In situations like this, do startup founders leak the word that they want a buyer? It seems like they wanted to put the word out there, but doesn't that kill their leverage in acq discussions?
Heh, I found this amusing "We also obviously built this on Node.js, anything else and it would take to much time to configure or setup." Couldn't you just use a lightweight Ruby or Python framework (e.g. Sinatra)? And wouldn't any simple data-store do? I'm surprised you even considered MongoDB...
I can see Buffer getting a lot of traffic via their guest posting strategy. I've seen several of their posts on HN. However, I would have a hard time imagining that these posts convert since they cover topics totally unrelated to their app. Also, I think their strategy it's generally dilutive for their brand. I recognize that startup blogs are a great way to get traffic but I'm turned off by it. Maybe I'm the only one though
I hadn't seen Chris Dixon's post on what startups need and don't need before. I disagree with vacation policy being unnecessary for startups. I know some startups don't have one and I feel like it's done to create friction whenever employees want to take time off which feels a bit insidious. And it creates the feeling that some folks are freeloading. I don't think it's overly "corporate" to have a well-defined vacation policy
The color-coding on this map was an interesting choice. Bright, stop-sign red is used for people whose income is in the top 1%. I almost felt as if being in the top 1% was a bad thing...
If the author sees this as a way to get product market fit, his points make sense. If a teacher with such a limited budget likes the software enough that he / she is willing to pay for it, then you are probably on to something. However, banking on teachers spreading the word and having a sales force focused on teach outreach seems like a terribly unscalable sales strategy.
There's a distinct writing style among today's tech entrepreneurs that becomes hard to stomach. Many blog posts have this authoritative and overly confident tone. It's only after an entrepreneur experiences success that they admit how they "did everything wrong." (see Suster, Mark) This pattern makes sense; as a startup CEO you need to always be selling. Once you "make it" it's hard to disabuse people of the notion you are competent.
Jason, as he'd probably readily admit, hasn't "made it" on this scale yet. That's what makes this post so courageous. At some point, Jason will be raising money for 42floors and a potential investor will ask him about Flightcaster. He won't be able to spin the story of Flightcaster in a way that makes him look like a dot com hero. I'm impressed that Jason put this out there.
Splitting infinitives is done so frequently today that it sounds more natural. Consider:
"I was hoping to completely finish the project before the teacher called on me"
Doesn't AirBnb require a credit card from the renter? Wouldn't it be straightforward to find the vandalizing renter using their credit card information? I'm sure that I'm missing something here...
Out of curiosity, what use case do you see for this?
Future features would be being able to let users specify which folder they want the file to go to and be able to change the file name. Also, just FYI the example link is broken for me. But I'm more interested in the use case, since this seems cool but I don't know when I'd find it helpful.
Rand assumes that the top ranking sites today that produce great content got that way through white-hat techniques. I have no idea whether Zillow, Oyster, or Zappos never engaged in shady SEO practices and I doubt he does either.
Also, one minor addition...if your domain is naturally uninteresting, that should affect your competitors as well. One can argue that having an exciting domain that breeds lots of natural links is actually a bad thing for a startup because it's harder to rise over your entrenched competitors.