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Our startup team of 10 has kept pretty strict time logs for the past 3 years. We have an official policy of 40 hour work weeks, but yeah, no developers are able to have that much productive time. Usually we see about 25-30 hours of solid development time, 5 hours of meeting/admin time, and 5 hours of lunches/coffee/break time.
There is something I really like about #4 the guided daily diary. I wonder if you could turn this idea into a dating site -- users can submit a guide and the top ranked ones get answered the next day. Users of the site can browse everyone's answers for that day.
Re:Ask HN: bikechatter.com - review & suggestions on Thursday April 23, 2009 @09:50AM (#575585)
OK... As a huge cycling fan I love the idea of this site. I could follow these guys on Twitter but I like the idea of taking a 2 minute break and just skimming this site instead.

Some suggestions:

1 - Spend time on making a more cycling oriented design 2 - Add thumbnails of the cyclists pictures next to their comments and maybe link to a bio page

Re:Ask YC: What kind of hours do all of you hackers work? on Wednesday June 04, 2008 @09:14AM (#208889)
I've been keeping pretty close tabs on my hours for the past few months and find that I generally average about 6 hours of really focused and productive work per day. It's really hard for me to get into the productive zone so I might actually be sitting at the computer for 10 hours procrastinating.
Re:Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding. on Tuesday June 03, 2008 @12:20PM (#208034)
I'm not sure if this is really the place to be asking a question about style and fashion :)

A) Yes I would go to this if it was branded correctly and all my friends were going to it. I wouldn't go there regularly. For examples that are working in Portland, OR check out Voodoo Doughnuts and Saint Cupcake

http://voodoodoughnut.com/

http://www.saintcupcake.com/

B) You would need a bank loan, perhaps backed by SBA.

Re:Ask YC: Should I believe the Rails hype? on Tuesday June 03, 2008 @12:10PM (#208024)
If you want to be a better programmer -- Learn Rails

If you want to spend your time creating a new business -- Stick with PHP

Re:Debian or Ubuntu for server? on Monday June 18, 2007 @01:54PM (#28926)
I've been using Debian stable as a server for the past 8 years. The stability has been top-notch and I actually prefer having a distro that doesn't update very often. The less time I can spend updating a server the more time I can spend delivering value to my customers.
Re:How does the unconnected get buzz for their startup? on Wednesday May 23, 2007 @05:23PM (#24161)
Have a co-founder who is as passionate about communicating ideas to people as you are about hacking code.
... maybe in a few years we will all say:

"Facebook dominated the most monetizable activity on the internet: connecting people together"

Re:What is Twitter's source of income?? on Monday May 21, 2007 @02:40PM (#23672)
My guess: They will start selling professional accounts
Cool site. I co-founded a startup that was doing a very similar thing in 2002 (it failed). Here are some ideas that will hopefully make your site successful.

- Start off with a really niche site. For example: Vegan food in Portland, Oregon. It's the niches that sites like Citysearch aren't serving very well.

- Don't code any more features. Spend the next 3 months on marketing. Making this site successful is an exercise in savvy marketing, not programming.

- No one cares about keeping track of restaurants they visited. Everyone cares about going to good restaurants. Same features, different message.

Re:Apple speed bumped the Macbook today. Good time to buy on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @03:06PM (#22299)
Thanks for the tip. I'm going to pick one up.
I am currently using Dreamhost right now for a staging server. The reliability has been terrible. I have never seen the uptime go over 24 hours.
I had a unique idea that I implemented in my part time. The site was featured on Techcrunch a few years back and quickly started making a lot of money. Within a few months a handful of VC funded competitors sprung up. They were able to iterate on the concept very quickly and completely destroyed me within the year by developing a significantly better product then I did.

The moral of the story: Working on your startup part-time is a great way to mitigate risk while you build out your first version. However, if you see some traction quit you day-job and start executing relentlessly.

Re:New Y Combinator startup: overhear.us on Friday May 04, 2007 @06:21PM (#19575)
This could turn into the non-nerd version of InklingMarkets.com. Or it could just be a place to bitch about your boss. I think it's great!
Re:Can anyone suggest a nice laptop to run Linux? on Friday May 04, 2007 @11:13AM (#19397)
Lenovo Thinkpad
Re:At what point do you share your idea/prototye with others? on Thursday April 26, 2007 @01:36PM (#17071)
I would share the idea almost immediately with at least 5 potential customers.
Re:Advice needed: "friend" stole my idea...what to do? on Thursday April 26, 2007 @12:21PM (#17029)
Are you pissed because you know that this woman has the contacts and industry experience to execute on the idea better then you?

A presentation and an hour talk surely hasn't given her much of an advantage. Go off and build your idea into a successful company. The day after it hits Techcrunch you'll have 50 competitors anyway.

Interesting idea. Rather then taking on all of the risk (and reward) by doing a startup that risk would be spread across all of the employees in the organization. Sounds like the organization would exist to provide "startup insurance".