yoseph

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the "growth hacking" guys in this story.

Personally, I don't see this as an accurate description of what happened. We were seriously considering sendwithus and were looking at how to integrate their product. We talked a few times (maybe 4 times?) and definitely saw the value of what they were doing and where they were going.

We also were very transparent about the features we needed to move forward and they gave us a fair time range for when they could deliver them. Originally, we were comfortable with the timeline. Of course, you sometimes want things to be built yesterday and we happened to come across Vero which had all the requested functionality already built. That's what caused the switch.

Hope that clarifies things and honestly, I'm disappointed by the above comment. Anyone who's built something from nothing knows the hustle required and sometimes you have to risk annoying people to prove there's value in what you're doing. There are many examples of this. Here's the most recent one I've seen: HotelTonight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EER3rdWXbNk).

Everything's easier said than done...

I can. Here are three: Salesforce. Amazon. Google.

Their ambition isn't limited to the song meanings / annotations market. They wouldn't have raised $15m on that. Look at how they're branching out. PoetryGenius, NewsGenius, etc. They want to annotate the world's information.

That's a huge market and with RG's excellent execution so far (everyone has missteps - remember that), it warrants a $15m bet.

Wow, that is an awesome landing page. Kudos.

Works fine for me, but it would be great to be able to adjust the line height of the text.

if you have a billion dollar idea or even a million dollar idea, you shouldn't worry about "burning" contacts. You'll have plenty of other people to test with.

If people have enough of a pain point, they'll happily use a google doc. Look at Craigslist. It's god-farking-awful (worse than a google doc), but people still use it to find apartments...

Let me ask you a question. What is the number one thing you need to test to prove the viability of this idea?

You didn't listen to what he said...

He said that you should test it while dedicating minimal resources. In this case, a Google Doc spreadsheet could do the trick. It's a great piece of advice.

Why spend multiple weekends working on building a prototype when you could start testing the idea's viability (virtually) straight away?

Hey, I'm a product manager at Wave. Would love to learn how we can do a better job. Could you shoot me an email? yosephATwaveaccounting.com

Is it weird that I read the title as, "Google Acquihires VirusTotal"?

edit: no disrespect to the VT team. Congrats to them!

Reading the first few sentences, I thought you were going to criticize the media for playing into the "Apple will fail without Steve"-bit.

I don't know what will happen at Apple, but I don't like lynch mobs. Give Tim Cook a chance... These are very minor items.

$180k is an exorbitant figure. I would question his motives 100%.

A CEO at your stage should be someone who is deeply involved with building and selling the product/business (at this stage, your business is your product). What responsibilities do you envisage him having? Also, how much equity is he looking for?

I'm a FounderFuel alum and I can say with certainty that the data isn't complete. From the first cohort alone, around $2.5m has been raised so far. They're now about to start their third cohort in August.

I always struggle with this when running between meetings. Looking forward to trying it out!

The messaging on your landing page is very unfocused. As a potential customer, you're asking me to do way too much work to understand your value prop. The benefit to me should be instantly identifiable. A feature is not a benefit...

Happy to chat if you'd like to discuss. Email in profile.

Disagree. Love what I do but it's not all puppies and lollipops. Things can (and do) go wrong on a regular basis and you have to learn how to deal with that reality.

I went through FounderFuel as part of their first cohort and couldn't speak more highly about the team there and the program.

Feel free to reach out if you want to chat. Email is in profile.

Btw, Hi Ben!

Yeah, I agree but have you tried an android phone? Pretty much requires that you sign up for a Google account to maximize its functionality...

You don't really get a sense for engagement until your product is being used on a large scale. That's the true test for engagement. That's why distribution should come first.

Have a read of this recent BusinessWeek article: http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/24762-on-diaspo...

They're still going and actually were just accepted into YC.

Round again we go...

It's so disappointing to watch...

But it's not a bubble if we're able to tell it's a bubble, right?

Great feedback! Thanks.

We're definitely going to add more detail to our backtesting page, as you suggested. Just so you know, the maximum number of holdings over the past ten years was 31.

Keep in touch with us! We'd definitely like to get your opinion once we've updated the page. What's your email? Mine is yoseph at vuru.co

Clickable: http://www.vuru.co

I didn't say it did...

Just looking on the http://sprouter.com/answers homepage, here's a taste...

Dan Martell - Flowtown, Aaron Patzer - Mint, Micah Baldwin - Graphic.ly, Mark Suster - GRP Partners

Quora isn't just for entrepreneurs... E.g. http://www.quora.com/Charlie-Sheen-Meltdown-February-March-2...

So the net benefit of me participating in this community is...? Making entrepreneurial friends?

Good on you for getting things up and running.

But what's the use case?

Isn't there a danger of amateur entrepreneurs giving bad advice? Why wouldn't I use Sprouter.com? It's Quora for Entrepreneurs and they have some of the best web entrepreneurs on there waiting to answer questions.

Sorry if I'm seeming harsh. As an entrepreneur, I'd genuinely like to know how I can leverage this tool to my benefit, before I sign up.

"Is the word “Startup” meaningless? If so, why and does its loss of meaning really matter? If not, what does it mean now?"

I don’t think its meaningless, but I do think its meaning has somewhat been cheapened. The issue is that people are quick to lump early stage companies all into the same boat. There are many different segments within it. We just don’t have words that properly describe those segments.

For example, a startup that is ramen profitable is not on the same level as 3 guys setting out to build an minimum viable product. That sounds pretty obvious, but I would bet that a lot of people would say they are both startups.

IMHO, it’s not a startup until you have product/market fit. Until then, it’s an interesting project you’re working on with the intention of turning it into something real.

That’s the approach we’ve taken. In the past month or so, we’ve achieved product/market fit and have officially upgraded ourselves from an interesting project we’re all passionate about to a startup we’re all passionate about.

Admittedly, this was more of an internal perspective, but perhaps this is the type of approach that should be taken.

Link to the startup, not the blog post: http://www.sprixi.com

Interesting idea. It sounds cool.

My only piece of feedback would be about the name. When I first read the title of this post, I thought your company was a mentoring service.

TripAdvisor and Where I've Been certainly sound like travel apps.

Are you subversive at all? Anti-establishment?

If not, change your name. No one wants to check out a site that reminds them of Ben Stiller ripping his ball sack with the zip to his fly. Honestly, I'm cringing just thinking about it.