ahizzle

Out of curiousity, have you tried doing something on your own that you were not passionate about? I know that my efforts when my heart wasn't totally "in to it" felt really... crappy. Despite all of my best efforts and intentions.

Passion is the fuel that you burn when attempting a startup. If you run out of passion, you run out of gas... and it's hard to get far when you've got no gas.

Dig?

Agree that you should pursue this one harder...

You have a nice "inside track" by already being in the industry... and it's quite likely that you're very passionate about this topic, which will come through once you...

...Consolidate your pitch to more tightly communicate the opportunity, the problem in solving the opportunity, and how your product fixes that problem. (Preferably in a way that works better than existing solutions/semi-solutions. ;)

Remember, you've got to put your salesman hat on when making your case for a product like this. What was the principle objection your potential customers raised when declining your proposed solution? ie: Why didn't they like the fact that the end-user has to pay?

Is there a way to shift that cost elsewhere while maintaining the integrity of the system?

Have you listed all of your assumptions with that solution and thought of ways to test and prove/disprove each one?

Just be glad you guys don't live in Canada (at least not when it comes to wireless data ;). One of the larger providers up here, Telus, charges $30/month for 500mb and $65/mo for 5 gigs... and that's all ON TOP of whatever your actual wireless plan is. Yick.

Absolutely. Also seems a little strange to not give back to the community such basic information, after it's done so much for him.

Maybe there's a competitive reason he's not divulging, or he's just too darn busy? ;)

(I'd love to know, too)

I don't think you can assign the highly socially outgoing (as you described here) as "regular" people. They're outliers just as nerds are. I'd wager that most people just "get by" in varying degrees... though how you would prove or disprove my hypothesis, I have no idea :)

I don't suppose you would know who offers a similar sort of service for Canadian based companies...?

I discovered his material at a very young age as well and found it absolutely fascinating. I learned an awful lot thanks to his writing...

Is there anywhere we could properly express thanks/condolences to the family? (If not... Is that a YC startup?) :)

One of the very noticeable things I've observed, and I'm sure someone else has already blogged about this, is that if you're doing something "new" people will hate on it because it can't be done... but if you're doing something that sounds like it's already been "done", you'll get hated on because you shouldn't bother doing it.

Really it boils down to being able to differentiate hater-ade from constructive criticism.

Yes, but for thousands of years there hasn't been an Internet with bloggers detailing this sort of thing for the rest of the world. :)

I was commenting less on the haggling aspect and more on the team-based shill/forced-reciprocity system.

Great article. I wonder if rug merchants will have to adapt now that their tactics are getting wider exposure?

The "best practice" bit is priceless.

CSS would become so much easier to learn (and teach!) with a tool like this.

Actually, "would" should probably be "will", since this tool is so useful.