how things are done today or how the world is missing out on their idea.

I really like the notion of a trifecta--"a tech lead, a designer, and a business hustler". I think that when you have smart people with complimentary skill sets that can work together eloquently, you have a better chance of delivering a quality product with fewer revisions and rewrites.

I'm not sure it makes a difference whether the initial idea comes from a designer or a hacker or a business person. I think that to deliver successfully, a company eventually needs all three, but the initial idea is just an idea. I see no reason why hackers would be favored over designers or anyone else. I think a fund to help designers fund their ideas is a great thing.

I've seen people at booths at marathon expos use these to sign people up for mailing lists on the spot. I've also seen the street marketers for non-profits use these to sign people up for whatever they were promoting.

The world is finally starting to take notice of how significant it is that everyone has these handheld computers in their pockets all day long. The amount of data that is being harnessed by apps today is impressive, but over the next few years, I think the market for this information is going to be enormous. I wonder who will "own" the information. I assume it will be the network providers.

They are going to need tools to make sense of the information they have. They have very detailed information on their phone users, but they'll have to think through how they can monetize the information legally. Could we see these companies developing the ability to say, "the user of the cell phone X, who is a 14 year-old girl, spent 2 hours in this store on this day". That data on an aggregate basis could be very valuable to companies--companies that would be willing to pay for this kind of insight. "We noticed a spike in teenage girls visiting your stores in the northeast within a day after launching your ad campaign. It didn't have as large of a spike in this region of the country however." I think investors would be willing to buy this kind of information too. Imagine the edge a hedge fund would have if they had this sort of insight into consumer trends.

I suspect there will be a huge need for tools to analyze and make sense of the data that this new market will demand. I'm sure there are already some startups headed down this path, and I'm sure large communication companies would rather use a vendor for this data analysis than learn to do it themselves.

I think this is definitely the edge of a huge new market.

We definitely need to be concerned about how governments, and not just the US government, will be able to use the information that social networking sites are aggregating. On one hand, the library of personal data and knowledge of the inter-connections people could be used to help defeat crime, it could also serve to help governments identify their opposition. We have seen some of this happen in the Middle East. It is a very dangerous situation that has grown out of people's willingness to share anything online, especially in forums that do not protect their identities.

I couldn't agree more about the need to shift from a "if we build it, they will come mentality" to one of entrepreneurship in how we help developing countries and populations. I'm actively involved in the founding of an organization that focuses on financial literacy and business education for grade school children in developing countries and struggling US schools. We hope that by teaching children "to fish" rather than handing them food stamps, cash, and other subsidies, we can begin to develop communities that are self-sufficient. A little innovation can go a long way in these communities. I'll try to post a link to our website once we have it up and running... hopefully next week.

I couldn't agree with you more. When you are a member of the HN community, there are likely many things you take for common knowledge. I think it is useful to take a step back sometimes and just remember how technologically simpleminded a lot of people are. This often opens your eyes to opportunities for new products and services that wouldn't make sense to a programmer. Other times it is just the opposite, however, and the HN community will be able to provide you with the best feedback for certain types of products.

The key takeaway here is know your user.

I like this. It's similar to selling shovels during the goldrush (not that this is a goldrush, but you get the metaphor).

Obviously execution is critical; however, I cannot agree with you that everything else pales in comparison to execution. You can execute "successfully", but if what you build isn't something the client wants, then you're wasting your time.

Depending on what you're developing, a business side perspective could be invaluable. The financial services industry is full of inefficiency, as an example to illustrate my point. I worked in equity research for a while and we published reports that were simply pdfs of excel files (there are some publishing tools out there like bluematrix). There are huge opportunities here for a better publishing platform that is easy to use for someone who is not technologically savvy (like research analysts). Having someone with the insight into the industry could be very useful and would help a developer identify and focus on developing and designing functions that would be useful to the client. I'm sure more than one developer has wasted time developing something only to get FEEDBACK (also know as perspective) from the client (often business related when not a developer end-product) that the functionality doesn't match what they need or expect.

I just cannot agree with your point of view here. In my opinion, ideas and perspective are important, but then again, I am new to this. Can someone explain to me why execution should be held above all else?

