Ask HN: Founders taking the leap?

Posted by riskish on Friday June 11, 2010 @08:25PM
from the ask-hn dept.

I've been to events here and there, and I have found that the ycombinator community represents the web start up mind set very well better than most places. I wanted to start this thread as a way to exchange instant messaging addresses (IM) with founders that are just now taking the leap to start a web start up with their own experience. This can be a good way to stay motivated and help one another.

( 32 comments | 36 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by DTrejo on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:10PM (#1425404)

hang out with us on #startups on freenode :)

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by harnhua on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:58AM (#1425631)

Went full-time last August to work on an FPGA test/design tool http://www.plunify.com

Probably sounds very focused ;) but there are so many things that can be done in this space.

Feel free to message me at harnhua (at) gmail (dot) com

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by bdickason on Saturday June 12, 2010 @09:59AM (#1425993)

Call me stupid but what'an FPGA application? You reference it tons of times on your site. Is it one of those things where if we don't know what it is, the software probably isn't for us?

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by jallmann on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:03AM (#1425590)

Will be working on my startup fulltime come August. It is a twilio for video calls, basically. If anyone is interested in the telephony or the video space, I'd love to talk. Gtalk is joshua.allmann

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by markbao on Saturday June 12, 2010 @12:08AM (#1425526)

Hi! I'm building a bunch of businesses, like http://genevine.com , http://branchr.com and http://supportbreeze.com. Get in touch - [email protected] email+msn, marktbao on AIM, @markbao.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by corruption on Saturday June 12, 2010 @12:16AM (#1425536)

Mark, a little advice. Focus is underrated and oh-so-powerful. Pick one. I'd choose branchr.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by astrofinch on Saturday June 12, 2010 @02:39AM (#1425659)

I disagree. My intuition is that if Mark was to focus on only one of his startups, it would only become about twice as successful. I think it makes sense to work on them all simultaneously if they all seem equally promising.

Mentions of the "80/20 principle" make me wince, because both 80 and 20 are stated with 2 significant figures too many. But the idea behind it--"there's a lot of variation in the effectiveness of activities you classify as 'work'"--is correct. If Mark does just the most promising tasks for each startup, he'll be doing pretty damn good.

Your comment is a good example of a HN user suggesting a simple heuristic for answering an important question, which I find annoying. Another example would be Paul Graham's advice to make a product that scratches your own itch. Your domain expertise should definitely be a factor when choosing between two startup ideas, but I could probably think of three other factors that are at least as important.

I guess I could live with the simple heuristics if they were accompanied by detailed justifications explaining why they're better than most conceivable complex heuristics, but they never seem to be. Simple heuristics are sometimes correct, but there are so many people spouting simple heuristics just because they like simplicity that simple heuristics have a large burden of proof to overcome, in my mind at least.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by NEPatriot on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:23PM (#1426249)

YC batches startups. Why can't we batch our MVPs? See what looks the most promising, shelf the others and go for it?

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by corruption on Saturday June 12, 2010 @03:27AM (#1425706)

Parsimony.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by astrofinch on Saturday June 12, 2010 @03:01PM (#1426369)

Why is parsimony good?

- Simpler principles make better mantras.

- Occam's razor--all else equal, you should assume the world is simple.

I can't think of anything else.

Both of those considerations seem weak compared to other factors.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by cmelbye on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:46AM (#1425625)

I'd pick Supportbreeze (if any picking needs to be done). Support needs to be fixed.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by auston on Saturday June 12, 2010 @12:41AM (#1425557)

Focus is not underrated, it's under-utilized! And I would pick genevine!

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by vaksel on Saturday June 12, 2010 @12:45AM (#1425563)

focus is overrated early on, but yes once you find the one project that is an obvious success, you should try to focus on that 100% full time

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by markbao on Saturday June 12, 2010 @12:43AM (#1425559)

Thanks! That's a concern I have as well.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by bdickason on Friday June 11, 2010 @09:05PM (#1425307)

I'm building Salon Software at http://getmochi.com

My AIM: its495time My MSN: [email protected] My Twitter: @flashmen

Would love to talk to ANYONE especially people building subscription-based software for industries that are 'sleepy' or slow to adopt tech.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by kranner on Saturday June 12, 2010 @07:10AM (#1425844)

Hey, I'm working on http://codeboff.in. It's just a landing page for now but there's a blog at http://blog.codeboff.in.

My IM is [email protected].

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by eduardo_f on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:31PM (#1426263)

I quit my job 3 weeks ago to work on a Gmail migration app. It's in beta:

https://apps.improffice.com/migrationbeta/

Get in touch @123Edu, eduardo at improffice dot com

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by lachyg on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:19PM (#1425418)

I'm working on a project, bringing front end code to unsavvy designers, I've got the guy who designed SimpleGeo's site doing design work, but I'm looking for a technical co-founder

AIM: lachygroomgle (don't ask!) gTalk: [email protected]

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by guiseppecalzone on Friday June 11, 2010 @09:50PM (#1425382)

I'm building HelloFax.com.

You can ping me at joseph (at) hellofax.com.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by acangiano on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:35PM (#1425450)

Looks great. One suggestion: create a desktop client for less tech-savvy people. All they have to do then is right-click that word document, and select "HelloFax it!" (or "Send it as a fax").

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by guiseppecalzone on Saturday June 12, 2010 @10:26PM (#1426863)

Thanks for the feedback! That's an awesome thought. Makes me think of oneway: http://goto11.net/oneway/. If you need to fax and run out of pages, ping me and I'll refill your account.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by lachyg on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:20PM (#1425423)

Love the site! Feel free to connect with me if you're ever wanting a hand sometime in the future :) Got my details above (or below!)

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by guiseppecalzone on Saturday June 12, 2010 @10:33PM (#1426869)

Thanks for the offer of support! Feel free to contact me if you need a hand as well. Perhaps we could find a way to help each other out. Where are you based?

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by acangiano on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:13PM (#1425411)

http://ThinkCode.TV is the first project of my startup and it's not a web application, but feel free to get in touch. My IM is [email protected].

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by Tawheed on Saturday June 12, 2010 @12:19AM (#1425538)

I'm quitting my day job to work full time on http://braintrusthq.com and http://toutapp.com.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by zakkap on Saturday June 12, 2010 @01:23AM (#1425612)

originality goes a long way... try not to rip off 37signals' http://basecamphq.com/ website so closely.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by Todd on Saturday June 12, 2010 @04:15AM (#1425733)

I understand your point, but they don't own the hq suffix. I see many sites these days with the join or get prefix. The fact is, as any of you know who've spent the hours at your favorite domain query tool, it's getting near impossible to find anything. I see more sites using dashes or resorting to .net, .org, or .me (myself included). It's just the current state of things.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by bdickason on Saturday June 12, 2010 @10:00AM (#1425996)

Very cool! What kind of revenues are you seeing?

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by mindcrime on Friday June 11, 2010 @08:39PM (#1425269)

Does it have to be a web startup? :-) How about an enterprise software startup? Anyway, my IM address is [email protected] (XMPP/GTalk).

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by ryanhuff on Friday June 11, 2010 @09:41PM (#1425366)

...or mobile start-up. Really, just about any software driven start-up would be a fit.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by bdr on Saturday June 12, 2010 @12:56AM (#1425579)

Cut off everything else and became full-time in May. Building a chat site. Contact @andrewbadr on Twitter or gmail in my profile.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders taking the leap? by voidfiles on Friday June 11, 2010 @09:33PM (#1425352)

I am building http://wacchen.com

My IM is: [email protected]

[ Parent | on HN ]