trizk

IE does not inherently support WebSockets, so apps with worker threads will block. You can support WebSockets in IE clients using this hack:

http://bit.ly/irM6XV

I wonder if you could hook something like Mvyu media viewer glasses to an iPhone or Android TTS app.

It should be noted that they have not really raised any equity capital. The $1M are pre-orders for the iPod Nano watch, and hence is revenue. In this sense, Kickstarter is ingeniously being used as a platform for virally marketing the product (concept) and as a sales channel. Kudos to them for their success.

http://www.khanacademy.org/ (no affiliation)

Check out "wkhtmltopdf", I think it has a library to take a screenshot.

If you own, try to rent out your house and then rent a cheaper place closer to work. If you rent, try to move closer to work. If you live in a city you might be able to do without a car. Also, if you have an extra room, you can try renting it out or listing on airbnb (no affiliation). The point is that sometimes you can find low-bandwidth opportunities to make or save a little extra cash on the side.

A self programming, learning computing machine.

Man, I feel you, you are not alone. It seems to me that you are a "builder". An entrepreneur with the foresight and technical capacity to make great things. But both your superiors and peers are standing in your way. Turning the beautiful and fulfilling art of creating technology into a political battle and minefield. Leave, now. It is not your company, they don't own you, and you don't owe them anything. Build your war-chest. Only with your own resources will you be free to innovate.

Follow up question: Any startups using Scala?

Based on my observation, some heavy hitters are using Scala in production, but the learning curve is high and development time is slower that PHP, RoR or Python.

He would have wanted you to move onward and succeed. In fact, that is the only way to do his memory justice.

I think the op mentioned that the investor wants a majority stake. Otherwise, I agree assuming that you know your co-founder well enough that s/he dose not collude with the investor to oust you.

The only problem with this strategy is that 30% may leave you with nothing as the majority owner drives the company into the ground or fires you prior to vesting. You would be in a worse situation than 0 because you would have invested your time and energy. As entrepreneurs, we all know how demanding a start-up is. To be swindled is just not an acceptable result of effort.

Edit: spelling

Never give away control of your company for money. If the investor had your vision he would have built it without you. What is going to happen is you are going to fight over the direction of the company until it ultimately fails. The is especially true in equal partnerships. Disagreement quickly leads to stalemate.

The amount of money and valuation are extremely low. Show him examples of funded companies in your space (see CrunchBase) and talk about typical startup valuations based on your space and how far along you are (maybe $1M to $5M). Offer him an investment opportunity of a maximum of 20% of the company for the money he is putting in. That should bring your valuation to roughly $1.5M which is still fairly low and keep you in control of the company for this round and the next.

In order of preference:

1) GeoTrust 2) Comodo 3) Thawte

Although many cert providers tout wide browser acceptance, you may find discrepancies in production. Be careful. GeoTrust has excellent customer service, decently priced certs, and an automated/expedited process. No affiliation.

As a very senior (and hopefully talented) software engineer, you should be getting a fairly decent paycheck. Here two workable options, bound to get you the result you want, with a degree of risk: 1) Save money while working on "side-projects" at home. If and when one of them take off you should be able to fund through early growth 2) Join a very small, interesting start-up and take a relative pay cut for equity. If the start-up grows you will naturally assume a technical leadership role such as Director or CTO.

Dan can you elaborate? If the board is company leaning with say 3 of 4 seats for the founders and 1 investor, how can a founder be fired unless in the unlikely scenario that the other two vote against him/her?

An interesting (albeit fictional) movie to watch on this topic is "The First $20M is always the hardest". Yes, you have to give away equity to get funded. But if you are asked for a controlling stake early in the game, then you are being setup for a big letdown.

Also, although convertible notes are very fashionable these days, consider your position if and when you need another round of financing. You may very well be forced into a bad deal under the threat of liquidation to pay your creditors with the company IP. On the other side of the table your investors got you to pour your blood, sweat and tears into the company as well as the financing, and they ended up with 100%. This is not to say that all VCs are bad, or even most. Rather, that is the substantial risk of a convertible note.

"I realized I only enjoy software if I'm building what I want to build"

You sound like an entrepreneur to me. Find something you want to build, and build it. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I have long found this gentleman's libraries to be visually appealing, easy to integrate and generally top notch:

http://www.maani.us/charts/index.php

However, they are XML configured flash.

I wonder if anyone who has ever been acquired has felt mistreated in a possible effort to get them to leave and forgo shares before they vested, and what they have done about it, if so?

This is awesome. Upvoted.

You can probably use a website such as http://bizfilings.com to incorporate Delaware C-Corp. No affiliation.

Dont make 100 websites. Optimize this one. SEO and compelling content. There are plenty sites that can help you with SEO if you Google for them. There was even someone in the community offering services pro-bono. But do also make your website more compelling/attractive. Integrate some value added service if they give you your email. Like a high scores page or newsletter. See if you can't make the games multiplayer and get some competition going.

Yep. I quit. (and launched a start-up)

Aarrgghhh. I am getting beaten by down votes. For what its worth Vienna is beautiful.

The offer to pay me a $200 brokers fee to connect you with this amazing opportunity is still open.

Advertisement: Room to let in Vienna, Austria

Big 3 bdr. apartment to share with exotic Vienna couple

* 40 minutes to where the Brat lives. * 3 hours to Prague, Budapest. * A couple of more hours to other places you may have never heard of but should definitely see.

$200 Brokers fee only.

Edit: Re down voting. Sense of humor... anyone?

While I do not think that they are spam, I think that the trend will eventually have a negative impact on the community. If you eat too much chocolate you will get sick of chocolate.

It could be that you just need to stick with it longer. If you are not out of funds, keep refining your product and trying to market it. Thats what I would do.

I think it depends on both yours and your spouses contribution to taking care of the child. It also depends what number child you are on like ericb said. The first child is always the hardest and can be a distraction for a couple of months. After those couple of months, and even if you have more children the distraction becomes a need to support your family over your startup. If you can fund your startup and your family without making them suffer, AND you have a supportive spouse in terms of the hours you have to put into your startup, then you are all set.

Edit: I just noticed your user name is kia, so there is a high probability that you are female. Although it is not exactly "right" it is "traditionally" expected for a woman to be more of a contributor to taking care of the child than the man. Thus, it depends greatly on your spouses willingness to forgo gender bias and help you. I would suggest that you be very open and thorough in your communication about how you will share the responsibilities of the child.

Looking for funding has forced us to shift focus from developing our product to courting investors. It is such a waste of precious time. I would love to see a collaborative list, such as a spreadsheet on Google Docs, of less than well known investors.