this could be technical... getting users to use the product or service/page. my newest venture is a little different... B2B... so we'll see how that goes.
also, my answer is relevant because with more users comes expansion. my social networking site (before the phrase was coined so feverishly) started with 10 people initially signing up. i had launched the day prior to my vacation and didn't return for 2 weeks. word-of-mouth spread it like wildfire and when I returned... 20k people has signed up. with that however, came the server and bandwidth bill (I was using a shared hosting plan). technically, it made me broke for time (fixing everything that broke and eventually broke during my transfer to the dedicated server) and financially it drained me (back when dedicated servers cost and arm, leg, first born and your dog fluffy). =P
i wouldn't say it's impossible... but if you have too many "leaders" and not enough "doers" then ideas and expectations start to bottleneck. ideally, my preferred team would consist of 2 leaders (one w/ more experience in marketing/biz and one w/ more experience in the flow of programming and visual design layout), a hardcore programmer and a UI designer.
take every project as a learning experience. if you have the ability to select what projects you accept, only take the ones who have an "emotional" connection to you and/or your business... aka, the ones that don't cause you to groan and hate your line of work. :)
why does everyone compare themselves to google? with everything company, something'll happen eventually and it'll turn into the present-day microsoft. the thing that i'm focusing on is to become a leader like google w/o replicating it step-for-step. google found it's wave and surfed it... now it's our turn to do the same in our own niche/product.
traffic and service recognition with a very focused market group. facebook's valuations, as inflated as they may be, could hold some truth based on the market they have targeted themselves into.
do politicians even know how to turn a computer on? seriously tho, this was the same argument that was given when the internet was introduced to the public a few decades ago. instead of holding technology and their creators accountable, the government needs to hold the individuals that use and abuse it accountable.
most of the "bad guys" i know of who make viruses and spread bad stuff around the internet are not usually the ones starting up companies and trying to make a product people will be able to use. the government has a tendency to point the finger and blame the small guys instead of taking responsibility and training their employees how to use the resources given to them... and then complains about being under-funded w/ their technology program.
if the RIAA (which i respect but don't agree with) can kick around little old grannies and people who died a decade ago, can't the government track down someone on their own set of networks sharing information? not to mention... haven't they heard of simple port blocking? >o<
make sure what you use is primary-browser compliant. if it isn't, make sure there is a fail-safe system of code/css that allows the person to still easily navigate the site. one additional thing: make sure that if your site is to be crawled by search engines, that the menus don't appear "blind" to them as that will reduce their crawling capabilities/performance.
As much as I enjoy collecting generic, one-word domains... this is just crazy. You're buying the right to use the name and not the name itself; a virtual promise if you will. It's like buying an ad space on the side of a building in downtown SF only to be covered in a couple years by bigger, nicer looking buildings and ads.
I guess it's not so bad seeing that it was a mostly stock-trade deal, but the idea of spending that much money on a domain that isn't all that grand is absurd. Does anyone want to buy OrdersUp.com for $200 million? Heck, i'll make you an even better deal... $150 million with full rights to our software... ;-)
Keep a paper trail of everything, from emails sent relating to your service to any fees paid out to contractors or anytone else working under/for you w/ the project. If they make a stink out of it, I would suggest hiring a lawyer to represent you (we have one that we have on retainer -- tends to be cheaper this way). If you don't have the funding for this, you could always ask them to rename theirs and maybe they'll comply in good faith if you prove you had your name and whatnot first... or the last option would be to follow chandrab and just rename your product... it'll keep a stink down w/ the other company and won't be a costly blackhole to throw money you could have put into marketing the new name.
I can't help but laugh at the audacity of another tech-related investment firm commenting like that. He is trying to persuade people that YC is just writing cheques.
also, my answer is relevant because with more users comes expansion. my social networking site (before the phrase was coined so feverishly) started with 10 people initially signing up. i had launched the day prior to my vacation and didn't return for 2 weeks. word-of-mouth spread it like wildfire and when I returned... 20k people has signed up. with that however, came the server and bandwidth bill (I was using a shared hosting plan). technically, it made me broke for time (fixing everything that broke and eventually broke during my transfer to the dedicated server) and financially it drained me (back when dedicated servers cost and arm, leg, first born and your dog fluffy). =P