Ask YC on Hacker News

So you didn't get into YC...

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Oh well.

Please don't write a motivational or demotivational post about how you didn't get into YC, how you're going to give up or soldier on, with or without them, how you didn't need their help anyway, etc.

That is all. Thanks. ;-)

PS: instead, simply refer to this one from last year: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550351

PPS: No, notifications haven't gone yet, and a YC alum advises me that they will all go out in a single batch.

Ask HN: What are the most important business metrics for your startup?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I'm working on a business dashboard for small startups and mISVs, and could use some expert input.

What are the important business metrics you monitor every day? How do you monitor them?

Which are the most actionable vs. time consuming?

Ask HN: cofounders as couples ?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Just curious (really) - are there cofounders on HN that are also in couple ?

Note that I'm not looking for pros and cons on the situation, more wondering if our situation is very common or not :)

Ask HN: How would you promote a social network start-up?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Hello all!

My bosses have just bought a social network website with 20K+ userbase and 80K pageviews per day, it is basically a copycat of facebook for Russian market. We have large social networking websites here in Russia like vkontakte.ru, odnoklassniki.ru with tens of millions of users, so the competition is quite high. Our goal is quite ambitious – to get a decent market share and grow our audience at least to 1M users in the first year. The problem is that our marketing budgets are relatively small and absolutely not comparable to those big players.

Ideas that have come to my mind are referral contests like "get more friend signed up and win an iphone", cross-promotion with our friendly websites, sending invitation to users from email accounts, maybe some kind of viral videoclips...

Any more ideas how to promote a website like this?

P.S: I don't have any realworld marketing experience, I'm actually the CTO of the project but would like to contribute to project success as well.

Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Just name it -- something you want to see solved but hasn't been yet. Political, technology, scientific...anything.

I hope to spark a discussion like the original version of this topic - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=442571. More importantly, maybe someone will do something about your problem.

Poll: Ask or Leaders in Top Bar?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Recently I replaced the "leaders" link in the top bar with an "ask" link leading to a page with just the "Ask HN" (or more precisely, url-less) posts.

Do you prefer to have "ask" in the top bar, as the site is now, or was it better to have "leaders?" Assume whatever isn't in the top bar will continue to work, and be linked to from "lists."

Ask HN: What's actually "defendable" about web startups these days?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

For example, what's keeps Gowalla from copying Foursquare's features, and vice versa? Unless a startup is working on something truly revolutionary and highly technical, how would a startup answer the question: what's keeping competitor X from copying you?

The lack of an IP warchest for today's startups seems to me like a glaring weakness. And you can't answer with "our team", "the way we execute", etc. I mean something that's truly defendable. (I guess Facebook DID patent the news feed...)

Just something I've been thinking about lately, but have yet to find a satisfying answer for and thought I'd ask the HN crowd. Thanks!

Review my website (http://boardlite.com)

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Boardlite http://boardlite.com is basically a lightweight bulletin board website very similar to stackoverflow.com. The difference being, the aim of Boardlite is to handle discussions instead of questions and answers. You can also see a list of FAQs on this page: http://boardlite.com/faq/

Ask HN: Space in the market for luxury public transit?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

To begin, I hate cars. I live in cities to get away from the car lifestyle. Still I find public transit to be lacking. Perhaps it's the homeless people defecating on the floor 4 feet from me, or maybe it's the lack of customer service, the inconvenient stops, and the entitled bus drivers, but I wish there was something "more".

Quite a few people I know whose average profile is 20-40 something techie, upper middle class salary, etc drive even though they live in San Francisco. They seem to have less of a tolerance for the fist fights and the public urinals than I do.

Virgin America has been quite a wake-up call for the aviation industry. I fly to Seattle twice a month, which means I spend a lot on airfare. I would save $6k/year if I flew on Alaska instead, but the lack of service and comfort just isn't worth the savings to me.

Maybe there's a market for an urban transportation system which costs 2x-3x the rate of Muni, and doesn't have any subsidized rates, as a way to draw people out of their cars?

