suprasanna

As a quick 'part answer' to your question, a lot of the reasoning behind so many rounds for many companies is actively choosing to stay unprofitable by pouring would-be profits (and new investment dollars) into gaining more customers. The idea being that as long as you "know" you can get your customer to be worth more than you paid to acquire her, eventually your company will be profitable once you slow down (or hit a 'max') with user acquisition.

I'm visiting India currently from the States and the biggest hurdle to launching delivery sort of services here must have been effecively locating homes.

Addresses that most "western" countries consider expected (ex. 1 Apple Loop, City, State Zip) don't exist here. Companies literally print on ads "On ____ Road, near ____ Terminal behind ______ City, State".

If Amazon somehow figured this out for India delivery - they'll do great.

Lastly, a 30 day return policy (or any return policy) is unheard of here. Electronics, clothes, anything I bought here strictly said no returns no matter what (even if defective).

Agreed. Also part of the issue: staying up all night DOES impress (just not to professors aka no impact on your grade). Students stay up late with friends; complain about 90% of the time; plan fun stuff to do 'after they study'.

And so, in a weird way, pretending to be super-busy has its rewards. And this is part of why the problem even exists.

I'd agree with you that not much can be done because it's not like education is advocating this take on studying per se, it's just a relic that gets passed down through the various waves of freshmen every year.

To this end, for those so inclined, Cal Newport is the author of a great book (How to be a Straight A student) that had good ways to force yourself into a schedule that limits your studying time (good thing!) while still giving you the results you want. Lots of willpower required but was well worth the effort for me (took a bunch of failures until I got it right).

As a University student in the States, I can say that, other than academics themselves, this is mostly propagated by a "I slept fewer hours than you so clearly I work harder look at me and feel bad I'm so stressed kbye" mindset. I have seen many times people waiting to tweet or Facebook something right before bed to prove to the world (and elicit responses) that they were up till an ungodly hour.

It's similar to what happens in adulthood when everyone compares how "busy" they are 24/7 and display it as if it's a badge of pride.

The pro side to easier access to larger and larger audiences is the ability to find a niche audience (or have a niche audience find you via Twitter). This turns your 'boring' pursuit of mastery into something of interest, and maybe even guidance, to a large group of people.

Not quite a direct answer, more of a thought sapling.

For those that have been down the startup road before - should this focus also be reflected in the same proportions in your budget? Ex. Should 50%+ of a startup's budget be spent on user acquisition/trying new things to gain users + increase conversion rates?

I'd argue that people generally have an underlying expectation that they'll be able to do far more on the internet with web apps than with physical mediums. If that is true, then having elements from the real world into web apps does promote a sense of familiarity and an intuitive understanding of, at the very least, how to get started.

Facebook has all the tools in place for sharing things perfectly and privately just as I would want and I know I can even customize them per piece of media I put out there. The problem I have is working through 500+ people and figuring out who to share what with. I think the reason people are looking for an alternative for some aspects of sharing is that it's too much trouble to curate that giant list (and sometimes, as you mentioned, useful to just keep that giant list of friends). Instead of going through and curating all those people, it's far easier to go with a new service, proactively add just a few people you care to share with for any given event and then put your photos/content there.

dotmatrix22, I'd like to chat with you about how you're handling things - I'm working on a startup that is leveraging this in a similar way and I'd like to see if you can help us out as a consultant. Shoot me an email (under my profile).