failquicker

I believe they are using a custom interface from Braintree. Pretty sure living social is the same.

Aaron and Paul,

You guys weren't joking when you said you were moving fast. Looks great. I'm kicking the tires now and will report back. As I told you in January, great damn idea. Let's grab a beer -Jason

As of right now, all of their .com and .net registries are still down

I'm writing "Everwake"

It's about a future where our preoccupation with productivity led us to genetically engineer away our need/ability to sleep. In this future sleep becomes the drug of choice and the domain of the counter culture.

I have a framework I wrote last month and a good friend of mine is a sci-fi editor. She agreed to give me notes, mainly so I would leave her alone.

Not really going to set a word a day goal. With me, I find that sometimes only a few hundred words eek out. While other days 3000-4000 come out freely.

My method for getting a great coder even though you can't evaluate coding skills -

Hire a great coder to HELP YOU INTERVIEW. Find a great coder who's work you respect, who is currently employed and not looking to leave his position. PAY HIM his going rate to help assess your candidates.

Find candidates through local meetups, friends of friends, and this lovely community here. Above poster is correct, Good coders are respected. If you actually start becoming a part of the community you will start to find folks who might work out.

We liked freshbooks more than quickbooks, so I can say that it's a nice product.

But right now, I'm a big fan of what's going on over at Less Accounting. I think he's on the right track to the perfect small business solution. And the support level is unreal.

Ok, maybe I abbreviated my train of thought there. Let me elaborate.

And I am speaking solely from my knowledge of US History.

"Bi-Product of the industrial revolution." retirement came about SOLELY because of the industrial revolution. Prior to that most people were artisans and self-employed. However, once everyone got onto an assembly line, older people who couldn't keep up started gumming up the works. And they were being laid off in droves. To counteract that, Roosevelt, enacted Social Security as a form of "Old Age Insurance". Soon after, corporations started pension plans of their own. And this ushered in the era of "Companies look after their own" in America.

The point I was trying to make is that it use to be common belief that your employer would take care of you. It's not that way anymore.

Did I do any better that time?

This is really a question for your underwriter. As it varies greatly depending on who holds your merchant account. You are right, most credit cards are going to default to the unqualified rate anyway.

But the bigger problem is this.

If you get bare minimum information from your customers, and then for some reason you start getting more than a few charge-backs, they might close your merchant account. Which is a fun exercise in thinking on your feet =)

The best bet is to get a merchant account with an account representative that is familiar with your business model and talk to him about how you plan to proceed. You are much less likely to run into problems if they verbally signed off on your actions.

As to fees. This is really cart before the horse. You have no sales yet. Trust me, when you have a whole gang of sales, people will start tripping over themselves to process your transactions at a happier rate.

The modern assumption of retirement is a bi-product of the industrial revolution. Retirement was a brass ring that was held up for workers to see as a way to keep them productive and loyal for a long period of time. Just think of how many times you've heard the phrase "You don't want to jeopardize your pension do you?" said in a movie.

Unfortunately, greed, escalation, and bloat caught hold at lots of these companies. And the concept of company retirement became much more of a well organized ponzi scheme.

As one example, both of my parents were taught from an early age that they should grow up to work at one company for their entire life. And that's what they did. My mother, went to work for the local school system. And my father went to work for the local chemical production plant. When they started work they both expected a retirement package, payed into and provided solely by their employer.

Neither one got that. My mothers retirement plan converted. Into a 401k with a fractional matching contribution from the school district. So she went from 100% contribution from her employer, to 90% coming out of her paycheck. If she was to retire "on time".

My father had a much worse fate. He had a pension from his company and a company managed 401k. Both of which were gutted when the company was spun off in debt reallocation. He still has the company letters that shows him having over 1 Million dollars on paper as his retirement package. He retired with little more than a gold watch for 40 years on the job. I had to support him in the gap between his "retirement" and when his social security kicked in.

But the silver lining is that we can all learn from the fallacy of our predecessors. We can take responsibility for our own lives, happiness, and "retirement". That's a big reason why I work for myself.

And most of the people I know are into the "mini-retirement" concept that has been more recently popularized by Tim Ferris. Live now. Don't work your whole life to live later.

If you truly love the work that you do...who'd want to retire anyway?

So...are the children suppose to live in the school and never leave? Because the second they step out the door they are bound to run into a few rogue hotspots.

Even out in the rural areas of the US, you can usually find a wi-fi signal.

By the way, I love the Hemingway reference in the SN. Feel free to email me and I will brainstorm with you.

Solve a problem. That's it. Make a solution that will put a salve on someones pain.

It sounds like all of your other ideas are trying to take advantage of a percieved hot space or were just "neat ideas".

Start making a list of all the problems you have observed and figure out how your proposal could help address them.

