spif

Love this idea and also the execution looks well done. Kudo's on the launching customers (how did you land all of those?).

Could this also work as a music curation for in our office? Would save the SONOS battles that can turn ugly pretty quickly.

As a startup founder that recently sold my company, I can totally relate. Right up till the moment I signed the final SPA I thought I would crash and go crazy. Some of the things that helped me through:

1) You are not alone. Most founders will completely sympathize with you and understand your feelings. There are a growing number of founders that are coming out with their stories. Remember pg's articles about the highs and the lows? Also check #3 of YC's survey here: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html

2) It's normal. Knowing that everybody hurts. It's normal that things are hard. If you can acknowledge this one simple fact, things become much easier.

3) Openness. Talking to friends and family and being open about it. The hardest thing I found was to be vulnerable wit those I feared might abuse it (investors, spouse, co-founders). In the end it actually improved everything about my relationships with most of those (and some that it didn't - it showed their true colors). For example with my gf - for her it was an instant revelation how I was feeling and she understood why I was cranky, tired or otherwise distant. After telling her how I felt - it was like instant intimacy.

4) Time out. Taking constructive time out and feeling happy are correlated immensely. Constructive time out is not watching the newest Walking Dead, but for me an effective time out was writing lists of my thoughts down. Taking the time out meant I would feel more in control. Feeling in control directly leads to more peace and happiness.

5) Doing GTD. The other items in the list are somewhat softer but this is one that has made the biggest practical impact. I religiously follow zero inbox and for me it is a something I pride myself in too -> feel better about things and gives me the brainspace to think about the higher level stuff.

Hope that helps. Feel free to email if you want to discuss more. There's much more back story to this than can be public. ;-)

This type of fatigue is usually caused by selfishness and excessive thinking about yourself

Why do you think this is true?

You might be totally right, but it would be a more subliminal egoism, like feeling like a victim and being excessively defensive. I don't think most people will understand why being tired and selfishness are linked. Curious to why you make this causality / correlation.

That's an incorrect overgeneralization. Not all startups are alike, as I'm sure you know.

If the employees get screwed over, then it doesn't sound like they are valued. I see many startups where the employees are super valued assets, get a decent salary AND they do what they love.

Yeah, that's about right.

Your blog is brilliant. Thanks for posting it here. (I realize that's sort of unnecessary but in case you doubt plugging it in the future, don't. It's actually really good.)

One of the cool side effects I'm expecting from christeen starting this is that through her experience she'll understand me better. Looking back I hope she can place into perspective all the ups and downs that startup-life brings.

And I hope I'll be able to understand better what she's going through.

Thanks.

The original idea started in 2006 while I was working with Eight Media, which I had founded together with Daniel Spronk (spazmaster). After hacking away at a prototype for a while we presented our MVP to a live audience in London in 2007. The response was overwhelming, we got serious about it. Found an angel willing to invest.

Then in 2009 Daniel went back to focus on Eight.nl while I kept going with Soocial. Looking back I think it was much harder without Daniel as a co-founder than I expected. It makes such a big difference to have someone there to bounce idea's, make decisions together and just have the support of someone else who's just as involved and committed.

Very much agree with PG's statement that although possible as a single founder, you're chances of success are less.

BTW FYI - I'm the husband. ;-)

Thanks.

There's Stikk (stikk.nl), de Balie, Singel 146, Rokin75, TNW crowd (incl thenextweb.com, twittercounter, paydro), de Waag and Pakhuis de Zwijger and of course Sofa just getting bought (they leave but still... ;-), not to mention all the different places where startups are renting offices together (marvia, cardcloud). I've seen quite a few awesome things (products, people and deals) in A'dam and it's only getting better.

The startup scene _is_ growing into a hub actually, although some elements (e.g. capital) are hard, others easier (hiring, advice).

That feels like an honor coming from you, thanks. Have you been in Amsterdam often?

