This thread needs to be killed. The website looks exactly like HN with most of the content from HN, but has some fishy looking links embedded to look like HN upvoted stories.
For someone like me who opens multiple tabs at one time, it would be easy to think that I was on HN and click through the fishy links.
1) Online: I just skim articles to find something that interest me. I am not in "knowledge absorbing" mode at this time. It's mostly just fun/boredom. I try to limit how much time I spend reading online.
Offline: I read for either knowledge (business books, non-fiction) or for pure pleasure (fiction). For both the cases, my kindle has my full attention. No computer, no mobile phone, no distractions.
2) If the word makes no sense, I will check the meaning. However, if I am not completely sure about the meaning, I might still carry on as it helps not to get distracted from reading.
3) I read for 3-4 hours at a time and make sure it is at a time when I have peace and quiet and uninterrupted time.
Few questions for you before any advice can be given
1. Do you have any official documentation over the ownership of startup?
2. If so, how much do you and the other founder each own and what are the vesting periods?
3. Does the CEO have any equity and if so, what is his vesting period?
4. When you voiced your concern with your founder, what else did he say? Did he brush aside your concerns or adequately address them, while saying that keeping the CEO in place is important for the business.
I try and spend 20-30 minutes everyday going through the "new" tab and up-voting the new submissions I find interesting (think of it like volunteer work). Somehow I tend to up vote Ask HNs more often than posts that are links to website.
I just noticed that the said "bully" has stated in his comments that you had integrated inspectlet.com. I checked it out and it looks like a screen recording service. If this is truly the case, then I think he may be correct as interpreting this as a violation of privacy.
I think the best course of action would be to do the following
1. Put up code on github as others have suggested, thereby reassuring existing users
2. Publicly state in a reply to the comment that you had indeed integrated the screen recording service to help you understand user behavior, so that you could make a better app.
3. Put a disclaimer on the details page for Google Analytics with a link to opt out.
AFAIK - Yes. The developer could potentially run the analytics in the background html and from the content scripts track events sending the url as parameters.
I've seen loads of extensions that use Google Analytics to track user behavior. They of course post this on the details page with a link to the Opt-Out.
Could you tell us more about the "new analytics startup"? It seems like that's the code the reviewer was referring to (which you have said is no longer there in the extension)
A demo or some screenshots would definitely help me understand how this works. I understand what it does, but have no idea how it does that. Most people wouldn't bother signing up without that info.
Also, as you scroll down, there is a very large amount of white space, which seems to be just wasting screen real estate.
It really depends on what you are building. If your domain is say Retail, then you should try and find someone with that domain expertise. I am of course assuming that you are a techie and do not have much experience in that domain.
One source of such partnerships that people often overlook are - current customers. If you have a customer who is really passionate about the project, there is a chance he might be interested in working on it with you.
I am launching a document translation service. Don't have a website up yet, so nothing that I can point you to. Sorry.
The user will upload their document, make payment and download translated document. I figured I needed a privacy policy since some of the data might be sensitive.
Thanks. Will check out what others in my niche have done and take it from there.
If I had to look for one single thing in a CTO to head my new startup - it would be a person who is able to answer - "No. I don't know how to do that. But I will figure it out and let you know".
Since you mention that you are a startup, you will have technical issues that no one single person will have worked on before. Instead of looking for someone who has UI, backend, server admin, mobile, web [add many more] skills, look for someone who is honest about what he knows and does not know, is not intimidated by different technologies and enjoys getting his fingers wet in different areas of work. I'd go with a Jack of all trades to a Ninja-Guru-Shaman programmer any day.
I believe that the question you should be asking yourself is this - Can BaaS (or any other service) help me get to the market right now at the lowest cost possible.
For any such commodity as a service, the initial costs to you will be lower than if you had to build the service yourself. However, over time the costs will go up. The benefit to you will always be ease of development and having the time to focus on building the core features that will make your startup feasible. Most startups fail before they reach a point where they need to worry about rising costs and that's a good problem to have. (when you have it you can mostly pay someone to fix them for you)
My recommendations (having never used any of the above mentioned BaaS providers, do take these with a pinch of salt)
1. Look at how easy it is to get your data back if you need to host the services yourself or change providers. Does the provider have any processes for the same? Speak to the sales (and support) people about this before you decide on a provider. Look for the provider that is transparent about this.
2. Don't worry about what the cost will be when you reach a million users. Your time right now is spent wisely validating your idea. Cross that bridge when you come to it.
3. The only "complete no no" scenario I can think of would be if you were hosting sensitive information (credit card etc)
No. From my experience it does not matter between these three. Previously a lot of people thought that .info domains had been penalized by google as they were abused (cheap domains to buy) but there was no substantial data to backup the claim.
For someone like me who opens multiple tabs at one time, it would be easy to think that I was on HN and click through the fishy links.