mitchellwfox

Do you have an idea already or are you looking to be a technical co-founder? What I would say is that if you have the idea, share it to capture the imagination and attention of other potential co-founders.

I too have used CoFoundersLab.com with mild success. If you have not only an idea, but something you can show / share with people, I can't recommend AngelList highly enough for finding other startup folks - their recruiting tool is by far the best I've seen for early stage companies.

Finally, if you're a great developer and looking for an idea to work on, we'd be thrilled to talk with you at [email protected] - read more at http://angel.co/goodapril

In my experience as a startup founder thus far, you may be over-thinking this one. Your lawyers are a valuable source of information and reaction, and help provide some guidance, but they aren't making or breaking your day-to-day existence as an entrepreneur.

Having just gone through a long selection process to find our attorneys, the combination of things we were looking for: 1) Deferral of fees. There are some reasonable arguments that this can actually be counter to your best interests, but if you're bootstrapping and don't have a big nest egg in the bank, it's hard to choose someone who doesn't 2) Affordable rates. Because even if fees are deferred, you will ultimately have to pay them 3) Relevant expertise. I would argue that this has more to do with startups similar to you (e.g. in your industry) than it does with a particular domain like corporate law or IP. He or she should obviously be able to serve you in diverse areas, or introduce you to the right people who will 4) Personal fit. You have to want to work with these people through formation, fundraising, and negotiations.

Look for them by asking for referrals from other startups in your industry. Local meetup groups for your industry are a good place to meet those people.

GoodApril (http://goodapril.com) - Online Tax Planning for Consumers - seeking late 3rd Co-Founder / Lead Developer

Taxes suck. Your job is to help us guide consumers in uncovering the ways they can pay less.

Us: We're launching our MVP next week, helping consumers know how they're impacted by the Fiscal Cliff and the 7 major tax changes coming in 2013. Help us accelerate our growth and development of our tax planning service.

You: Ruby on Rails engineer looking for a big new challenge.

Based in San Francisco, CA. Pre-Funding.

Talk to us: [email protected]

I would love to find out if other YC candidates on HN felt similarly. I strove to keep my suggestions realistic, while reflecting honestly on the benefits and disappointments of our YC interview experience 2 months ago.

I have not used these tools myself, but I came across a good blog article answering this very question a few weeks back: http://blog.kickofflabs.com/how-to-do-a-great-product-promo-...

6 views since Nov 4. 3 for full 1:50 duration, 3 for only ~:20 seconds.

Nice article. I like how you pulled in some examples of major brands that started small, like Virgin.

As an entrepreneur, you're unfortunately constantly confronted by the push-and-pull of needing to think big, and then to build small. Investors (seem to) want to hear about big markets and big ideas, and at the same time want to see real product and traction - things that are hard to achieve unless you start small. Thanks for sharing.

Why, Hacker News of course! ;-)

You should also check out Stack Overflow http://stackoverflow.com

Have you checked out the "jobs" section here on HN? http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

It's obviously a one-way tool and what you're describing is two-way, but it's a start.

I wasn't aware of that Paul Graham interview on Mixergy. Thanks for sharing the link.

Yes. Click on presenter's name: http://startupschool.org/2012/

Thanks for going out on a limb and providing some additional insights here, especially since it's clear PG and others in YC saw / reacted to your thoughts.

As applicants, my co-founder and I have certainly striven to balance the kinds of advice you lay out here ("Focus on things that can be useful in a startup" and generally being "impressive") with also providing "human" responses that demonstrate our personalities. Hopefully both sides shine through.

Refreshing to see some legitimate criticisms of an Apple product in the mainstream press. I'm a fanboy too, but they don't ALWAYS get it right.

I second jaredtking on 99 Designs for logos and other work.

Elance (http://elance.com) is a good option generally for finding contractors.

While they are spendy, design-focused recruiters like Creative Circle and Creative Group can help you find both contractors and full-time employees. They do a decent job of screening so you only see qualified applicants, unlike Elance and 99 Designs.

It's reassuring to hear that what has often been cited as a case-study in over-ambitious fundraising and over-enthusiastic investment did, in fact, turn out to be a sobering lesson for entrepreneurs.

The tales of double-digit million dollar exit were frankly baffling and would have painted a very different picture of the current acquisition market.

I received an invite from Exec for a similar offering this week. $50/hr for 2x cleaners, reserved online, including pickup/dropoff of your house keys so you don't have to hide or give away a copy of your key.

In my personal experience, it can be very frustrating to try and collaborate on UI design remotely. This is further exacerbated by language barriers.

I have had recent good experience working with a relatively inexpensive design team based in Kansas City (cremalab.com), which was kicked-off in person but completed remotely.

Google Drive - I hate to be too "mainstream", but we've been using Google Drive to share docs between our small team and it works great. Collaboration on Google Docs is native and simple, plus we're able to keep our Office docs alongside without trouble.

We're also using Asana for bug tracking at Endurance. Bugs get assigned into categories based on priority (P1, highest to p4, lowest).

Another great tool to use is Jing or Snagit to take a screenshot or short video of the bug, in action. Then it's a simple click to upload to Screencast and paste the unique URL for the screenshot into the bug. Much faster than taking screenshot, naming image, saving it, and attaching it.