Ask HN: What kind of geo-focused APIs would you like to see?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

There are already a few services that allow you to pass in a location, and get back "local news" articles. I'd like to see this done much better, so I get news I truly care about.

Also, an API where I pass in location and get back local deals/coupons/discounts. Publishers or bloggers can put the results on articles/pages/posts that are location focused.

Ask HN: How do you sell software to academics?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Me and two fellow grad students are launching a startup that's applying to Y Combinator this cycle. We're making statistical software aimed at students and researchers, with an emphasis on ease of use and smooth collaboration. The trouble is, none of us has experience selling to this market. We know that it's on a long sales cycle, and we're going to have to start beating doors early if we want to start selling to academic institutions in 2011. What we want to know is how.

We'd also appreciate introductions to other startups that are selling to academic institutions, broadly defined. We've already spoken with Chris Varenhorst of Lingt (YC S09), which is selling their classroom product to high schools. Any others come to mind?

Ask HN: What are you YC S10 applicants doing now?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

March 13th is just around the corner, what have you other YC S10 applicants been doing since you applied?

Refreshing HN looking for messages from pg? Searching your spam folder for anything from ycombinator.com? Continuing your search for a co-founder? Putting together a blooper reel from the outtakes of your video? cough Awesomizing your demo/MVP?

Past successful applicants: what did you do while you waited? Would you recommend it?

Ask HN: HN alternatives to basecamp?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I have a need to manage some projects (open tasks) with other developers (for mobile apps). I was just going to use basecamp, but I'd prefer to use an HN startup if there is one out there.

Ask HN: What steps should I take to find a front ender? (And not be ripped off)

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Front end/graphics has always been my Achilles heel. This project that I'm working on (www.mgxcopy.com) is long overdue for a design refactoring, and I want to find someone/some-firm whom will (a) generate programmatically clean code that I can work with and be seo friendly and (b) I may be able to call upon for further work on the site.

I want to up the visual quality as well as the usability/functionality of the site tremendously, and I'm new to beauty in the front end. Basically, just graphics as well as cross-browser, seo-/programmer-friendly code would be great. But ideally, I'd get some snappy js-animation to the user experience.

I have already checked out Crowdspring, but am satisifed neither by the quality nor the prospect of getting good code. And in my mind the other options are Craigslist, and iterations of Google searches. I'm also considering posting on the 37signals Job Board or the Smashing Magazine Board, but I'd rather not spend the money till I'm sure I have no other options.

So: what are some venues you have used to find front end developers or--as a front-end developer--you use to find jobs? And as a bonus question: what can I expect for a budget of $3-5k?

Tell HN: I'm building a startup aboard the Startup Bus en route to SXSW

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I'm aboard @thestartupbus along with 24 other coders, designers and bizdev folks who are building startup projects to launch at SXSW. We began the trek 36 hours ago at the Vast.com offices in SF and are currently somewhere in southeast AZ (or maybe TX).

Me (@euwyn) and @shiftb are building Pairwise (@pairwiseinc), a Foursquare for business networking at SXSW and other conferences. Other great projects are being built as we speak. BeNeighbor.ly matches people with others that are willing to help. Dormdorm is AirBNB for university summer housing. Datebrowsr aggregates data from online dating sites. Stalkbox aggregates information from Foursquare, Gowalla et al. Txtli is a "Twitter for Cars".

A full description of our projects can be found at the following link, as well as a game that lets you virtually "invest" in the most promising ideas. http://game.thestartupbus.com/i/2d8a97d

You can find our homepage with a live map of the bus and live video updates http://thestartupbus.com

Feel free to send along tweets of encouragement to @thestartupbus and come find us at SxSW!

Lead Dev for NYC Fashion Startup - $10,000

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I'm launching a new fashion retail startup in New York. I'm looking for someone to lead development – all aspects of it: programming, design, SEO/SEM, UI/UX, etc. I don't expect you to be an expert in all of fields, but you should know how to manage those that are.

