RoastBeats

There’s a great podcast called Web Masters that actually interviews a lot of the people mentioned in this.

Off the top of my head, I’ve heard episodes with the creators of GeoCities, Links From the Underground, and Usenet just to name a few.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/web-masters/id15300777...

You don't buy it? But here we are... two total strangers with (presumably) no relationship to the University of Alabama, discussing the University of Alabama because of their football program that got their university into the New York Times and onto the homepage of Hacker News.

I guess we can debate whether "positive" equals "positive sentiment" or "positive success in generating brand awareness." However, the fact that this article exists underscores the positive publicity value of the Alabama football program regardless of whether this specific article is good or bad publicity.

In other words, the NYT never writes this article for Sheboygan State University's football program because not enough people care about it (note: it doesn't exist... nor does Sheboygan State... it's just a generic example so I wouldn't offend anyone with the name of a real university).

In contrast, people care about the University of Alabama's football program, which results in people caring about the University of Alabama.

Am I the only cynic who wonders if the original “mistake” was fabricated?

It doesn’t really cost YC anything extra, they get lots of good press and praise, and ultimately they wind up with an even fatter pipeline of companies they can select from. Win, win, win situation as far as they’re concerned.

I use Streak (a YC company, I believe), which has email open tracking built in. It's meh... gets the job done, I guess, but it's not really their focus. I definitely use it more for the CRM component.

Haven't heard of RocketBolt. I'll check that out.

I think Hubspot has something. Was it called Sidekick? I can't find anything about it anymore.

Have to agree with Neutronicus here. The prevailing example would be the "But I'll never get into med school/law school if you don't raise my B+ to an A-" argument which I hear at least three times a semester.

This gives us two solutions. First, is to convince naive kids that it's OK to be something other than a lawyer or doctor. Seriously, any students reading this comment, pay attention: There are plenty of other wonderful (and lucrative) professions in the world. If you genuinely care about medicine or law, you should certainly pursue those degrees. But if you're only concerned with career earnings and/or prestige, well, I have plenty of out-of-work lawyer friends.

Second, the academic industry (and it is an industry) needs to place less emphasis on grading and more on education.

I can hear the objections now: "Wait... you mean schools don't emphasize education?" Sigh... we'll save that for another discussion.

As a college-level instructor (with a PhD in those -- gasp -- liberal arts), might I suggest two things?

First, the critical thinking I learned reading poetry better prepared me for business management, web development, and entrepreneurship than any of my Chemistry courses (I was also a Chemistry minor in Undergrad). I'd be happy to go into the details, but this doesn't seem like the forum for that explanation.

And second, again, as an instructor, one of the bigger problems in the humanities is grade inflation and a sense of entitlement to A's. Whereas in a Calculus class, grading is much easier to quantify (i.e. get X number of questions right on a test, end up with Y grade), grading papers is a less standardized practice. The result is overwhelming grade inflation (I can't tell you the number of students I have who quite literally break down in tears when they receive B's). Perhaps both the utility of humanities degrees and the propensity for being willing to challenge oneself in a STEM course would be increased if getting higher grades wasn't perceived as being easier in the humanities.

I've often found myself thinking evite is way too spammy. Plus, a lot of times, it seems like overkill. This looks like a good alternative for just catching up with friends (which happens a lot more than me hosting parties).

Looking forward to checking it out.

While I realize it's not a "flashy" project in terms of "look how much fun you can have with this app" or "look how it can streamline your workflow," I like its utility. Every time I look around my condo, I can't help but think "I really need to do a better job of recording my assets in case something happens and I need to file a report with my insurance company. So in that sense, anything that makes it easier for me to do that would come in handy.

But I'm not sure you give that need enough emphasis in your CTA's. I don't really see anything on the homepage (which is where it's going to be most important) about needing to document this stuff for my insurance company. As far as I can tell, that's pretty much the number one reason, right? Perhaps you could even play off the same basic cautionary desires that make us buy insurance in the first place. For example, I know the chances of my condo burning down are incredibly slim, but I still spends hundreds of dollars insuring all my stuff as a "just in case." Why not play on that? Why not have messaging that reminds people that they're doing it for the "just in case"?

You mention you've got a full time job and this is a sort of side project, but you might also consider reaching out to some insurance companies to see if you could get some sort of "Seal of Approval." Right now, I don't know if your product would be an approved means of categorizing assets for my insurance company, but if I saw State Farm's logo (and All-State, or whoever) right there on the homepage, I, as your consumer, would get that immediate warm-fuzzy feeling of being extra secure (even if having those logos come with all sorts of caveats about not guaranteeing claims, necessary comprehensive documentation, etc, etc.)