pwntifex

As a Las Vegas entrepreneur I'm surprised to see Nevada so highly ranked. I knew Zappos had done a lot to legitimize Vegas as a potential location for startups, but I still don't see too much of a startup community in general here.

Perhaps we're getting some residual fundraising benefits being sandwiched between CA and CO.

While 30% seems like a pretty ridiculous number, I don't think there is enough data yet on if Facebook credits will hurt app profits or strengthen them.

One of the nice things about Apple's app store is you just click to buy, you don't have to worry about giving your payment information to individual app makers. I buy many more iphone apps than I would if I had to enter payment information for each of them. Many of the smaller app makers I'm not sure I would trust enough to give payment information to. Many also use more trusted 3rd party systems like PayPal, but they aren't one click experiences which diminishes conversion.

If Facebook credits become the norm and are widely adopted, there could be a significant uptick in consumers willing to pay for apps from the 1-3% which is widely circulated.

I'm coming off a very painful startup failure myself, but I am honestly very thankful for the experience. There is an old cliche that says you learn more from your failures than your successes. It's become a cliche for a reason, it's usually true.

I reflect often on the entire experience and constantly go over all the mistakes we made in hindsight. It's painful, really painful, but you learn from the pain. The pain makes it real so you won't ever make the same mistakes again.

I'm onto my next startup now and all that hard learning is paying off. I'm working even hard but with much less stress since I know I'm doing the right things this time around.

Those are my sentiments too. I'm scared for one company to have that much power, but they do make a great product and have great tools to leverage it. I'm most likely going to transition to facebook-only logins on my sites off the platform. The social discovery advantages are just too large.

As a self-funded startup looking to raise a small angel round without much traction yet, I am fairly sympathetic to this article. However, I still wouldn't go as far as calling investments in startups with traction, cash-flow, and coming from a good personal recommendation "low risk". Most of these startups will still fail.

I also don't think it's unreasonable for VCs and Angels to use these markers in determining whether or not to invest. There are still lots of deals available to VCs and Angels and these are some of the better filters to find the best ones. If there weren't enough deals available where startups could provide these metrics, the market would correct itself.

Lastly, while I do agree that the "pay" industry around how to run a startup doesn't provide much value, I don't see it as too much of a problem. There is a plethora of really valuable information available for free from successful entrepreneurs who give back to the community through their blog posts and talks. You'd have to be a fool to pay to learn how to run a startup when you can learn all the best advice (from people who have succeeded at it) for free.