It's an opportunity to get involved in a really exciting new platform that could change the way the industry works.

What you'll get: - A $10,000 paycheck - An NYC office space in the Garment District (6th Ave and 37th) - Full creative freedom to build something incredible - An experience with apparel retail and overseas manufacturing - An awesome way to spend the summer

What I'm looking for: - A hungry, driven programming wiz (pro in all web languages) - A great sense of graphic design - Someone with style who appreciates fashion - Summer commitment (May-August) - Awesome communication skills - A great network in the tech community

While I hope you're all of the above, I don't care if you're able to outsource one or two of them.

I'm a student at Wharton. One side of my family runs M&J Trimming, mjtrim.com, and the other Haddad Brands, haddad.com, (Google them). We will be leveraging the resources of both of these apparel companies, and you'll get an insider's view of how they work - from clothing design to sales to production.

If you're interested, let me know. Send an email to jcohen1@me.com with your resume and samples of your work. Students welcome.

Ask HN: What kind of jobs exist for Computer Scientists in social justice?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Hello.

I am a soon-to-be college graduate. I've always been top of my (CS) class, but unlike all of my fellow classmates I won't be immediately jumping into an awesome job to get rich when I graduate. I know they won't actually be doing that either, but I don't even have the desire to do so.

Instead, I have a burning desire to work in a social-justice related field. I would like to help the world become a better place -- I know it sounds corny, but I do. I'm so frustrated with it right now I'm shaking. Nobody so far (professors, advisor, or parents) has been able to give me any substantive advice in this regard.

I'm college educated and I have a skill which is supposedly indicative of intelligence. I want to do some good with it. I would like to do a lot of good with it. Please give me advice.

Ask HN: What payment gateways do you use for your app?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I guess the question is more toward the Canadian HN entrepreneurs. Since Authorize.Net require you to have a merchant account in US, we, Canadians, can't use it. What are your choices for merchant account/payment gateway (in terms of building a web app)?

Ask HN: Is there a point to school?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Something I've been wondering about lately is the idea of school. And to be honest, I'm a bit lost right now.

Here is my situation. I am a senior in high school but go to the community college via the running start program here. I got accepted into the University of Washington and will be going there next year. And of course, I am interested in hacking and the start up culture. I've been reading Hacker News for quite a while now.

I'm confused about the whole purpose of school. To me, it seems that school is something one goes through to get a job and make money. But from what I've heard, to be successful I need to spend my time programming, and right now it feels as though I'm doing everything but that. I feel like I'm being dragged through this tedious system which will later prepare me for work at a company coding Blub, it's driving me nuts. Everyone around me keeps saying how important school is, but right now I'm having trouble seeing that. It's as if there are two paths that say they lead to the same thing, one of them being the right path while the other being the path we are supposed to believe is correct. At least that's what it feels like to me.

I have a lot of respect for everyone here at HN and I find many comments to be very valuable. I was hoping to gain a bit of insight from this great community.

Ask HN: Are ACM worth a membership?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I see acm offer a lot of Computer Science articles located in one page. To access a download-link, I have to sign up for a membership, so the question is, are they worth the effort and money?

ref. http://www.acm.org/

Ask HN: How to sell an App Store company with 15m installs?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

(I'm a long time user of HN, just posting under a new account for this)

I've been developing on the App Store for about 9 months and have built a set of apps that collectively have over 15m installs. Among these have been several top 100 apps.

I'm considering selling them all, and I'm wondering how to go about it. Obviously if a buyer knows you want to be bought, it instantly lowers the price.

I'd really appreciate any thoughts/suggestions anyone has?

Ask HN: What % of equity should a CTO get?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Hi all, I'm a HN regular posting anonymously because this contains sensitive information.

Short version: I've been managing everything technical for my friend's startup, and was asked to join as a CTO, in exchange for equity. What % should I ask for?

