joeythibault

I like your thinking. And there's nothing stopping you from delivering on that idea (because it's open!)

Agreed, however they rarely pull punches at the SvN blog. This is not the first time they make comments about the "others" (even if they're successful "others").

What's wrong with being young? I feel old at 27, but because I have 5 less years now to think of, develop, and launch new projects compared to a 22 year old.

There's nothing wrong with being young and a CEO. In fact, you'll probably have to step up to the plate because no old fart will work for free and helm you startup (not that you'd want them to anyway).

I've used Basecamp, Trac and Bugzilla. All are easy to use (and we've had some very non-technical users on them). My favorite though was trac, very easy to use, easy to set roadmaps and milestones. The bonus with bugzilla is that its more flexible (we're managing several development initiatives simultaneously). Basecamp is inexpensive, but I didn't find it as useful in managing bugs and support tickets (it was very useful in managing a grant application process though).

http://www.bugzilla.org/ http://trac.edgewall.org/

Personally, I don't think that the mode matters as much as consistency in method. I've successfully managed support tickets for smaller projects on a series of google doc spreadsheets without any problems. It makes for easier sharing with the client as well.

Bugzilla might fit your needs best out of the three I know about. Good luck!

Sounds eerily familiar to the SvN mantra (37signals). I think the point is that momentum can be exhilarating while even the smallest missteps can really set a company back. Which is why, as a startup you need to positively reinforce your staff, remind people of/tout the little successes and mitigate the failures. Momentum is important for morale (and future successes).

I agree with you, but I also agree that major changes in a companies focus can really hurt morale (if the employees aren't sold on the idea they'll push back).

Also, I think the author would agree with you to an extent. Apple really did push into a market where they didn't have any prior business, but their experiences and expertise really paved their way to success.

I hope they continue and expand the practice. It seems like a cool initiative, though I'm a little fuzzy on what the products of the initiative are. For example, you can get the foodbank data, which would be great for finding the exact locations of the nearest foodbanks...say, if you were homeless and had an iPhone.

Could be great for transit times and getting around the city too.

If I'm missing the point of the open data please enlighten me.

goes to show that even the simplest things (that usually make people yawn) are the ones where innovation can be most disruptive.

Anyone else remember that Rbk just recently fought (and won) a battle simply to provide a different, "more efficient" material and cut to the jerseys?

there's a correlation between depression and food, but there are also correlations between food and socio economic status. So being low income might also be contributing to mental health (which isn't addressed in the article at all; though they do point out that if there are a lot of takeaway joints near by then the problem is exacerbated...might those areas also be lower income?).

This is not to mention that kick ass programmers that leave can end up being competitors. Any employee that's valuable knows the ins and outs of your company/software (what's good about it, where the limitations are, what customers want/don't want). letting them walk away is a risk.

Setting up an environment where employees often walk is even worse, i.e. where there is rampant "poor communication, disregard for an employee's cares and well-being, or a combination of the both". I've been there and watched great programmers leave unhappily. It causes morale issues and leaves a huge hole in institutional knowledge.

Plus I would never outsource copywriting. Good way to end up with a FAIL.

Yeah, I think one thing to add to that list is testing. I'm not a programmer, but I have often been able to root out bugs that really affect customer usability (and often can save our programmers time by finding the specific variables that contribute to the bug...which can make fixing them faster).

Product testing is really everyone's jobs (in software it's much easier to manage your app if it's something you engage every day).

Great list though!

no luck. Checked my spam too. I'll shoot you an email at info@phonehalo.com

According to the question ask "do you think war is inevitable?" you'd be included in 9 of 10 think war is inevitable. What we want was not part of the question (and I don't think it is on peace.facebook.com either. Their question is "is world peace possible?", based on your response above your answer to facebook would be "no").

Anyone else think it's weird that he wouldn't even mention twitter and facebook? he just called them "the two fine companies". I know they want to own the information and distribute it (that's their biz). But why not talk about them directly?

email me at joseph.thibault@gmail.com.