Get your team together and brainstorm.

Was anybody else bothered by the giant moving spammy pop-up on that site? I'm currently reading on an iPhone and it took up practically the whole screen.

This has to be one of the best don't judge a book by it's cover biographies I've ever read. I love that he left MIT to persue acting. Follow your dream.

"I will break you...r covelant bonds"

No, I stand by my statement. I don't believe that Facebook will continually dominate the hearts and minds of the online world in the way it does now, in perpetuity. My reason given for failure was "complacency and failure to inovate" which I believe is the downfall of most great companies. The companies that I listed were examples of this phenomenon. You can really take this theory all the way back to the Dutch east India trading company if you want to. Evolve or die. In all probability, someday facebook will stop evolving.

Now I'm currently refering to facebook failing in the same way that "Microsoft and Yahoo" have failed. They still exist, are still (quite) profitable, but their relavency is fading.

As to apple. I've always wondered if the magic there will continue after Steve Jobs dies.

Well, I'm glad to hear you say that. I actually read you as leaning the other way. I'm glad I was wrong. So let me jump in on this side.

The question is not opportunity vs. self-validation, it's opportunity vs opportunity. If you believe in what your doing, and you can keep chugging along doing that, that's what I would do. Thank the company for the opportunity but tell them you are committed to your startup, they will respect that. And if they don't, you probably didn't want to work there anyway.

On the note of experience. At the job you are being offered, most likely you would gain specific technical experience. But you get hordes of experience from running a startup too. The startup experience tends to be on more of a macro level and you will find it useful in many aspects of your life. Running your own company will force you to put on lots of hats and give you a more complete look at how things fit together on a grander scale.

Not saying that the job experience is not valuable. Just reminding you not to forget about the experience you are already getting at your startup.

Self validation is cool too.

So what's this startup? =)

Eventually, complacency and failure to innovate will probably kill off Facebook. I know it's hard to look at Facebook now and see the possibility that they will be much less relevant in 10 years. But that will probably happen.

Prodigy, CompuServe, AmericaOnline, Friendster, Myspace and to a certain extent even Yahoo and Microsoft. At one point in time they were all pervasive, disruptive, and dominant. And now they've either gone or are having to pivot into a niche to maintain viability at a fraction of their former glory.

The internet and technology will keep growing. Facebook will get marginalized at some point.

"The experience I could gain at that new company is probably loads more than I could ever get slogging away on my own."

It kind of seems like you've already made up your mind here. If you think that you can get more value out of the job for the time being, don't feel bad about taking it.

I see the big variable that you haven't talked about here is your commitment level to this particular startup. Is it something that you love doing? Or is it just something you are passing time with.

In my experience, I've built startups that I could have jumped ship on. With others, that thought wouldn't have even entered my mind.

So I think the variables here are more than just should I take the job or not. We don't know your situation well enough. My guess is you are already leaning one way though.

"With kids it would have been impossible."

It's not impossible, it's just adding another degree of difficulty. I did exactly this in the second half of my twenties. Working on my projects, doing consulting when I had to to support myself and my family. I believe the impetus that drives "family men" to seek shelter in a "normal" job can also drive you to be relentless in making your startup work. More skin in the game.

Also, team comes into play here. Personally. I know that if I wouldn't have had such a wonderful and supporting partner at home, the startup issue would have been a non-starter.

Team first =)

Ok, so there are actually quite a few variables when you are considering. Mainly, the type of T-shirt you want to print on and the type of graphic you want printed.

The three main types of shirt printing are...

Screenprinting - The Old standby. Looks good, washes fairly well. But can get expensive when you get into multiple colors. Also, only higher end houses are going to be able to handle larger resolutions on your graphics.

Direct 2 Garment - This is the new kid on the block. It's essentially an Ink Jet printer that has been hacked to take garment dye. Upside is it prints RIDICULOUSLY high resolution graphics. And you can generally get a small run done for not a ton of cash. Down side is, the house doing the work has to know what they are doing. Poorly cured DTG work will fade almost immediately.

TRANSFER PRINTING - This is like a hybrid of one of the two above methods with the Iron ons you get at office max. Don't hate though, Transfer printing can be awesome. Pretty much every sports team ever uses transfer printing. It makes the graphic stand out (physically) from the shirt.

Find someone local to you. I guarantee there is a hungry local print house that is close to you that would trip over itself for your business right now. The economy has hit printers pretty hard.

I will be happy to discuss your order specifics with you in more detail and point you in the right direction. Full disclosure, I'm from a Garment Industry family and I currently own a T-Shirt company myself. Not sleazy though, as we just print our own stuff for resale and I won't be trying to get you to buy from us :-)

My contact email is in my profile, or we can discuss it right here in the HN Comments section.

Hey Diaspora, if your reading this...GO GET 'EM! You guys will do great.