Long version: this startup is run by my very good friend. He is an amateur coder, and developed the code base himself part time over a few years. When he was ready to invest $ to make the site grow, he brought me on board on a consulting basis. I found, hired & currently manage a small team to work on the site, and he pays for the budget. Before I came on board, the code base was pretty terrible: all the development was being done in real-time on production server, never any testing, full of bugs, etc. When I came in, I did stuff like introduce version control, create a staging server, code/schema refactoring, automated testing suite, automated builds, bug/issue tracking, etc. I also manage the team itself, and we regularly have informal meetings where we talk about high-level stuff for the site's direction - you get the idea.

Right now, I put in about 10-15 hours of work a week, out of which I bill for about 5, using a heavily discounted rate (about 1/3 of what I bill others), because it's my very good friend. Before I came on board, the site was developing slowly, but since then it's been growing at a very good organic pace. It is making some money already - not much, about $200 per month, and it has about 1000 daily users. It's not profitable by a long shot (obviously a dev team of 4-5 people costs a lot more), but I believe it has the potential to be in the future.

I want to offer that I don't take any $ myself, contribute about 15 hours a week and take a %. My friend (who is the only owner with 100% equity, btw) have a great relationship, and he actually brought up bringing me in as a CTO himself, but all talks about money are uncomfortable (for me), especially with friends, so I wanted to ask here - in this situation, what's a fair % to ask? Some examples with references would be ideal. Or some kind of a formula that makes sense to calculate it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!!

Ask HN: How do you capture and analyse usage patterns on your RIA?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Hello everyone,

I want to answer the question: "What is the user activity most likely to lead to the user upgrading?"

What are the best practices for capturing potentially large amounts of usage data (e.g., perhaps, capturing every click on every button?), storing it cost-effectively without swamping your main app db, and then running reports/analysis on that data?

Is it best to log this stuff to text and then run a parser to load it into a separate db? To use external services (which ones work best? why?) To store it in your main db? Is it best to capture ALL the data and then figure out what you want to extract out of it later? Is that practical/realistic? Is it better to just focus on specific hypotheses and just record those specific data points?

I'm particularly interested in these questions in the context of a Rich Internet Application - i.e. something that looks more like a desktop app than like a website. Website analytics are fairly well documented, with plenty of articles tools, etc, but I haven't found much on the topic of doing this kind of tracking for complex RIAs that don't have simple and/or obvious conversion funnels.

For example, if you built an application like Huddle, how would you record data to figure out interesting usage patterns and which ones are more likely to lead to a purchase?

Thanks for any input/insight!

Simple HN feature request: link to parent story from individual comment pages

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I find myself frequently bumping into comments (e.g., http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1178984) indexed in Google and wanting to read the root submission. But I annoyingly have to click through a series of "parent" links to do so.

Could we get a "root parent" link there, in addition to the already-existing "parent" link?

EDIT: djg suggests "top" is a better name and it sounds good to me too.

Ask HN: Whatever happened to Google pulling out of China?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Google.cn is still up and running and it's definitely still censored.

Anyone have updates on what's going on with the story? Is Google still planning on carrying through with the following threat?

"We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China." (1/12/2010)

Ask HN: Best office chair

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Post your favorite (or least favorite) office chairs and why. I'm looking for a new chair for my home office.

Ask HN: How to look for a programming opportunity

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

A recent thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1176962 about a Giles Bowkett blog post went long on the solicitous nature of the article but ignored the most interesting claims:

  Most programmers I know seem to respond to job searches
  by learning new programming languages. The logic there is
  pretty weak. "I can't get a job with a language I know, so
  why don't I see instead if I can get a job with a language
  I don't know." Learning new languages is a good thing, but
  there's a time and a place for everything. It's never a
  matter of your skills being stale; there are still COBOL
  jobs out there. If you're good at programming, and you
  can't get a job, the skill to improve is not your
  programming skill but your job-getting skill. If you've got
  a task that requires two skills, and you have one of those
  skills down solid, but you suck at the other skill, the
  thing to do is not spend even more time perfecting the
  skill you already have down solid.

