scottallison

While Twilio and Amazon Connect have some integrations it does not appear that Connect is built on top of Twilio. The Amazon FAQs says that all telephony services are charged separately by "AMCS LLC" which I'm guessing is a telco they've set up to do this at the lowest possible margins. If they went through someone else their pricing would be higher.

Great post. It was last year that there was a lot of chatter from everyone, worrying that we were in a bubble. Since then the talk of bubble has apparently decreased but the real signs of a bubble have accelerated, in particular, crazy living costs.

Very worried to read that this is still happening:

"Companies raising money at $15MM+ plus valuations with no traction and no real vision..."

This is awesome for a weekend hack! Good fun :)

500 has always been about startups with some degree of traction. Out of our batch, all bar 2 had a product, and over half had revenue already.

Actually I'm fairly sure there were 2 teams with single founders at the time of application. All had a team though, that's the most important thing.

This is cool. We currently host our app with Engine Yard and there's been a number of times when we've wanted to put in extra capacity for short bursts but it's impractical to do it. It's not the cost of upgrading for me that's the problem but the hassle of having to configure a new instance, and migrate to it. So I love the approach of dragging a few sliders and it magically happening. Go GoScale :)

Which makes me think of customer development... And how difficult it can be to sort through which feedback matters and is worth iterating around and what you should ignore. I think the biggest successes of recent times, Inatagram and Facebook just had an innate sense of what their users wanted.

Before I moved to silicon valley, I used to come here a couple of times a year, visiting as a Scottish person living in London. I would deliberately schedule any important meetings at the end of the trip, knowing full well that it would take me a while to get into the valley mindset and start thinking bigger. Unfortunately there is a pessimistic and sceptical mindset in Scotland which is extremely unhelpful.

By the way, if you'd just inflated your numbers that wouldn't have worked either; you need to believe them.

I think they don't want to make a noise because the next Air will have much of the power (but lacking the connectivity). This is literally one for the Pros. Can't see the line continuing beyond this iteration.

I'm the other cofounder of Teamly. Matt is very kind to describe me so nicely, but I feel just as lucky to have found him. As well as being extremely inquisitive he gets stuff done, and is as passionate about Teamly as I am. We clicked straight off, and that's why we're putting in so much effort in finding the right additional cofounder to join us now. It's far more than about technical skills, it's about fit and passion.

Great post. Janice Fraser's LUXr classes (and slides) are worth a look. What I particularly like is for the first step, you describe setting a clear user goal, and they expnad on that:

We believe that people like [customer type] have a need for, or problems doing [need/action/behaviour]. We will know when we've succeeded when [quantative/measurable outcome], or [qualititative/observable outcome], which will contribute to [KPI].

See http://www.slideshare.net/clevergirl/luxr-oneday-workshop

Thanks for the comments folks :)

This article summarises what makes the valley both awesome and absurd. I got mixed emotions reading it. It manages to be both appalling and inspirational.

And Bill Nguyen makes the manic Zuck portrayal in The Social Network appear shy and retiring by comparison. I'd love to meet him.

FYI, the original quote is by motivational "guru" Jim Rohn: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

Google Voice is a great product which could be so much better, it's pretty clear it's one of those things Google has not looked after or worked on much. It's also a complete pain to set up. Your average Joe is going to struggle to get it up and running and nicely integrated with Gmail. I've watched two reasonably techie people struggle to work out to make/receive calls inside of Gmail.

Note that if you struggle with cell reception and want to make calls over wifi then T-Mobile's UMA service - they call it "Wifi Calling" - is a good solid solution which just uses wifi as an alternate bearer for all your phone's usual capability. (voice, text, data)

Thanks for pointing that out, but putting it another way, the things I expected I would benefit from by being in London did occur, along with the pleasant and unexpected bonus of the government's tech city initiative.

As you're in Seattle, it would be interesting to know why you're making the move.

I completely disagree with this, simply because there is already a fantastic and large hub in London. There's hundreds of startups here already and proximity to VCs, in one of the world's best cities. It makes a lot more sense to build on something that's already strong, and make it stronger.

I think one of the smartest things this Government has done is to recognise that and ignore calls from people outside London to create something elsewhere. But yes, London is frigging expensive. That said, you can live close to, but outside London and it's no more expensive than the other places you mention.

More on UK visa: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/03/17/uk-beats-the-us-to-a-tec...

Agreed, a hybrid of absolute numbers of startup people and density is probably the most appropriate.

Sounds like Chicago has a great community!

But you can't cite bumping into Dave McClure as evidence of anything other than Dave McClure travels, A LOT. ;)

You're right, it's the other way around.

It's not all about funding... it's about the less tangible benefits of being around other entrepreneurs.

FYI, UK introduced a "startup visa" this April.

Look forward to seeing you there!

I think the truth is that the absolute number, along with density are both important. That's why Boulder - apparently 70% more entrepreneurial than Silicon Valley - cannot really claim to be better than SV, which has an entrepreneurial population 15 times larger.

I guess everyone is different, I love silicon valley for many things, the quality of life being one of them (and the weather). Maybe it's just me but I'm from a cold, wet and windy country called Scotland :)

Startups the main game in town; yup, it's a good point, and in Paul's essay he says that Silicon Valley is probably the only place where doing a startup is considered normal. In London it's absolutely not! London has a low density, but still in absolute terms the 3rd largest (by SD subscriber metrics) startup cluster in the world. The fact that startups are not the only game in town is both a positive and a negative. In Silicon Valley there is somewhat of an echo-chamber, and there really isn't anything but tech. London on the other hand is a huge city, the most multicultural on the planet, and can lay claim to being the centre of a number of important industries, including finance, media, music, fashion, etc. If you are doing a startup in any of those sectors Silicon Valley is probably not the most appropriate place to be.

Good question, but i don't think they have. Partly why Eric Schmidt was over here in July doing an event for VCs and angels, the goal was to build closer relationships

Agree all round; it will be great once his fund is up and running. The key thing about it is that they will be doing seed investing, and that's where the greatest need is (and he would argue, the greatest returns). It sounds like they intend to be quite innovative in terms of how they assess deals as well, presumably the intention is to comb the whole of Europe for the best unfunded startups.