saddino

Hey everyone, just looking for some beta users (the link is to d/l via TestFlight) before this is ready for prime time, thanks!!

thanks for the comment! yeah our website is still our pre-launch placeholder for testers so we'll start to work on something more product focussed

well we got blindsided by Yahoo! when they released Livetext while we were still in stealth with a buggy MVP (in fact, TechCrunch broke the story the same day we submitted to the App Store)

pro: we don't have the validate the concept anymore

con: now we're playing catch-up with an Internet giant

anyway, guess there's some solace in having the only alternative on iOS for video texting without sound, and we still think our minimalist design is pretty cool

help us keep morale up by checking it out, thanks!

As someone who relocated from DC to SV two years ago, DC has always had a healthy startup scene that is, as you suspect, hampered severely by money flow. That's not to say it's not possible to fundraise where you are, it's just amazingly much harder to do so.

Your pitch is never "finished" because it's a living reflection of your conviction, your passion and most importantly, a tangible opportunity (for investment, for employment, for customers).

You should pitch whenever you can, to whomever you can, until doing so is effortless.

A pitch is foremost a test of your own faith in your project. If there is any self-doubt, your pitch will betray it, and you will know you aren't ready (or that the idea and your execution aren't going to cut it).

So by all means pitch. Test yourself.

The path I took (founded four startups previously, two exits, currently working on fifth) was to first have a go at consulting.

Working for yourself is not much different from running a startup. You have a product (yourself). You have sales (winning contracts). You have accounting (for your invoices and for your expenses) and have to keep books. You have legal (your contracts). It's a great way to learn how to run a (hopefully) profitable business and build the foundation you'll need to run a startup.

Apparently moderate alcohol consumption only increases life expectancy for people who are generally unhealthy (by reducing risk of heart attack) http://nutritionfacts.org/video/alcohol-risks-vs-benefits/

Here's a shorter version: Are you so inspired by a software product or service that you are driving yourself mad thinking about how it was created? Great, do whatever you can to write your own version. Keep at it. Seriously, keep at it. Are you so obsessed with figuring this out that you are unaware that hours are passing by while you work? Awesome. You have discovered a true passion. Now you don't need to read things titled "How to Be a Programmer" because you will drive yourself to become one innately.

For everyone else, go ahead and try to read things titled "How to Be a Programmer" but don't expect it to actually help you, you know, BECOME one.

If, worth = "love the convenience of a wi-fi enabled device that can be controlled by my phone and looks hella cool" then, yes...yes it is.

Apple should institute an unpublished karma score for reviewers based on number of reviews, how long a user used the app prior to reviewing, etc and use it to weigh both visibility of the review and its contribution to the average score.

If you, as a startup founder, can't authentically and sincerely project energy, excitement and confidence about your idea, then something is either wrong with your idea or you are in the wrong business.

Get ready for two-factor authentication coming to a car near you.

Love this. Would consider myself super lucky to have someone as founder-friendly as Sam as an investor.

As someone who has been both, I don't think the distinction is that important. Either route carries enormous pressures and the associated stress that comes along for the ride. Plenty of lifestyle businesses have taken the same toll on their founders' marriages, families, net worth and more. In fact, probably more entrepreneurs have offed themselves due to business failures than startup founders.

The actual question for would be business owners is: does the intensity of your passion drive you towards accepting this risk? If you are unsure, then either title is probably the wrong one for you.

"Ownership" of a word is not the issue here. The standard for trademark infringement is based on a "confusingly similar" basis. Unfortunately there is no hard and fast rule here: it's up to a judge to decide. That final points made in the article are exactly how one would go about mounting a defense; but again, you are at the mercy of the courts here and fighting this would cost.

(IMO the PinPigeon logo is indeed confusingly similar)

For this to work you can't be completely delusional, only partially.

This.

Or as I like to say: the most important pitch you will ever make is to yourself. Convince yourself and others will follow.

What I really enjoy about Kara Swisher's article is how her writing style and her framing of the story reflects the whirlwind reality that found Systrom and Krieger in an 18 month exit.

There are no superhuman heroics involved here nor supersecret backroom deals. This is really just a simple story of good luck and timing, a spot on pivot and execution, and honestly brokered business relationships.

You can't duplicate the Instagram strategy because there was no strategy. These guys didn't build an app to flip. They built an app that was cool: to them, their friends, their investors, their users, and ultimately their suitors and acquirer.

Kudos to them.

Every killer idea is stupid until success betrays its obviousness. Most inspired ideas are probably stupid. And finally, many ideas are just plain stupid. The trick is to ignore your gut reaction and ask yourself, "If this amazingly stupid idea is executed perfectly, is there a real market for this?" Women "pinning" their desires? Check. People sharing incredibly easy-to-compose video? Check.

Don't confuse the dancer with the dance.

Another reminder why off-brand soft launches on mobile are key to testing and understanding your potential customer and market.

While idea viability may be validated by traction (read: user acquisition), product viability is best validated by DAU / MAU and low churn metrics.

That being said, we closed $750K in my last startup after crossing 125K users, so perhaps traction is good enough at least for the first round.

There have been several pieces (from classical to classic rock) that have actually caused me to break out in tears. Not teary eyes mind you; gushing waterworks at specific resolution points. Amazingly, this is reproducible, but the severity of the effect depends on my mood. After reading this, my best guess is that this is tied to an especially intense release of dopamine. My maternal grandfather shared this peculiarity and both of us have had awkward moments where we try to explain that we are quite OK -- "it was just the music" (an explanation often met with puzzled expressions).

It took me almost 20 years of hardcore programming to realize it wasn't the programming that was interesting to me. I didn't give a whit about new languages and frameworks and new design patterns. What I cared about was the creation of something from nothing. What I cared about was the ability to conceptualize and immediately materialize: ideas leading to moving digits on a keyboard leading to product.

Starting my own company, releasing my own software, interacting with my own users and reveling in their praises or reeling back from their complaints: that's software brought to life and that's what keeps me going.

Programming is just the canvas for getting my ideas out in the real world in the hands of real people.

Beware too that some advances, while looking like possible acquisition discussions, are nothing more than intelligence gathering. Another reason to heed PG's advice to keep looking ahead while ignoring the hand wavers.

Wow, nice work! I'm the author Trapeze, a once-shareware (now freeware and open source) PDF-to-Word/RTF/HTML/PlainText application for OS X. My approach was similar: trying to squash characters into words via a logical grid to determine whitespace. My #1 request from customers was to extract tables and I never had the guts to attempt it. :-)

(For those interested, you can grab Trapeze from mesadynamics.com -- requires OS X 10.4; source code is a mixture of C++ and Objective-C).

A little out of left field here, but if anyone is interested in working on the other multi-process browser (for OS X at least) I've just released Stainless as open source. Stainless was a hack that actually became quite popular while we Mac users waited for Google to release Chrome for our platform. http://stainlessapp.com

Anyone who remembers Kozmo should know that the original pricing model is doomed to failure. Grocery delivery doesn't scale well, and 14 years of technological advancement doesn't change this fact.

I've been thinking that Parse (and StackMob, Kinvey et al) need to provide a similar self-deployable solution at a reasonable price; this might be the motivation they need to do so.

How does Apple responding that it has not been submitted force them to approve it???

Same here. Have a pending payment in my Google Wallet account. Ah well.

This at a time when printing from, for example, a non-WYSIWYG WordPerfect document on a a PC would print your entire doc in whatever printer font you had installed and selected. Seems crazy now, but printing to an ImageWriter from a Mac was a huge step up, poor DPI notwithstanding.