As someone thinking about working in programming after not doing much real programming for a few years, I am interested in whether he's right or not. I am actually planning to dive into learning a new language or relearning C++ with its current set of metaprogramming features and extensive libraries.

Ask HN: Modern Day CS Curriculum

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I am currently a computer science major at a moderately well known school. The cs program concentrates heavily on Java with a side of C. There is little to no mention of other styles of programming. The focus seems to be halfway between a purely theoretical approach and a purely practical approach, but at the end of the day we learn neither.

I seem to be here at a pretty interesting time though, because the school is currently changing the curriculum quite heavily. This put me in a fun position to try to persuade the school to go a certain direction.

I figured there would be tons of info online about how teaching the Java API instead of core programming concepts is blasphemy, but I really can't find many good resources.

Has anybody read a particularly interesting paper/blog/whatever that talks about different approaches/thoughts people have had regarding computer science education?

Contract HN: Build Graffiti for iPhone + iPad

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I run Graffiti on Facebook (http://facebook.com/graffitiwall). It's a top 50 Facebook app (with a higher user rating than any in the top 100+) that lets users draw for each other using a very simple interface. We have so far neglected to build Graffiti for the iPhone or the iPad and I think that's clearly a mistake since it seems like a perfect fit. Obviously it's a short time frame, but we'd really like to finish it before the iPad launches in a month or so, if possible.

The application will be simple: the user will draw (using color, width, and opacity), and then be able to send to a friend via facebook or email. There will also be a way to view Graffiti the user has sent/received, and ideally a way to replay the drawing like we have on Facebook Graffiti. We can handle most of the design but don't have any experience making iphone apps. It will most likely be a free application and we're going to promote it heavily from Facebook Graffiti.

Should be a fun project. If you're interested, shoot me an email at hn.jobs.tmt [at] gmail.com with your resume and links to any iphone apps you've built, plus your rates.

Tell HN: Come hear me talk about crypto at BSDCan'10

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I'm going to be speaking at BSDCan'10 in Ottawa on May 13th. The designed-to-infuriate-tptacek title of my talk is "Everything you need to know about cryptography in 1 hour" and the basic premise of the talk is that 99% of the time you can write secure cryptographic code without being an expert cryptographer, as long as you follow a few pieces of basic advice.

Come hear me talk! The conference website is http://www.bsdcan.org/2010/ and you can register at http://www.bsdcan.org/2010/registration.php .

Ask HN: Books That Should Be Read

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I realize that I was not the only one who have a favorite book that I think everybody should read.

So, what books do you think that everyone should read, or at least should know about?

Programming Language For Youngest Kids

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I want to teach my son (4.5 years) "programming" (obviously, too early for general-purpose programming, but a limited-environment language can certainly be taught). I'm considering writing my own little language/"interpreter". Is there anything already out there that's worthwhile? The options I've seen is Scratch (8-year+) and Logo (seems boring to me for this age). Some others are listed here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_programming_language , I haven't checked all of them out though (e.g., Karel looks intriguing).

Tell HN: Our startup is improving online advertising

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Dear HN,

We have been quietly working on a new online advertising platform called Deckeo. We’re getting really close to conducting a private beta and wanted to offer the HN community a chance to participate.

The goal of Deckeo is to provide website owners with a better solution for selling their own ad space. Inspired by forward-thinking ad networks like The Deck Network, Fusion Ads, and Zerk Media, we set out to create a platform that would enable anyone to sell ad space on their website using the cost per influence model.

If you would like to get on the list for our private beta, or would just like to know a little bit more about Deckeo, head over to http://deckeo.com/beta_signup.php

Cheers, Tim, Matt, & Eric (The Deckeo Team)

Ask HN: Review my website soundkey.com

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

This is my first website, and it is in alpha version, but functional. It would be great if I could get feedback on (1) The idea behind it and (2) The website itself (layout, etc)

Thanks!