Yes. where can we meet up?

I've got a mytouch. I think android is going to be huge. Time will tell, but I'm betting that it will become the sole "iphone competition" (though it will be codified in 100s of phones, not just 2)

I urge you to watch the trailer. This is most likely the dawn of movies re-made by fanboys.

radiolab (part of nyc's public radio) had a great news piece about this very topic. Back during the cold war like 1 in 3 people thought war was inevitable. It says a lot about our culture that 1 in 10 think that we can achieve PEACE. 66% peace lovers to 10% is pretty sad.

Great listen if you have an hour commute: http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/10/19/new-normal/

fair enough. You've just given me the confidence to contact as many bloggers as I can (as long as they specifically pertain to our market).

Thanks!!!

hahaha. touche.

There's a lot of research available now in education that says that positive reinforcement works, but not when it's talking about intelligence.

For example, students are much better off when you say, "you worked so hard on that project, it really shows that you cared about what you were doing" as opposed to "your project was great, you are so smart".

Children understand the difference between hard work and smarts (where smarts are natural ability and hard work is a virtue).

Later in life those students that were positively reinforced for working hard are better off than those that were simply told they were smart. Which is a nice reference to what it takes to be a startup founder (smarts are great, but only when paired with strong work ethic. However a strong work ethic and tenacity could overcome a natural gap in ability).

Cary should have saved his time and just said "join the navy". I'm not advocating military service. But if this student doesn't want to stay where he is, doesn't know what he wants to do and doesn't have the means to relocate, it's probably the most stable situation to let him think about his/her own future.

Just saying...

3 years on a boat or sub and he'll know EXACTLY what he wants to do (and will have a lot more means to act upon it).

The only other thing I would add to someone thinking about getting into a start-up is to really think about the founder(s) and whether or not they may be capable of leading the company to greatness.

It's possible that the founder of the company doesn't meet all of those important criteria, and if that's the case the startup is probably going to be in big trouble down the road.

If you are more valuable than the founder to the company he/she will sooner or later be betting on YOU to carry the business.

hahah, at least it's a good demonstration of the possibilities. Honestly I think the best personal use I will find is with my morning emails exchanges with a few friends on the east coast (about 25 emails go back and forth every morning, including links, videos, etc.). We just to do it with a blog but that didn't fit. Chat is too time consuming, but Wave might be just right.

At least it'll make procrastinating more efficient.

The approach makes sense, but something about spamming tons of blog owners turns me off.

I've used a similar approach, but only with the blogs that I had either made personal contact with previously or that I frequented.

On another note, your blogroll/Reader subscriptions are a great place to start if you follow other bloggers in your industry. Being an active member of the blogosphere also helps give you some clout.

wait...so now there's a popularity contest within my own friend network?

Rackspace cloud has great customer service (they did as Mosso too). We pay about 150 a month for our hosting (4 servers, 2 paid by clients). We're small time, sure, but upgrading/resizing is super easy and we've never experienced any downtime (knock on wood) of any of our servers.

Our dev server is running 5 rails apps in testing on a 256 box so it's well worth the money if you just want to try it out (it's about 20 bucks a month).

They also gave me a sweet tshirt. But that doesn't skew my love for the RS cloud ;)

Really isn't this the point of Hackernews? to promote and link other sites (even you own) and to enable intelligent discussion? If it wasn't added here I for one wouldn't have learned about it or wegame.com.

That being said, I liked the interview. Though, I don't agree that failing at a business makes an individual more qualified to create another startup. I've met a few entrepreneurs who probably should just pack it in...

Really I think the key is that this guy made good connections and left and impression. If he had made the same connections (somehow) without failing first in a business things might have played out similarly.

Though, the fact that he had the wherewithal to start/fail at 15...kudos to him.

On another note, one of his points is similar to another current topic "eating/buying you own dog food". I suppose it's easy when your a 15 year old male and your market is video games...