powerflex

This will likely continue to be a solid strategy. As new technologies and innovations come to light new generic groups are created. Maybe one technique would be to keep track of emerging internet meme's and jump on related domains ASAP?

Yes and its very distracting. Girlfriends are money/time/attention pits (but I mean that in a good way).

I have first hand experience of this at my last company (as an employee). Several big name companies were sniffing around and the CEO took the initiative to actually explain in detail what we were doing and how we did it.

Not one of the companies actually became a competitor even though they had the financial resources to crush us. In fact, one ended up purchasing us!

The idea truly is nothing.

True however then users have to think followed by get frustrated dreaming up a name. They already know their email address. And unless they already signed up its probably not taken.

>wrote his own programming language when he was 16...

Do you mean he executed "man yacc"? ;)

Thats quite a stream of serendipitous events (referring the the above blog). How does one just have "intense sessions" with people like Max Levchin, Evan Williams and Naval Ravikant??

Yeah, for example uniquely identifying users.

Ha! I should of known!! :)

Even though it didnt make me rich, I consider my first startup to be successful because I took it from idea to revenue.

I'm amazed that more of these are not posted to Hacker News. The solution of math problems seems to forecast innovation:

ie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_coloring_conjecture

was just recently solved.

Website looks really good. When I parsed this url

http://www.fortmason.org/calendar/2008/03/week4.shtml

it only listed the first event to follow the date pattern and sometimes listed all the events as one.

You guys are off to a great start!

update: Im now at about 300Kwh/month for a bill of $35...

Are the images coming from flickr? Because I am getting pictures of a baseball and the word is "playing". Since the images are crowdsourced then maybe there should be an array of them to convey the idea.

In my opinion there are too many words off the bat to remember if you are new to the language. How about doing a delay of one where you define a Spanish word and its image(s) and then the question after next is the image to assign the Spanish or English word to it, then a few questions later its the Spanish word to assign the English word to it? That way you get a 1-2 punch to help memorize it.

I'm in the final round of alpha testing of an application that will do just that. Stay tuned...

I completely 100% agree! (Still love Flex though)

I don't know the cost... but I do know that parsing xml and outputting excel is not all that sophisticated. However you'll need a more concrete application of the process to get some bytes built. Hit craigslist software developers up for some quotes to get a better idea of what you need to move forward (dont hire anyone yet!). And start reading: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/11/09/rexml-processing-xml-in-...

Good luck.

A developer can really get screwed jumping into someone else's idea on faith. If you really believe in your idea then pay to outsource a prototype, then (since you are not a developer) show you have the business chops to bring it all together. Once you do, developers for your idea will be a dime a dozen.

I live in a one bedroom apartment in SF, and have 2 mac mini's, a laptop, and two servers - all are on 24/7. Electricity is $20 per month.

Brilliant. I love this idea. Its my new backup plan.

I've got some ideas around the eInk type displays. Every now and then I send an email to the eInk guys trying to get some bulk rate pricing on their displays - 3 months now and no response. I've got no idea if my ideas for the displays are marketable as I don't know the display costs. These types of problems usher me toward software time and time again...

Just be thankful you have a girlfriend who's a) supportive of your startup mistress, b) can relate to your night-long bug hunts, and c) you can sleep with.

Sheesh, some people get all the breaks! ;)

Personally, I like the post. Sometimes would-be entrepreneurs just need to know if they are going about it the same way others have gone about it to become successful.

I've tried the "just do it" approach in the past and now believe its nonsense. Be calculating and methodical, not impetuous.

Do's/Dont's: Don't work on your stuff on employer time. Make sure you have energy left after work for your project (sometimes that means not being the star performer at the day job). I work my day job from 8-5, and my startup from 6-11 EVERY WEEKDAY. Weekends its ALL DAY developement. Have a product roadmap, release dates, and work your tail off to meet them. Do your architecture design work during the week at lunchtime (off site). Cut anything from your time that isnt helping you meet your goal (ie I dont even drink beer anymore because it hinders coding).

Read this for inspiration (its short): http://loiclemeur.com/english/2007/12/the-idea-does-n.html

Finally, only quit your day job when your startup is making your salary.

I don't know what you have been considering doing with testing, but off the top of my head I don't know of anyone doing content A/B testing (ie: which version of content is more effective). I would expect to see a more granular, dynamic approach in website verbiage as NLP matures. For example, at my day job they argue semantics endlessly. Tailoring a websites' grammar to the user could increase effectiveness. This is an area I consider fascinating and wouldn't mind chatting more about it off line if you like.

I'm 30 in San Francisco. For your first idea, if you are talking about website "performance survey" / "A/B" type testing then you have some wicked competition based out of SF.

I agree that advertising is not the way to go. However end users have demonstrated that they are not very willing to pay for services unless its to meet girls ;)

Corporate, on the other hand, doesn't seem to want anything for free...

So we have a few entrepreneurial individuals hacking away in their spare time, but they need "co-founders" in order to increase their success odds?

Maybe an arrangement can be made. Why not form a company where each idea gets equal time and run with the one(s) that sticks. Think of a cross between an engineer board of directors and an incubator.

You get what you negotiate going in. Period. Ive seen people negotiate majority shares, get it, then request 300k salaries and leave in a huff. They still get their millions of real stock.