Ask HN: Where did you go to college?

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

What are the alma maters of the HN viewer base?

Ask HN: For the prototype.js users -- is it worth it?

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Prototype.js sounds very interesting. I'm about to start writing a pretty hefty JS lib of my own, and I'm wondering if any of you guys use it regularly and your opinions? To you find you can get more work done with the added constructs prototype provides, rather than just straight JS and maybe jQ?

Ask HN: Who are the best icon designers?

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I will be in the market for some custom icons in a few months. If anyone here has experience hiring a custom icon designer for high-quality icons (such as those used by CulturedCode, etc.) or is a designer with a strong portfolio, I'd love to hear about it.

Wanted: Co-founder.

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Straight to the point. I'm a single founder starting a small company that has the potential to become huge. I emailed YC regarding co-founders and they suggested HN, so here I am. I only qualifications needed are to be well versed in social network advertising and a massive amount of free time. That's it. I can't discuss the company details here but, obviously, it has something to do with social networks and advertising. Let's go.

If you're really upset about having topics you personally don't like on HN...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Lately I have seen more than a few "why is this here?" type comments on topics that have already gone popular on HN. The bottom line is that happens because not everyone has the same interests, and this is a social site with many different people on it.

If the fact that you have to share this wonderful digital playground with the other kids really, really bothers you, then this is for you. It's a Greasemonkey script called "HN Toolkit":

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039

Part of the functionality is the ability to blacklist submissions, either by keyword in the title or in the domain (or entire domains, whichever way you want to look at it). It cycles through the list of stories and matches each against the blacklist, adding style = 'display: none;' to each match found.

Hope this helps.

5" resistive touchscreen MID, Google Android 2.0, GPS, WiFi ,3G from 189$

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

We would like your precious feedback about our product. Here is the link : http://enso-now.com

Ask HN: How to recruit great hackers in a remote location?

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I work for a small company based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, a few hundred kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. The company, ssimicro.com, is a great place to work, has many qualities of a startup (although we've got enough funding that we pay very well), has opportunities for entrepreneurship from within, and desperately we need great hackers.

The problem so far has been that most of the people we've contacted or who've contacted us are unwilling to move to what they perceive as the cold, dead arctic. All the people we've interviewed said they loved the job atmosphere and what we're doing (the fully-loaded bar/beer fridge, pool table, huge TV + PS3 tend to help with that). But they feel like they won't enjoy Yellowknife at all, so they don't respond.

How can we go about more effectively finding great hackers to help us build software services that make use of our unique, satellite/microwave-last-mile network?

Ask HN: "Basic SEO"?

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I see this phrase thrown around like a magic spell from time to time, a la "Put up a site about a profitable niche, do some basic SEO, and bam! presto! Instant $50/month!"

But what is "Basic SEO" to you? Blogging? Adwords? Paying dudes via MechTurk to write articles for you?

Googling "Basic SEO" brings you a few good articles, but a LOT of "buy our ebook" articles too. I just feel that if it were so basic, it'd be more common to find.

So what do you consider to be "Basic SEO", HN?

Ask HN: Can I sell my early stage startup?

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I have an early stage start up. It's a subscription model business. All the software/website is fully operational and customer ready.

A sudden change in my health has made it necessary for me to either sell or shut down. I've spent the last year of my life building this company. Money is not much of an issue, I simply want to hand over the business to someone excited and capable. If I can recoup some of what it cost me to build this company, that's merely a bonus.

Is there a market for this? I would have been thrilled if someone dumped a primed and ready startup into my lap, but perhaps I am alone with that thought.

A fair amount of knowledge in our business domain is necessary, but any intelligent hacker can pick up the basics within a few months.

What are my options?

Tell HN: Amazon Associates Program now shut down in Colorado.

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I received an email today from Amazon informing me that my associates account has been closed due to some legislation that was recently passed.

Here's the email: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18955/amazon_associates_colorado.html

I don't actively use Amazon's program, but being in Colorado I see this as a big problem.

