jiffylu

Does anyone have a list of lawmakers who are supporting SOPA?

I accidentally tweeted it. I didn't notice that the tweet button was checked as I published it. No one follows that blog except for a few close friends.

San Francisco, CA

Dailyaisle.com - www.dailyaisle.com http://dailyaisle.tumblr.com/

We are in the 500 Startups Summer accelerator class and are looking for talented front-end developers or designers. This is a great opportunity to join a startup at the ground floor and learn how to start and scale a company. Not to mention, you will be able to network with the 500 Startups mentors.

We are looking to hire both interns and full-time positions.

Similar to http://www.synchtube.com/

This seems right up USV's alley too. Marketplaces and platforms.

If I remember correctly, USV didn't exactly pass, but made a play around the time Sequoia did.

Your monetization strategy should be... if you're calling at&t about a service issue, verizon could pay to be notified with the opportunity to respond to the call first and win your business.

Kayak-

I think the biggest difference is the funding environment. In a way, it's a networks effect problem.

There are consumer Internet companies that made it big in the valley, in the process, creating millionaires who "get" consumer Internet. They then go on to create or fund other consumer Internet companies.

Meanwhile, in Boston, there hasn't been a significant consumer Internet exit.. at all? (Wow, I can't think of one right now) So the promising consumer Internet businesses and talent in Boston, who can't find the seed funding or the mentorship, move out to the valley.

I personally don't understand Bryce's action. If he doesn't believe in social proof, he should just invest independent of who else is investing. It seems a bit drastic to leave the service.

Also, Angel List doesn't push any investment philosophy, it just gives investors access to deals. As an investor, I would think that access to deal and information flow would be valuable assets.

I would try reaching out to the founders of these companies. They will recognize your email right away as a customer development effort and will sympathize with your cause since they were in your shoes one before.

One thing I've done in the past is just show up. I've found that people are more defensive on the phone since the only time we get calls from people we don't know is sales calls. Show up, ask to speak to them for 2 minutes if they are free and set up a meeting at a future time. If they aren't free, leave a handwritten note.

So... they own the stories we create? I was going to say, this would be a great way to write open source text books but not if Neovella owns the content.

"2. Copyright. The content, organization, graphics, design, and other matters related to and created in Neovella are protected under applicable copyrights and other proprietary laws, including but not limited to intellectual property laws. The copying, reproduction, use, modification or publication by you of any such matters or any part of Neovella is strictly prohibited, without our express prior written permission."

This article is more about if you were in Groupon's shoes could you have done the following...

Yes. I think I could build my own Groupon... in fact hundreds of people have and many are quite profitable.

Could I build it to scale? Could I build a sustainable business that will be there for the long haul or be significant enough to be acquired? Could I find an untapped niche that the group buying biz model could exploit?

The writer doesn't even list many accomplishments and the barriers to entry that Groupon has created (besides capital and what access to capital buys you i.e. PR, buying competitors, buying super bowl ads.

He should have said... Could you compete against Groupon's salesforce? Could you compete with their ever decreasing cost of customer acquisition? Could you compete with their high gross margins while you are forced to cut your margins to compete?

Does anyone know how much it costs them to acquire a new number? In other words, every time a user creates a new group, they are assigned a number. How much does that cost GroupMe?

Yeah I heard they were heavily targeting CMU. Here are some pictures of the new offices.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-pittsburgh-office-2011...

Mark is right to point out that each geographic region has its advantages. Places like Boston may not be known for home runs in the consumer space but because of MIT, it's been known to produce some heavy tech winners (A123 systems, ITA, kiva)

There's also a reason why Google has offices in Seattle, Boston, NYC, and soon, Pittsburgh. Hiring is tough in the valley and there's an abundance of talent elsewhere.

If you want to innovate on web technology, the valley is the place to be. If you want to innovate on business models, content, or heavy technology (to name a few) there are other places where you can thrive.

Mint used a combination of paid search and SEO/blogging strategy to get their first couple thousand users.

Dave McClure and Noah Kagan worked on that for over a year while Aaron Patzer & Co. worked on the product.

Dave talks about that in this video (Skip to 30:40): http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262665259

I think people are getting too caught up with the dish washing element of the story. The point of the story is about taking ownership and doing whatever it takes to move the company forward.

Early on at Reddit, Alexis Ohanis did all the "bitch" work so that Steve Huffman could focus on coding.

But if we must analyze the dishwashing aspect of the story, I think there's an element of "caring for your coworkers / employees" there. If no one washed the dishes, the company wasn't going to go bankrupt, but it would make other people's lives more miserable.

As I'm working on my own startup, I can relate to that sentiment, because I not only care about growing the company, I also care about my cofounders' well being.

Founders Den has gotten some press recently:

http://www.foundersden.com/

Reading up on tech news helps as you run into tech debates such as html5 vs. flash. There are free MIT classes on opencourseware that have helped me bridge the tech gap. I've taken a few courses on the site on my own time and I still can't program very well but it has helped me better understand the theories and challenges of developing software. This helps when you're communicating with developers.

I think a big issue is understanding the software development process. I would check out "Inspired" by Marty Cagan and a lighter (more anecdotal) read in "Dreaming in Code".