tsondermann

I don't think there's anyone writing better, more actionable advice on this particular transition than Michael Lopp at http://randsinrepose.com

I'd read everything on that site.

Excellent execution on a much needed product. We love it.

Bookmarking this for the next time I hear the "iPad is for consumption not creation" argument. ;)

I can speak to the specifics of last summers class at Betaspring (our first class), if anyone here is interested. tsondermann at betaspring

I'm the Program Director for one of the accelerators on the list and @jkaljundi's advice is spot on. The only thing I would add would be to seek out alums of the various programs to get a feel for how each one works. They all have distinctive personalities, find one that suits you well.

Were it only a logo change, I'd say much ado about nothing. It's the watermark that's raising hackles. TC piece misses this entirely. See here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shellen/3951018593/

The HN Onepage Greasemonkey script. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30512

Allows me to load pages in a separate frame and then vote and/or comment on them. Saves me the trouble of loading up 15 tabs and forgetting to vote up the stories that I like.

Well done app. Adding to my list of "what do we call this thing and is the domain available" list. Thanks.

They did email the whole list immediately. I received the same exact apology email minutes after the first came out.

Despite the fact that it was clearly a (now properly formatted) form email, it was still nice to see that they had realized the mistake and quickly took action in a self-effacing manner. Good on them.

Really nicely done app. Fits well in between eventbrite and manually organizing things yourself.

One thing I'd think about in terms of increasing conversions would be to allow people to test drive the process of Creating An Event without the need to set up an account. You can always gather that info later on in the process.

FF is becoming the Betamax to Twitter's VHS. Superior tech, more feature-rich, yet doomed to obsolescence/niche status as Twitter rides the wave of mass appeal.

I agree that it is incredibly hard and decidedly non-trivial to try to replicate the model.

I suppose it depends on what you define as success. For us success will hinge on the number of companies we launch in Providence. We know that many will fail, but our hope is that by launching 20 (or so) companies a year we'll be able to accelerate what is already a small but thriving startup scene.

One could argue that Techstars has been invaluable in placing Boulder on the startup map. And I think we're just starting to see the same thing come out of Bootup Labs in Vancouver.

Success (for us) is just as much tied to our love of Providence as it is to decent returns for our investors.

I'm the Program Director for Betaspring. We will be offering funding in our next round. We've soft-launched this summer with a few local teams to prove the model will work here in Providence.

Our hope is that we'll attract smart, talented people to the city to help support the burgeoning technology/design scene that we currently have.

We're rolling. (I'm the program director). Started out small this summer with 7 companies with plans to increase to a dozen in our next round.

Of course I'm biased, but I'm not sure I'd call us a rip-off. We make no bones about the fact that we are attempting to replicate a model that has been shown to be extremely successful in other cities.

I'm helping Betaspring in Providence RI get off the ground. http://betaspring.com. There's also Bootup Labs in Vancouver, Junto Partners in Salt Lake City, Good Company Ventures (for social enterprise) and DreamIt in Philly , Next Start in Greenville, Alphalab in Pittsburgh.

Sorry if I broke some unwritten rule here. Link was going around twitter and I know some folks that work there.

Believed the story was something HN readers would appreciate.