Instead of changing to comply with the new law, Amazon is shutting the program down.

I don't blame Amazon for shutting it down, but I'm wondering what this means for the future for online sales in Colorado and across the US.

Ask HN: Cofounder vesting schedule for young startup

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I've been working on a small startup alone for about four months and I have someone interested in joining as a cofounder. I'm meeting with a lawyer later this week to talk about incorporation and some other legal matters, but I'd like to head in there with an idea of what the ideal outcome should be and unfortunately I don't have much experience here.

Given that I've only been working on the startup for four months, what's a fair vesting schedule so that the cofounder can earn equity in the company? Long term, assuming our partnership works out, I have no problem with each of us owning half the company, but how long should he have to work to get to that point?

Your thoughts are always appreciated.

Ask HN: Variable Declaration Location

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

I'm currently working on a project with a contract tech lead.

The tech lead is the same tech lead who developed the companies previous application and is well regarded.

The following code snippet is a bogus function the illustrates his variable declarations (all at the top of the function).

  public virtual Token LogOn(Credentials credentials) {
    Token token;
    User user;
    token = null;
    if (ModelState.IsValid) {
      if (validateCredentials(out user)) {
        token = user.CreateToken();
      }
    }
    return token;
  }

I've always declared my variables within the smallest scope possible. If later it needs to be accessed higher up, then it gets moved during the code change/refactor.

  public virtual Token LogOn(Credentials credentials) {
    Token token = null;
    if (ModelState.IsValid) {
      User user;
      if (validateCredentials(out user)) {
        token = user.CreateToken();
      }
    }
    return token;
  }

The tech leads var dec bugs me no end :P

Hell why bother declaring it in the function at all, GLOBAL VARS FOR EVERYONE!

Am I just being anal retentive? Am I wrong? Is it something I should address, conform with (at least in this project) or do I need to build a bridge and get over it?

Ask HN: ad server recommendation?

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Hi, my startup will (probably) be serving ads and we are looking for a platform.

To be clear, we are not looking for an ad network like DoubleClick, but simply the software to do the serving and management. We'll do the selling, in other words.

Of course we could build our own, but that would be so much reinventing of wheels. We prefer not to install software on our own servers, it should be SAAS, but it's not a dealbreaker.

We will look at configurability (things like CPM vs CPC, weighting, keywording, URL targeting) and reporting as the main drivers. Of course, reliability and performance matter too.

Do you have any recommendations based on experience? Thanks!

Ask YC: Free / Open Source Solution for online meetings

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

While I worked at BigCo, we used a really nice tool (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Acrobat_Connect) to have our online meetings - sharing the screen, with a small chat window, etc. I am trying to find something similar to this, but open source (preferably GPL'ed or under some more liberal license). The best I was able to find up to now was http://webhuddle.sourceforge.net - anyone has any recommendations?

Ask HN: Best Ad Network for Tech Blog?

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

Been using AdSense for quite some time as I am not focused on revenue from blog... but would love to try new networks. Whats working best for tech?

The Power of 5 Sentences

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PST

This just happened.

I sent a cold email to a key large organization. The subject line was “Re: [Organization Name] & [My Company Name]” because people are more likely to open an email that looks like an existing thread about their company.

The email itself was 5 sentences long:

One sentence to introduce myself and my company One sentence to show traction/social proof One sentence to outline one specific way for us to work together One sentence to give a snapshot of potential results One to suggest a time for us to meet in person

5 sentences. That’s it.

24 hours later, I received an email introducing me to the higher-up in the organization who could help my company most.

72 hours later, my co-founder and I were across the country and meeting face-to-face with him. After hammering out some details, he invited us to Dubai to attend a global summit for entrepreneurial leaders and make connections that will be crucial to the expansion of our business.

We are on the plane to Dubai now.

The moral of the story: send a simple, straightforward cold email to the 5 organizations you know would help your company most.

You have absolutely no idea where it could take you.