hippo33

hmm...strange. let me look into it.

I think the organizer should have been upfront with you about what he/she wanted you to talk on. That said, I don't think it was an offensive request. The organizer wasn't being presumptuous that you would be interested in speaking on this topic just because you're female -- he/she was merely asking you... As a woman in tech, I get how it's these little things compounded over time that get annoying, but this ask on its own is not unreasonable is it? You can always just say no (as you did). :)

Do we need to pander to VCs? I'm also not sure that your assertion that it hurts their credibility is true.

Fred Wilson has publicly admitted himself that he hasn't led a deal all year. I don't think that affects his reputation. If anything, I think people applaud him for his transparent efforts.

How is this manipulative?

While the data may not be 100% accurate, I think the author makes a lot of great points about finding out what series A deals a particular investor has done to know whether this is a good fit.

Clicky link: http://hello.stickyjots.com

If I were to do that all over again, I would've focused on building an audience around a pinterest-like blog or FB page with cool retail items so that we would've had people to launch to.

Soneca, you are absolutely right. In this case, we shut it down, and my co-founder decided to move on. This just wasn't meant to be. After that, I decided to team up with a different friend of mine, and we are working on LaunchBit. So, while that was the end for Parrotview, it's not the end of my startup journey. :)

Great point, Tibbon -- I didn't even touch the fundraising side of things.

Good question! I've found it's easiest through progress in this manual sort of way. It's a much easier pitch to say, "hey, I need you, because we have all these paying customers who are going crazy, because there is no website" than it is to say I have "this awesome idea but no one is using it yet."

They are speaking at the Lean Startup conf right now. Amazing idea -- they create mushroom kits so ppl can grow them in their own home. They use used coffee grounds from Peet's all around the Bay Area.

Can you provide more context for where these photos are? (I'm assuming digital?) Do you have a flickr-esque site? Mostly mobile or web traffic? etc...

I'm in the same boat. I've tried using Dragon, because talking is easier than writing for me. But then, I end up with a lot of umms and uhs and unstructured posts. Copywriting is super important, very difficult for non-writers, and time-consuming (for non-writers)

Actually, those are correct. "a couple writers" and "a couple of writers" are both grammatically correct.

"its completion" -> "it's completion" is just wrong. "It is completion" is not the intent of the sentence.

Oh, I didn't think it was obvious at all... Like in my example, say List A has 1000 people and a 50% open. List B has 2000 ppl and a 25% open rate. In both cases, the same number of absolute ppl are opening the email. Why should List A necessarily get more clicks than List B? And yet consistently, it does. That's not obvious to me...

This is a follow up post to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734797

This is another property owned by LaunchBit, but perhaps this is what you're looking for: http://www.newsletterdirectory.co/directory/

It can help you find lists to get in touch with.

Great comment, Samuel_Michon. One thing that is interesting to me is that your newsletter requires ppl to click through to read the entire article (as does Peter's newsletters). This probably also helps with the accuracy of open rates. Even if a reader doesn't display images, Mailchimp (as well as other email service providers) will know if he/she opened the email via the click. So, it may be a more accurate count over an email that doesn't have any links in it... (just some speculation)

I can also vouch for that for Peter's list and all the other lists that are over the 50% mark in the graph on my blog post. Quite frankly, it IS HARD to get this high of an open rate. Peter and all the other publishers who are able to do it consistently are somewhat of an anomaly.

That said, another way I've seen this done is I know publishers who will actively unsubscribe people who are not opening. And, this will give you a much higher concentration of people who consistently open...

agreed. but, unfortunately, ppl always ask questions like this, and saying "it depends" isn't particularly satisfying. :( so, i thought i would put a stake in this conversation by offering our data.

Not sure what you mean...the first paragraph reads "Lots of marketers combat this by creating banners that stand out in a “spammy-esque” way to achieve a high click-through-rate, but how do you do this without being spammy?" With this sentence, I had intended this to beg the question how can marketers get a higher click-through-rate without being spammy, but I apologize if that isn't clear.

Definitely counter-intuitive. And again, it may just be in our network -- who knows?

What do you mean by the latter question?

The grammatical error is not the contraction. "You're thinking about work-life balance all wrong" can be extended to "You are thinking about work-life balance all wrong" The incorrect part is the "all wrong." It should be "You're thinking about work-life balance incorrectly."

You're right -- we don't know. My interpretation of the article was that the AUTHOR seemed to imply that that was unbalanced, and my point in bringing it up was that it didn't seem right for the author to critique what is a balanced/not-balanced life, since it's different for everyone.

In the same way you take Apple seriously for using the slogan "Think different." :)

He was referenced, because of another article (see link in my post) on work-life balance.

What you need to make your life feel balanced is different from your peers. If you need to take more time off, then do it. But if you only need 1 week of vacation like Elon Musk, then that's his balance. That's the point -- let's not create one standard set of rules for what balance is because people operate differently.

That is a very fair point. Still learning how to write better. (since I didn't spend a lot of time writing in HS :P)

I think that it's important to set expectations with your team: co-founders, investors, etc. If everyone on the team needs to play golf every afternoon at 3pm to stay balanced, then that's right for them. There isn't anything wrong with this as long as everyone is onboard with this plan.

As for joining a startup, finding the right company culture is super important, and there are definitely startups that don't have pressure-cooker environments with long hours and work weeks. It's just a matter of taking the time to find the right fit.

This may be true of YOUR startup. There are plenty of startups out there who have different thoughts about speed. And, so long as expectations are properly set with everyone on the team: co-founders, investors, et al, then whatever you need to do is the right thing regardless of what other startup founders around you are doing.

Balance is what YOU as an individual need to be balanced. You are projecting your opinion on everyone else that you need to do other things to be happier. That is what makes YOU happy. So go do it! But, it doesn't mean that everyone will be happier doing that. The point of this post is that everyone needs balance and needs to do what they think will make them feel balanced. And rather than adhering to dogma of others, we should each individually do what's best so long as expectations are set with those in our company.

Haha -- my point exactly. That's why I said that most people think that my life sounded horrible. But you are projecting your own definitions on other people -- precisely the point of this post...