I remember listening to a great podcast a couple of years ago that Stanford was producing, but other than that I haven't had great success finding educational podcasts about the startup world. Since I have an hour-long commute and am a recent owner of an iPod FM transmitter, I'm looking for programs like this that might be interesting.
I have zero programming experience, since I work mostly on the nontechnical side of start-ups. Ruby and other languages are extremely interesting to me and I am definitely interested in learning how to use them, but I want to have a basic idea of the time involved. Was it weeks/months/years until you felt comfortable writing an entire Web app with basic functionality?The problem I have is that...
They used to provide videos where they would re-create popular blogs (Scoble's, for instance) in less than an hour using the Squarespace platform. At the end of the videos, the original blogs and the Squarespace creations would be virtually indistinguishable. I always thought that was one of the most creative ways I've seen a Web publishing company demonstrate the functionality of its product while hard selling it at the same time, and it doesn't surprise me that Accel would be interested in this team.
I recently decided to call it quits on a Web application that I was pretty excited about at the time: I was planning on adding restaurant menus to a database so that users could add their feedback about the menu items themselves, rather than the restaurant as a whole. Each menu item had the same price and description as the physical menu, but also showed which percentage of users liked the...
I've been busy working on a different startup, but this idea has been floating around in my head. What I would like to build and use is a calendar where I can add all of the events that I'm looking forward to - movie premieres, video game releases, album releases, product releases (like the iPhone 4), television shows, Web shows, etc.If your event title (ex. Fable 3 Release) is similar to...
I'm interested in hearing from people who learned how to code because they were interested in developing one of their ideas. I'm at a point in the development of a Web application where my financial situation is preventing me from moving forward with it, and I'd like to make progress by learning how to code it myself. Is this at all feasible given that I know EXACTLY what I want to do with the...
What if the users are like me, though, and just avoid going to the restaurant Web site from the phone because we are aware how bad the "usual" experience is.
I'm not expressing this clearly, but consider this analogy: If for ten years a neighborhood in town is "bad", has a high crime rate, routinely plays host to gang wars, et cetera, building a state-of-the-art gated community and community playground in that area won't attract new visitors for a LONG time until that old reputation runs its course.
One of your selling points is that there's "no marketing required." I don't know how you feel about this, but I think that's a losing strategy for a project like this.
This is one menu that presents the type of problem I'm talking about. The line that worries me is "All entrees come with salad bar," which reflects on every entree. From my perspective, the easiest way to incorporate data like this would be to include it underneath the extended explanation of the menu item.
PS Steven - I want to set up a phone call with you or something. I'm working on something that is literally one step away from what you are. follow me on Twitter (@nate) or e-mail me at nchastain at gmail.com and let me know if you've got some time free some time next week. I'm still in the development stage and won't have a product out for at least a month.
I'm working on a similar project, and one thing I'd like to point out is that menus are not always simple databases. There are several menus that have paragraphs of information that relates to several menu items rather than just one. How are you planning on translating that information to a mobile application, if at all? I'm trying to find a good example of this "paragraph of extraneous info" from menus in a Google Search - I'll get back to you when I can.
I'm building something at the moment that really streamlines customer feedback for a particular type of business. What I'm offering is essentially an A/B testing service for real-world products. I've done my due diligence on this market, and while three or four other Web apps have started doing what I'm proposing, none of them are executing on the same vision.Something that's been nagging at...
I have a couple of features that I'm interested in adding to my Web application, and I've also re-designed a few page elements. If I had $10,000 lying around I'd walk up to the office of my local Web development agency, but alas that is not the case - I'm a college student, and I'm broke.Provided that I provide very detailed spec documents and mock-ups, is it realistic to expect that a custom...
I judge "start-ups" (really a Web app) in this case by a few metrics, but the first test is always this: does this start-up solve a problem? I don't think it does. Anyone who wants to create a top ten list can do it from any blogging platform and several other sites that do exactly what this one does.
Likewise, the accompanying logo doesn't provide any insight into what your service does. What does reflected text tell me about your service? What does that odd, semi-rectangular polygon tell me about your service?
I read your FAQ: I don't think you should market it as a search engine, but rather as a social RSS reader. More people will be familiar with using RSS readers to get news than using search engines to do so.
Like I said, I think you created an interesting product, but I wanted to give you some food for thought.
PS Isn't the social news reader market fairly saturated? What, besides billing yourself as "spam-free" (in the FAQ) can you do to differentiate yourself?
I've been developing a Web application for the past three weeks or so, and as I near launch I find myself wondering whether this needs to take up all of my time in order for it to be successful. My number one priority is building this Web app into a viable startup, but I'm wondering if there's any room for a "hobby" in startup-life. One school of thought is that hobbies prevent you from burning...
Digg was at its best, IMO, when it focused only on the tech industry. Now that I can specify whose news I want to follow, I think any Digg user can create a niche Digg experience that harkens bark to that first version.
People are undervaluing what Digg is doing here - it's creating what I think is the best RSS reader available. Rather than subscribing to Mashable's RSS, TechCrunch's RSS and RWW's RSS, I have friends with similar taste adding content to "MY NEWS." Each one of these stories is something interesting enough to merit submission, whereas in a traditional RSS reader 1/10 of the TechCrunch posts would be one of those "Jason Calacanis: the Attention Whore" type of posts that Arrington publishes.
In short, Digg doesn't need power users, and its redesign is going to bring a lot of users back who liked the tech-centric Digg of old.