Actually we are working right now on exactly the above described use case. Let us know if you want a private beta code to help test it (it's in currently in alpha). Email my username @ company name.

Which is why for some reason's it's good to be an entrepreneur outside of California. Recently traveling to the US this was quite a revelation: being in Europe (Amsterdam) can also be a competitive advantage.

Of course you can go about outsourcing in many different ways. We've been baldy burnt with some freelancers and others have been a real blessing. I recently wrote a long history of developing an Outlook plugin here: http://24waystostart.com/2010/frog-driven-development/

I find though that nothing beats being on location with developers in the same room while working on a project. Find someone close by or at least willing to start off the project together on location.

I thought about mentioning that it's debatable whether or not it's an urban legend but decided the analogy would hold in anycase.

If you can stomach frog torture then here's some more background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

The way I interpreted PG's statement is that although (obviously) there are different ROI's for startups the main decision is not _how much_ ROI you make but _if_ you will be able to make any at all.

It's much more important to understand the dynamics at the decision point of investment (like Fred also says) whether or not you invest. Obviously the decision to invest is bimodal (you do or you don't) and you do this depending on what the investor believes the outcome (also bimodal - success or failure) to be.

From an entrepreneurs perspective you don't really care if you make 10x or 3x because at that level it's a success either way.

As Malcolm Gladwell states in (what the dog says):

'Self-conciousness' is the enemy of 'interestingness'

(Yeah, I'm aware that Gladwell uses a lot of anecdotal evidence, still in this case I believe it's correct and exactly what the op says)

Don't forget http://getmarvia.nl

My way of formulating this truth has long been: “It’s doesn’t help being first, if you are very quickly second best.”

But I don’t equate “execution” with “product development”. You can develop the best product on the planet, but if you don’t execute well on everything else (recruitment, communication, cash management, customer insight, investor relations, route to market, etc etc etc) a business will still fail. You have to build the best product AND do everything else right. That’s execution.

Amsterdam, NL also possible? If so ping me on twitter (http://twitter.com/spif).

Ruby dev - Amsterdam, NL

Postgres dev - Amsterdam, NL

C# dev (Outlook plugins) - Amsterdam, NL

Company: http://www.soocial.com

Soocial is a new way to manage your address book(s). Our offices are in a nice old 'grachtenpand' in the city center of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We're a small team of young (<30), crazy and fanatical engineers and designers redefining the address book.

(Telecommuting is possible but we prefer having you on location)

My mostly mouse-less OSX toolbox:

1. SizeUp, small window management tool with keyboard shortcuts

2. QuickSilver

3. Ctrl + tab

4. Things quickentry ctrl + alt + cmd + space (that one is actually very helpfull)

Although this is useful, it still doesn't solve having multiple address books across multiple accounts. Until it is you can use Soocial.com to sync the contacts between them. (Disclaimer: Soocial's my startup.)

Interesting how the failures make it look eerily human. And it seems to me while watching that the robot becomes frustrated when failing. I know it's me projecting that, seems interesting to apply that to human interaction though. How much is projection and how much is real empathy.

Purely out of interest anyone know what in the production process could be causing this?

Mea culpa. I wrote the title from my main take away from the article not the original. Thanks for correcting.

Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

We're looking for an engineer to join our backend development team and work on our architecture and cool new features. (Mostly working with Postgres, Ruby, Queueing systems, AWS and of course Rails.)

Have a great place in the city center of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. it's a permanent on-location job.

No, it's not: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=flotilla

Only just looked up those numbers as per Jacques question. ;-)

Yeah, true. We are looking into l10n and I18n. Right now just under 50% of our users are from the US. There is a seeming correlation between high conversion rates and english speaking countries and this would confirm your point.

In order of highest conversion rates are: New Zealand (1.16%), United States (0.98%), Brazil, Australia, Ireland , UK (all around (0.79%), Singapore, South Africa (around 0.6%) then it levels out.