I'm confused... you think there is a lot of scope to cater to niche segments, but then are wondering how to identify those segments?

If you have already identified the segments, then I would just talk to as many people in these segments as possible and ask them what they would like to see. I think that good customer/client dialog is invaluable.

Generally speaking, higher margin businesses are going to be less price sensitive.

There is a lot that comes with being a "dominant brand". In the electronics payments space, a trusted, tried and true product means a lot--moving money around is not the same as picking which site to use to post your blog. I would expect that there is a cost associated with a company moving from one provider to the other. Not only would your technology need to overcome the trust issue, but it would need to be able to validate the cost associated with switching.

Maybe if you spell out some of the segments you are considering, someone could provide more information about that particular segment.

How do you intend to protect against slander? Or just outright inappropriateness? Will you be taking down these sorts of posts?

I like the idea--we definitely filter ourselves in most forums. I'm just wondering if it is practical.

A retired public employee can actually make more in pension benefits once they retire than they made during their final year working. Based on how many years of service a public employee has, they can actually make over 100% of their final year salary. That is just an unsustainable model. I don't know who thought these pensions up, but they were not thinking beyond pleasing the immediate voting population. It is criminal that we continue to let politicians buy votes from current voters by robbing future generations. Shame on voters--either for not understanding how they are being duped into this or for not caring they are taking advantage of our country's future generation for their own benefit.

A representative government of elected officials has its legs cut out from under it by these direct democratic actions. As individuals, we cannot be experts on every subject and thus cannot vote intelligibly on every subject matter. Some people like to think that through technology we can be more informed, but in an ever increasingly complex and interconnected world, we are perhaps less informed than ever. Especially when some of us spend such a large percentage of our time being passively entertained.

We need reliable decision makers that can use expert advisors to make decisions that will help us all. The problem that many see with government is the development of career statesmen. Individuals that have spent decades in office. They become ingrained and out of touch. We should instead consider eliminating the ability to easily remove elected officials between elections and put in place legislation that would limit the # of terms our representatives can serve. This would do away with much of the cronyism and lack of action that leaves a bad taste with the public.

As far as the direct democracy's ability to balance the budget... that is obvious to understand. People only think of themselves and how these decisions will affect themselves. That is human nature. Any economics or philosophy student would be able to tell you what happens when you let a group of people vote on something like this. Either we need a more educated and selfless population (impossible) or a better structured government for decision making (needs to happen).

I get a sense of a little non-developer hate going on below... so fair disclosure, I am not a developer. I am an aspiring entrepreneur, and yes, I am working on a web-based company. I also work on Wall Street, so I apparently chose the other option Eric to which alludes.

The value add of a non-developer to a startup is pretty simple--they bring a different perspective than a developer does. Diversity is a good thing. I'm working on building something that I believe would be enormously useful, and it approaches a problem in a way that hasn't been done online before. I think the reason I was able to come up with this idea was precisely because I'm not part of the "online" community. There are certain ways things are done when building an online business that have become part of the "culture" to which the article speaks. Being able to approach a problem from a point of view without a preconceived or subconscious notion can add enormous value to a startup. That said, I am becoming part of this community because I do need the technical expertise to help build the product and it is easier to find someone to partner with than learn to program myself (although I do know some).

It is the same as growing up reading and writing a western language. You don't even consider the notion that text would be written or read in another direction than left to right. Having a Chinese friend at a young age would keep you thinking in different and more creative ways.

Interesting. I am disappointed because while Youtube was blocked at the bank I work at, I could still access some things relatively easily through google video.

While I don't think Google would ever consider shuttering Youtube and moving the content to google video, the idea of moving some of the longer videos from Youtube and creating a separate type of video library through google video is very interesting. There might be a market for this. It would be a place to view difficult to find films and a place for aspiring artists to post their work in a constructive forum.

I don't know if this is a sign of things to come under Page or not, but I hope that the resources that are being freed up will be put to use on something more exciting. Google's real worth, I believe, remains in the power of their innovation. Google videos wasn't dynamic--it just was. Let's hope we see something more exciting come out of this.