nickh

Which other article(s) do you feel are more accurate and paint a more complete/clear picture?

Thirded for part 3. I'm looking forward to it.

== Help Me Out: With growth/marketing for ShelfLife.net, a social marketplace.

ShelfLife.net makes it easy for collectors of toys, action figures, video games, etc to buy, sell, and research collectibles, and track their collections. We've got a solid product built, and trying to figure out how to grow the userbase significantly.

nick-at-shelflife.net

== I Can Help:

* Startup/entrepreneur mentoring.

* Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB advice.

* Certified parkour instructor.

nick-at-deadorange.com

We decided to postpone the deal because it was still quite early in ShelfLife's life and we want to grow our userbase. There's a write-up about it in the Financial Post.

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/03/02/shelflife-clinc...

What do you collect that isn't on ShelfLife yet? There might be a curator working on it right now.

More curators, collectors, and catalogs are the biggest goals right now. There's a critical mass of users that needs to be reached for the site to be useful for a majority of collectors.

Collectors for adding Haves and Wants, and for buying and selling. Curators (who are also collectors) for building catalogs that collectors are clamouring for.

Thanks! Nearly anything can be catalogued, provided there's information available for it (E.g. manufacturer, release date, etc), and it's not something like the sweater that your grandmother knitted you.

What's blocking you? A corporate firewall?

ShelfLife co-founder here. We're aiming to document to every collectible ever made, and provide collectors with the best tools for buying, selling, and tracking their collections.

You're spot on. Paying to participate is ridiculous. It also works against Salesforce by creating a barrier to entry for people who are on the fence about participating.

SoftLayer has their Catalyst Startup Program, which provides $1,000/mo of free hosting for 1 year.

http://www.softlayer.com/partners/catalyst

Rackspace runs their Rackspace Startup Program, which provides $1,000/mo of free services for 6 months.

http://www.rackspacestartups.com

Plants are fantastic, by the way. They make the room feel much more natural and alive, and less institutional and synthetic.

My favourite plant is Pachira Aquatica. It's more commonly known as the Money Tree. They're hearty, improve oxygen levels, inexpensive, look great, and are low-maintenance.

I have three small ones like this:

http://www.freshtopiary.com/mas_assets/full/DT-1024MT.jpg

and one huge one that's about 5 feet tall:

http://twitpic.com/3tbacn

I found the huge one at Ikea for $40.

I like minimalism. If there's a lot of stuff in the room, it can become quite distracting.

@blazzar's suggestion of a small couch is spot on. You'll probably feel like moving around. When I'm working at home, I stand at my desk, sit at my desk, move to the couch, or sit on my balcony. It feels good to change location.

Going one step further, when a user goes to your site for the first time, create an account for them behind the scenes. This will enable them to track beers immediately.

Later on, you can prompt them for an email address or password. For example, if a new user adds X beers, open a lightbox that says "Mmmm, beer. To make sure you don't lose your list, type in your email address and a password."

This is beneficial because by the time they've added X beers, they have more of a connection with the site, and likely to not want to lose the info they've plugged in.

See these useful posts by Daniel Tenner:

http://swombat.com/2011/1/24/how-to-PR-firms-startups

http://swombat.com/2011/2/4/attention-seeking-for-startups

@VSerge, I think question #3 is meant to be interpreted as "Are you doing either of the following?".

There're many solutions, from installable software such as Redmine[1] to hosted services such as TenderApp[2], GetSatisfaction[3], UserVoice[4], ZenDesk[5], FreshDesk[6], Groove[7], etc.

It all depends on what your needs are.

[1] http://www.redmine.org

[2] http://tenderapp.com

[3] http://getsatisfaction.com

[4] http://uservoice.com

[5] http://zendesk.com

[6] http://freshdesk.com

[7] http://groovehq.com

Have you thought about contributing to one or more open-source projects? That's a great way to meet fellow hackers, hone your skills, contribute to the community, and begin making a name for yourself.

That's a very good point: this planning is part of the role of the CEO.

The CEO (who had the idea and wrote the business plan) has validated the idea in the market. Also, we have a direct, funded competitor now, which has also validated the idea, and one of our revenue streams.

So the idea is valid and lucrative. I'm just not sure how much equity should be attributed to that.

It's pretty slow, but it hasn't been giving me any errors.

Thanks for your insight, aspir. Much appreciated.

Despite the CEO having worked on the business plan for the last 2 years, it's actually not out of date. This is because it's been updated as time has gone on, and a direct, funded competitor just launched, which validates the idea and one of the planned revenue streams.

Since I and others have joined the startup:

* we've just barely begun looking for our first round of funding.

* the CEO's been successful in obtaining a few beta testers to generate our initial content.

* we've built 70% of the MVP.

I realize that I didn't include much information, so I've added more details to the question.

On top of that, phrases like "eat healthy", "eat healthy fats", "eat cleanly", etc are ambiguous, and not helpful. This is because each person's definition of "healthy" and "clean" is different.

We need to be very specific when describing what to eat.