A lot of people seem to be concentrating on this idea that having a lot of money is bad for these guys. I'm on the other side of the fence. History favors companies that have taken money. And unlike any investment round I've ever participated in, they gave up no equity to fundraise. They also have a gaggle of really awesome, very experienced mentors helping them. I think they will be fine. I'm rooting for them. REALLY rooting for them. They're just nose down in code with the door shut and the phone off the hook. Good on ya.

Can anyone else verify that this is happening? Starts at post 119 on the popular stories list.

It seems to be a bunch of submissions are effected. The page past the picture I took now has 3 of the double submissions. I just added a second screen shot.

In this specific case, there was a better article from TechCrunch covering the same info. I just didn't see it before submitting. Also, it was upvoted quite decently.

I think it depends. I've seen some decent discussion of TechStars on here before. I'm sure there is a Harvard and Yale aspect to it it as well. But overall I think that HN is a fairly impartial site. I would be much more inclined to think that people just didn't like the article then think they were boycotting TechStars.

Honestly, I like the overall goal of your article. I just wanted to make 2 comments. 1) being disciplined in an of itself is not a good thing. It is a fairly common thing to be disciplined in a practice that is either futile or damaging to your best interests. 2) on this same line discipline for disciplines sake can lead to work for works sake, which wastes a lot of time.

Discipline is a great force multiplier, when used appropriatly. It is important to note that discipline should be a tool overlay to an existing beneficial goal or plan. Or in developing that goal or plan.

That's usually the hard part.

Also, I do know many highly disciplined WoW players

I think this article is a little propagandaish for hn. It really feels like a giant misrepresentation of the truth.

Berkshire was not hiding the fact they owned these derivatives. Buffett has talked about thm many times and defends purchasing this specific set of derivatives as having been "mispriced at inception" which I think is the most basic plan of all investing, right. Buy low, sell high.

As to the lobbying of congress, I would do the same thing, and you would too. When the derivitives contracts were drawn up Berkshire offered both a collatoralized and uncollatoralized option for the contract. The other parties would have paid a higher premium to Berkshire for the collatoralized contract, so they selected to forgo collatoral. Now, after the fact congress is going to step in and demand the contract have collatoral?

If I borrow money unsecured, I'm going to pay a higher interest rate. It would be extremely crappy to come in half way through the loan and demand that I put my house up ad collatoral. Now I have all the risk, and didn't even get to benefit from the lower I intrest rate at inception.

THAT'S what he's lobbying against.

And ontop of all of that, Buffett has said that if congress does include retroactive collatoralization, he will just pay it and his business will still be fine. So where's the fall from grace?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aZcI...

You make a couple good points/ideas.

I like the carbon free lawn service idea. My current mower is actually an American lawn reel mower. Coincidentally, I bought it on craigslist for $35. It's from 72, and still cuts like a champ as long as your willing to maintain it. The "carbon free" service would work great in my area where there is a high density of people in town homes with small front lawns.

Maybe YMMV on the small lawn mowers. But I have had extremely good luck with them. I think that most of the problem people have with mowers is failing to maintain them properly. In my experience, if you can buy a used mower that will start quickly without much hassle it can generally be kept in decent working order for a long time. But purchasing one of these used mowers was why I said the idea scales. It's pretty easy to get enough work out of a used mower to buy a better quality mower.

Thanks for sharing your insight. I hope someone jumps on the reel mower service.

I don't know if it will be possible to do where you are, but I mowed lawns for years on the side. Even after I had a "successful" startup. I enjoyed having something completely non-technical to do and it actually let my mind reboot. And before anyone scoffs, the pay is actually pretty decent relative to the time invested. Don't believe me? Call up a landscaping service and get a quote for your yard. There is some initial costs for equipment, but it's definitely something that is scalable. You can get a used lawnmower for less than $50. It doesn't have to be great, little push mowers are work horses and damn near indestructible. Especially anything with a Briggs and Straton Motor. But like I said, this will only be relevant if you live in a part of the country you can mow lawns in.

And on your comment about working in a cafe. I have often thought about how great it would be if someone started a "Startup Cafe" with a rag tag group employees that were all working on their own projects. Somewhere you could pick up a few hours in your odd spare time and still be in a stimulating environment. Maybe have a laptop setup next to the server stand for a few snippets in your downtime. Someone start working on that! I'll buy my coffee there.

You should definitely join the blacksmithing group. I'm definitely on the casting part of the work as opposed to the smithing. but I know a bunch of great blacksmiths. I think you will be able to find a great group of interesting personalities that somehow get drawn to metalworking (sort of like HN)

One great resource for metalcasting is Backyard Metal Casting. www.backyardmetalcasting.com He will probably answer any question you could possibly have about casting.

Good luck!