thewordpainter

love mixpanel, keep up the great work

love to know how much of the HN community suspected this -- when can we get an instagram poll?? :)

this feels like such a clickbait piece. hope usa today pleases their advertisers.

speaking for where i was born & raised, there is little semblance of crime in the great majority of atlanta. if anything, it feels like it's all coming from a particular lower income county or two.

i'd like to think a guy that has been at the center of the technology beat with some of the best opinions in the biz is a good person to have on the VC side.

twitter is the most powerful tool if used properly. you can cultivate a rapport that can translate into a relationship before you know it...and for companies like ours that are completely outside of the heart of the action, it's allowed us to stay somewhat attached.

agree with the guys above...sounds like a pretty easy solution to me. i think there's a lot of positives that can come from a standing desk. more than anything, it's a much healthier lifestyle than slouching over 10 hours/day.

when 2.4mil are following an account, it's safe to say word will spread :)

feel like i've run into the issue with facebook likes before. have they really not resolved it by now?

love it, mike. you in miami?

as for a simple request, our startup ( http://gorankem.com ) should be getting a nice mashable writeup soon enough tonight in their spark of genius feature.

if you could share that across your networks using the six buttons from the mashable article, i'd really appreciate it!

-adam

^great advice. there's a good chance the business will morph with time so i wouldn't drop anywhere near that kind of money until you've started making money with a product.

actually wrote a quick blog post about this subject as we were battling the issue recently: http://adamwexler.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/why-does-naming-a... it's a bitch-and-a-half to find a great URL these days, but try not to let it get in your way.

yeah, was already planning to pass along the mashable story to other industry specific writers and ask 'em "did you catch our mashable writeup?" and hopefully it could snowball from there.

i know when lifehacker picked us up out of the blue a year ago, a number of random smaller stories resulted from the domino effect.

i'm mainly concerned with how we can make sure the story is just spread across as many channels as possible as it's still fresh.

any message boards or communities that would help spread? (obv HN could be a great source...)

i'm with rick...this is public validation that you were on to something. depending on the resources they have behind them, it's probably too early to throw in the towel...then again, if you take your passion for the concept and apply it to their team, i imagine you'd make a great addition.

been wondering ... how's the job market compare for bizdev types in the valley & SF?

when i'm working from home, i love breaking up my late morning with exercise right before lunch. it allows me to take a step back from the morning work & clear my head. also doesn't hurt for staying in shape!

as for the daily fish oil intake, i am a big fan of tuna fish in oil...if that counts for anything (who says it should be 'ramen-profitable?' tuna fish profitable is more healthy & tasty anyway!)

call me naive, but other than YC & 500 startups, when i think mountain view, i think the startups turned corporations (google, linkedin, etc).

i think mountain view is much more of a family friendly local, compared with SF's younger scene that's always on the go.

i agree with @diego about meetups/networking being a huge asset for all the entrepreneurs trying to get their shit off the ground in SF.

thanks for the heads up. i just wish influential sites like crunchbase were not reliant on compete...

like you acknowledged, i'm not sure how much weight i'd put in brand awareness when many view myspace as a laughingstock these days. plus, all that traffic is ramping downward at a crazy high rate: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myspace.com/

biggest issue i had: ran into the same problem i have on youtube, grooveshark,etc -- i may be able to think of a song or two to play, but then you freeze up and can't think of anything.

you need some kind of reference/resource. that's just another reason we're building http://gorankem.com to do just that as the 'cliffsnotes for the catalogs.'

if we integrated our fan favorites for a particular artist (e.g. http://gorankem.com/artists/66 ) into a turntable room, it'd surely make it easier to find some songs you'd love to toss in the mix.

can somebody help me with some contact info to the turntable team...

from a brand awareness standpoint, facebook is definitely the way to go. if you're trying to drive sales, people are a lot closer to a purchase on google.

you can always pursue press coverage, but that traffic doesn't last so i'd continue to share your progress on places like HN.

i wouldn't exhaust too much money on a google adwords campaign just yet. if you're looking at that though, i often think facebook advertising can be more fruitful because of the ability to segment demographically.

