Thanks for checking it out! Yeah, I haven't listed the refill packs yet. Good question about GI... nuts and seeds are very low-gi, so when mixed with dried fruit the mixture as a whole is low-gi as the dried fruit is only a small %. I should really make that clearer. Thanks for your comments - I'll get on to it!
I guess what I'm wondering is if I follow those suggestions and I end up with maybe 3 candidates, how do I select between the 3? The obvious answer is to ask friends and family and then ask facebook friends. Beyond that though, was wondering if there might be another way of picking a winner.
Also:
1. Thanks for your comments people - genuinely appreciated
2. Wordoid is awesome! Never seen it before, but its a lot of fun! Will certainly play around with it
3. Yeah, I'm ruling out anything that doesn't have a free .com domain name (twitter handle gets bonus marks!)
Hmm, my linkedin and facebook networks are almost entirely separate and I really want to keep it that way. now having said that I wouldn't mind my facebook peeps getting near my linkedin stuff, but wouldn't want my linkedin crowd going near my facebook page. i actually just decoupled my twitter feed from my linkedin account, because i didn't think it was appropriate... some tweets wouldn't do my chances of getting hired much good.
Well I think there are way more opportunities for me in the US compared to Ireland, so that's the main reason that I would leave. But whether its better for entrepreneurs or not is a different question really, but I'll try to answer it...
Dublin's startup scene is at a much earlier stage, so there certainly isn't the same sort of community, talent, mentorship etc.
Raising money would also be more challenging, since there are only a hand full of VC's.
Sounds a little trivial, but it is worth saying that there is a really strong sense of pessimism here at the moment (because we're basically bankrupt). This is actually rather overwhelming and hard to escape from.
I also agree with the point regarding ambition. There isn't the same rampant enthusiasm here to actually build things and achieve something. So its harder to find like-minded co-founders... people who are willing to throw caution to the wind, work incredibly hard and just go for it.
Having said all those things, its undeniable that there is definitely something really positive happening in Dublin at the moment. This is the second incubator fund that's been put together (the first closed in jan of this year). Also take a look at the dublin web summit... http://www.dublinwebsummit.com/
Dogpatch has also announced that they are opening an incubator in Dublin, and DCU's incubator has just joined the Techstars network.
There are also tonnes of great hackers in Dublin, many of whom are world class. The problem is that most are comfortably tied up in their jobs at google or wherever. During the last 10 years here, the game plan was this... get a good job, leverage yourself up to the tonsils to buy a house and watch as it increased in value by 20% year on year. They buy another. People were becoming paper millionaires in their 20's, so there was no incentive to try something else. Things are different now and I think that the startup bug is going to catch pretty soon. All it takes is one reasonably successful exit and the media will be all over it. Then you'll see some great talent being shook loose.
It's not the valley, that's for sure, but for Europe I think its a great option.
There actually is a scene slowly building in dublin. Some encouraging stuff going on. Can read about the dublin web summit here... http://www.dublinwebsummit.com/
I actually loved google wave. I'm the type of person who works on multiple projects at the same time. So this usually means spending time trawling through my email inbox to find missing emails. wave kept everything from the same project in the same place! I was actually really useful, although people just weren't so in to it because it was over-hyped and took a little bit of time to get used to.
If not, why not?
What can we improve?
How much do you think it might raise?!
All comments welcome!!!