geoffclapp

I'd be glad to answer any questions people have about Jason as an investor and share my experience. He was involved in my second startup - the first was very successful, the second was a failure.

I had a great experience with Jason, even though the startup was shutdown. That shutdown was where Jason showed his true colors - he was always there, had great ideas, and was super supportive. When we did shut it down, the first phone call I got was from Jason, checking in. I still have the message in my voicemail.

After that, he continued to keep in touch and keep me "in the family". He had 100's of investments he could have been spending time on, but he never forgot. The idea that he is not founder-friendly boggles my mind. He's incredibly human.

I'm sure when you invest as much as he has, he has some things in the past he'd like to take back - hell, I know I do as an entrepreneur - but I can say he's on the list of people who I'd love to work with again and again.

It's amazing how many of us had the same emotion, about not wanting to let down or disappoint Steve Jobs. Much of what you said is echoed in my own post, about being at Apple when Steve came back, and him shutting down our project (and feeling no anger, but sadness and disappointment). This isn't linkbait, just nice to know someone else felt the same way: http://geoffclapp.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-steve-jobs-story.h...

The reply from LivingSocial is disappointing; the defense of the issue as "well, you don't know what we know" may be true, but doesn't make much sense on the surface. How can that be good for a company, given the buying public doesn't know those things either?

A more reasonable response, that would have been more believable, would have been something like "We have read the studies and want to work with the researchers to share our data on retention, engagement, and (whatever), as we think there are pieces of this complex problem missing from the analysis" - even better, point out if the researchers didn't reach out to them.

After the Groupon fiasco, both companies need to embrace a more open, transparent process (and communication style) if they want to change the perception of their market space.

One of the nicest parts of this is the client focus - the idea that you can send a build with BugHerd optimized in to make the issue easier to describe. With the plethora of consumer apps, great idea, but also in enterprise verticals like healthcare, where the users are experts, but not at computers/browsers/technology. For that reason alone - awesome - this would have saved us person-weeks of work, and even in some cases, plane tickets.

Good example from Launch Live Blog, here: http://launch.is/blog/live-blogging-500-startups-demo-day-au...

1:38pm: Same scenario of sending client the build, but BugHerd is installed. The client clicks new issue, types in the name of problem rather than sending email. BugHerd knows their browser, time they created the issue. BugHerd plays nice with others, over 1,400 users.

1:37pm: Matt of BugHerd takes the stage and says he had difficulty communicating with clients about bugs. Could spend hours trying to figure out what client is talking about -- not time that you can bill.

Although all companies go through litigation, this is starting to feel more and more like the same process Microsoft went through with IE - core business, varied legal action at state, federal, and international level, and business practices that can be painted as suspect, with lots of small business owners that can be put into the press as victims. Add into that a press-worth corporate tagline of "Do no evil", and this will, over time, get a fair amount of attention.

Could this be the Achilles heel for Google? The Microsoft lawsuit was a huge drain of both cash, brand, an intellectual capital from the company. It will be interesting to see if this series of litigation has a similar effect.

@Jason - might be good to take a look at the comments/frustrations on hackathons in this thread to get some ideas as well of what people liked/didn't like.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2240226

First, the answer is an absolute yes. Hackathon would be great. I would rather do that all night the first night than go to a party (realizing, of course I just posted this on the internet, and now look amazingly lame). I think the two most important things are internet access (which you have covered) and good working space - for example, folding tables, chairs, and powerstrips are more than fine (in fact, we can bring our own of the later), but places we can sit next to each other will be key.

And energy drinks.