joshuabaer

Not your typical Silicon Valley startup...

I've been using GetSatisfaction for years but it grew out of control. I'm looking forward to a simpler solution.

We're doing this at OtherInbox.com with our Organizer solution. I saw another company doing this in the TC50 demo pit last year but I can't remember the name.

Most of our Organizer logic starts with heuristic matches on the From address and other headers in the message, but we're also testing out Bayesian filtering on the message bodies to identify other traits and train the system.

Joshua Baer | @joshuabaer

Most startups aren't an invention like electricity. Many new companies these days are pretty easy to re-create once you have a working model to look at - ie. a less competent programmer can probably recreate your site in less than half the time it takes you to make it the first time.

Hopefully you have some other competitive advantages besides just having a good idea. It's those things combined with great execution and some luck that will make you succeed. If its that easy to rip off your idea and do it then being first isn't going to that much of a difference compared to execution and some kind of marketing advantage.

What's more interesting to me as an angel investor than the idea is what problem you are trying to solve. Your first idea of the perfect answer is probably wrong, but if you're trying to solve a valuable problem, you're smart, and you have some other competitive advantage then I might be willing to bet that you'll find the right answer.

With OtherInbox we were in 'stealth mode' for 9 months. We had about 200 alpha testers during that time, but our learning accelerated much faster after going public. In hindsight, I think we would have been better off being more open about it right from the beginning.

Note: Just because you're not in stealth mode doesn't mean you have to drop your pants and tell everything. Every company has confidential information and trade secrets.

It's a Google form that pipes into a spreadsheet. We can't really control the display of the * but its important that they are all marked as required so it won't let you submit the form with a field that's missing.

Our intentions are not financial (see the philosophy page). All of the mentors in Capital Factory are doing it because we love working with young entrepreneurs. We've all built and sold companies and even getting a 100x return on $5k won't change our lives.

Putting up some money and getting some equity is analogous to playing poker with dollar bills instead of chips. It increases our emotional attachment and shows that every mentor is really committed.

We're just doing 3 companies this year because it's the first year and we want to start simple and make sure each company gets lots of attention. We'd like to see it grow to 10 companies in future years.

Thanks for the feedback Owkaye - the current website is just a Typepad blog that we threw up for the launch, but we have a designer doing a custom template for us that should be up there soon. We'll focus on making the text more readable.