http://Nurph.com/AllStartups might be of interest to the Hacker News community (Twitter @AllStartups) - it's real-time Twitter chat for startup founders. We're chatting about the latest Apple news right now.
Congrats on TC, Michael, Long - and thanks for helping me to get up & running with Insoshi a while back.
As far as I'm concerned, a business like this (mysql/wordpress for social networks) was bound to happen. I'm just glad it's written in Ruby, running on Rails, version controlled via Git, and founded by the guys who taught me Rails (via RailsSpace).
There's loads of enterprise social networking consultancies popping-up, and they all want their own custom made platform , written in the latest web development framework, to sell straight in to the SMEs. Insoshi should fit the bill quite nicely. The only major question is how hosting services fit in to this (WordPress.com?), but I'm sure the guys already have this planned out.
As for the WordPress plugin comparison; Rails already has a convenient plugin architecture, so there's no reason why Insoshi can't piggyback this, at least for the time being.
Not working on the same problem for all hours of the day usually helps. For example, instead of spending all day coding, break up the day by swapping your focus to an entirely different aspect of your startup, like finding potential customers or planning your pitch to a top blogger. Coding in the morning, strategy in the afternoon...and both should be done while drinking as much water as possible.
If you can't bring yourself to focus on a different part of your startup, write down exactly what is causing you to be angry (let's be honest - it's usually something to do with the code you've written) and list the possible solutions underneath it. Choose the best solution on gut instinct, and move on asap. Too much thinking is bad.
p.s. I'm really, really glad to have come across this post; I now know other people are experiencing the same ridiculous mental state!
Please do if you think it's appropriate; I'm not sure how well the discussion style posting will work when aggregated amongst traditional blog posts, but let me know what you think (at the moment we're organising an entrelist session on ImInLikeWithYou's 'Blockles'). I have startup blog at http://webappropriate.com which may be more suitable.
I'm in a web entrepreneur mailing list with a couple of other guys from this forum. We started on email, but quickly moved on to using the wordpress prologue theme on our own URL, http://EntreList.com. It's working out pretty well, it's more fun to share the discussion across the web, and it's given me a ton of ideas for my own app.
Prologue wouldn't scale for the level of discussion that YC news handles, but it's good for small groups (perspective co-founders, perhaps?).
Zed hits the nail on the head when he highlights the passion for Ruby among new programmers. I just started working with Rails, and everyone I've been learning from is infatuated with Ruby (and Rails, to some extent).
Pretzel - I'd be interested in meeting up. Graduated from Leeds last summer, and I've been scrambling round in the startup world since.
Anyone else from the UK, let me know. The Songkick guys held a UK hackers meetup last year, so we're probably due for another one soon. Maybe we could do one in Stratford-Upon-Avon?!
I'm looking for co-founders too! I finished Uni last year, been working on prototype since. It isn't the money, it isn't proving other apps are bad; I'm just doing because I can't imagine doing anything else. I'm all consumed by the startup excitement!