sdiwakar
Joined 16 years ago
Karma
264
Submissions
37
Member since
Jul 9
Recent submissions
Comment · 13 years ago
Comment · 13 years ago
This has nothing to do with Google Plus, its about Google driving users to vote for their products instead of other open-source products.
The distinction being that both of these projects are OPEN SOURCE - therefore Google should not be taking COMMERCIAL advantage of this!
Comment · 13 years ago
Hi HN, my co-founder and I have been working on a Google Reader clone in the last few weeks, we're not quite ready to launch, but would love to get feedback as soon as we've opened up our beta:
We promise to have all the basics of Google Reader covered, including importing your feed data (or as much as possible through the API).
Of course, if you're looking for something to move to immediately, NewsBlur is an awesome product :)
Comment · 14 years ago
To be honest, I'm not particularly bummed that our team Contactable (http://becontactable.com) got rejected. If anything - its encouraging us to try to hustle harder, get a prototype to market, obtain paying customers and building a profitable business.
Although I was bummed about not getting through to the next round - I DO NOT feel that I was hard done by. In fact, YC partners clearly thought that there were better businesses to back or a better fit.
... and that's OK. The best thing to do, is to focus more of your energy towards your own startup.
I do not believe any of the processes need to change - if they realise something is broken, YC's partners will adjust accordingly. After all, they are also in business to make money - so if they start picking bad businesses to back, then they will change their application process accordingly.
Life's never fair, so just get over it and hustler harder!
Comment · 14 years ago
Bummer, we just got a rejection email for Contactable (http://becontactable.com).
The email came via Mailgun, here are the headers:
Received: by luna.mailgun.net with SMTP mgrt ????61; Fri, 16 Nov 2012 01:17:01 +0000
Comment · 14 years ago
Every time someone managed to get a custom printed Coke bottle - the proud owner inevitably photographed the bottle for display on Facebook - which of course is the real genius behind their marketing campaign.
It may have been an expensive marketing exercise for Coca-Cola, but being so different definitely grabs headlines.
Comment · 14 years ago
I agree, there are hundreds of guys in India that are doing a great job advancing the stated of the art - and you'll never hear a peep from any of them.
Ankit and Rahul are just good at talking themselves up. There are plenty of people in InfoSec that excel at marketing themselves.
Worst of all, they are an embarrassment to the intelligence agencies they have purportedly worked for.
I have no doubt in my mind that a graduate beginning her infosec career at the NSA, DSD, GCHQ, RAW, Mossad or other intelligence agency would show a better understanding of fundamental security concepts than these fuddiduddies.
Comment · 14 years ago
I'm curious to know whether people in the US holding senior positions are not subjected to non-compete periods following their termination with their current employer (e.g. not working for a direct competitor for a period of 3 months etc.)?
It surprised me that Marrisa Mayer was allowed to quit Google and then start at Yahoo the very next day, is that common?
Comment · 14 years ago
MaysonL, I believe the US position is to prevent patent violation in underdeveloped economies regardless of where the research was done or who owns the patent - this makes sense from an economic perspective given that the same could happen to a patent owned by an American firm.
However, I agree with you if you are suggesting that the US should not be strong-arming poorer countries into raising prices just to maintain the profits made by pharmaceutical companies.
Comment · 14 years ago
I'm 30 and am in an identical decision - except, a few weeks ago, I made the decision to resign from a well paid job at a startup.
A close friend of mine from university are going it alone for the next 18 / 24 months.
I'll be relying solely on my wife's income and our substantial savings over the next 12 months.
The main propellant that started me on my journey has been the unequivocal support I've received from both my wife and parents (my own and my in-laws).
Once I was clear in what I wanted to do & had a rough plan for how I could achieve those, I waited a few months - thought about the various scenarios day & night and once I had convinced myself it was a risk worth take - I took it to my best friend (and tried convincing him).
Luckily, we have been coding together since university and we decided we could take the plunge together since our temperment and personalities are matched well.
One of my current colleagues encouraged me & said to me it'll be the best experience of my life, to paraphrase his words... "the worst that could happen is that I'd have to go back to working for someone else. There's no chance that I could die, so why the hell not give it a try?".
When I mustered up the courage to tell my CIO (who I report to...) that I was leaving - he was sad to see me leave, but overjoyed that I'd be taking the risk and trying a new venture (he co-founded the company I currently work for and previously sold an earlier startup to Cisco).
So with the encouragement of others around me, I could only blame myself for not following through and giving the 'startup' thing a try.
... and thus, I would impart this advice to you.
Over the last few months, we've been brushing up our coding skills by building prototypes of ideas we like (and launching them - this is the hard part). One of them is a project we call Math Brain (http://mathbrain.com.au/exam) which helps students in Grade 12 practise for their university entrance exams (or as we call them in Australia - High School Certificate).
The site is not supposed to be a billion dollar business - but it seems to have started getting some regular usage (we were plesantly surprised). Hopefully, we can continue building upon this and perhaps build a proper business out of it (we would never had known if we had never launched it).
At the same time, we're not putting all our eggs in one basket - like you, we've got a number of other app ideas we'd like to prototype and release - all built & following the lean startup methodology.
The difference though, is that we have external pressure to deliver - i.e. both my wife and parents are invested our venture succeeding and therefore we demo things to them regularly. They got sick of me telling them about the ideas I have and showing them mockups of products - now they tell me to shut up and build it.
The trick, I believe is to make sure that you have someone outside of you and your co-founders putting the pressure on to deliver the project. Once you've got this external pressure, your likelihood of success is already higher.
The fact that you have a wife that can support you financially is great - because now you are both invested in making sure you are successful - this is great motivation!!!
I hope this helps in getting the fire started... god speed!
Comment · 14 years ago
Is this an indication that Digsby is going out of business?
I'm going to change the title of this to be a call to action.