it's an extra click...but like you said, i think it'll become more & more expected with time.

really think so? i think .net is the one that's getting jumped.

another interesting note: i think all these new domains will favor more & more google queries as people just don't know how to find the sites.

more & more, i get the sense that a great % of the b2c startups that achieve critical mass do something 'sneaky' along the way to get over that initial hump.

in facebook's case, the untold story is they basically blasted the university email databases -- how else could you scale a social network when everyone's attention was already so diverted? (i'll give them credit though because plenty of companies have prob tried similar tactics (e.g. uloop comes to mind), but haven't turned it into much)

another semi-related one that stands out is how i've heard the reddit founders originated the conversation from a number of fictitious accounts and once the conversation picked up around them, they just let it take off on a life of it's own.

to a bootstrapped entrepreneur who has literally run himself into the ground to get a b2c venture off the ground in a non-startup town, i can't afford to pay. the situation is made abundantly clear before they step through the door (and when i say door, i mean metaphorically because we don't even have an office...we meet on campus) ... yet, we still have students lining up the 'door' to intern with us every semester cuz we're the sexy opp in town (startup + music).

if i had the money/means/funding, i would have no problem compensating the ones that were bringing value to the table.

this should lead to a subsequent thread though: how should i pay for students workers when the CEO/company has no money coming through? as many credit cards as i can get my hands on?

curt, i'd be all for paying if the money was available. we have operated on a nonexistent budget and made it work.

my only hesitation about bringing money into the equation is i believe it can cloud the focus...and when the going rate around here is free internships, they're fortunately eager to pad their resume & get experience with us

with you on that, peter. big proponent of the collective team effort.

when i implied pitting them against each other, i was trying to imply that hopefully they have motivation to excel at their role instead of letting the dead weight bring them down.

we're on the same page. they understand that the internship lasts a set timeframe. during the fall/spring, it's just an externship to help them boost their resumes. during the summer, they know it ends when they go back to school.

i did a terrible job conveying it earlier, but i am very clear about the expectations up front when i originally sit down with the prospective interns to see if it's a good fit for both parties.

i encourage them to aspire to be indispensable. that's what the former intern that earned his spot did.

i make sure their expectations coming in are understood. unpaid (we tell them to go out and find part-time (or full-time) paid work if money is a necessity). you'll come out with some great experience working with a company that's taking shape. great opportunity to get three strong & unique bullet-points on your resume (compared with the other opportunities in town).

" I suspect your interns know they're not going to get paid, but they should get something out of the deal. Are you giving them individual attention and making an effort to build relationships with these kids?" absolutely. i'm hands-on with everybody. even though their work may tail off towards the end of their experience, the great majority have positive things to say after it's over...in fact, many choose to stay in the loop of our progress.

"Is GoRankem something I should have heard of that I haven't? Yet another benefit could be brand recognition on a resume. " probably not on a real national level to date, but as i truly believe we can offer some of the best 'bullet-points' in town.

thanks for sharing the link. i'll admit i'm not nearly familiar enough with the federal labor laws, but from my undergrad experience, i know it's common practice around here for many of the opportunities to be unpaid.

" Interns generally must be paid if the value of their work to the employer exceeds the value of the training program to the intern--which certainly appears to be the case described in the original post here." How would that be determined? All of the interns choose to work with us over other opportunities because of the hands-on real world experience.

"Anyway, interns who work without pay while possessing computer skills are chumps. In the job market in my town, anyone with serious programming skill can get a paid internship readily at a company with a genuine future--whether that is a start-up or an established big corporation." Athens, GA is a different breed. We are one of the only places in town where these students can get real world ruby experience. It's said, but essentially true.

surprisingly, i don't think it is. it's a nice little resource that IMDB tucks away -- why is the only mention in the bottom footer?

fyi, we've always had our eye on doing something similar with http://gorankem.com (currently just music discovery) ... we could apply our same ranking methodology to tv shows & their episodes, but movies are a different breed.

we compare apples-to-apples (no WALE vs. The Godfather) so if/when we get there, it'll be (e.g.) rank your favorite tarantino films...