If you ask yourself "What's most important in my life?" the answer will probably be "the people and relationships in my life".
Can't think of any better thing to work on than ways to improve our relationships with the people in our lifes. I'm happy that the best talent dealing with it. I wish I did.
I actually agree with Sarah/Paul. OK, London will still be THE European centra for startups because the VCs, successful companies and a lot of great people from all over the world + the English language.
But...
Berlin has a great international atmosphere, a lot of talented people and people really love startups. But the most important thing is that startup people actually moving to Berlin from all over the world to start their startups or to join others.
When people want to move to a city because of the startup scene there... that's a sign of that something great is happening there.
For me, the real question isn't about "how to find a technical or non-technical" co-founder but "how to find another great entrepreneur that want to join a hell of a ride". That's even harder than to find a person w tech- or non-technical background.
Of course it's a big plus if the person that you'll have as an partner is a great programmer, designer or business developer. But to be honest, the most important asset of a co-founder is his engagement. Find people who are highly motivated to work with you, your idea and your product and you'll be able to achieve awesomeness.
Of course it will require some efforts. I think the iPhone App Store purchase process handle it very nice, it requires enought effort but still makes it smooth and easy.
Usability and the most simple solution will always win in the long run.
Great guide but I really think this area needs a lot of innovation, the checkout process isn't nearly as optimized as it should be. It's 2011 and you still need to fill out the form every single time you want to buy anything.
I think we need to aim for the one-click-to-buy dream to get the checkout process getting it's usability and conversion it has the potential for. Apple's App Store is a great exampel of how easy we can make this come true. Two clicks and a password and boom you have bought the app. I want the same standard on all e-commerce sites, possibly with Facebook Credits/Facebook Connect, so whenever I'm logged in the purchase will take 1-3 clicks and no damn forms to fill out.
Great concept and execution! I've had the same idea for years but thought Google would launch this sooner or later. Love that it was launched with a business model as well.
Some feedback:
* I would be able to search local files as well. Dropbox is a great start but I want all of it ;)
* The UI have some neat features (love the interactive graphics on the upgrade page!) but overall it has to be improved a lot. Better graphics, better search result page, typography and especially all the buttons.
* Another way of monetizing the idea is to have partnerships with backup services. Affiliate deal or whatever. Since the user want the content searchable, they probably want backup of it as well.
I've worked a lot with PR, marketing and user acquisition methods for different startups the last couple of years and I can't agree with this article. My experience is the opposite, work with Facebook as much as you can, even if most of the "Likes" comes from friends.
There's two (combined) reasons for that:
1. It's really hard to acquire users. With or without budget, the most important part of a startups success is the ability to find and get onboard new users/customers. Facebook might only be one method of getting people sign up for your service but hey, it's one of the most effective ones. If 200 people click "Like" on the same day, of course it will go viral if it's a cool startup. Friends or not, it 's people and most of them have great networks of other people around them. People with many friends are more likely to succeed not only with your Facebook Page but with the business itself. Guess why? People know people, even if they're not themselves in the right target group. Get many people like you, and they'll like what you're doing (and their friends to, hint).
It's no rocket science, really. Facebook is very effective for marketing. Use it. Tips: start the page as fast as you can. Growing the amount of fans takes time, with many invited friends or not. If you get pre-launch press, use it for something. To have 200 FB fans when you launch for real are very valuable.
2. Retention. Facebook is great as a reminder to people. If you have many FB fans, you have many people to remind about your startups existence. Facebook is useful for getting long-time value of a initial interest/hype/launch. Actually more effective than newsletter subscriptions for some of the projects I'm involved in.
I think this is a great idea. Combining the best features of traditional online forums with topic based threads and the easyness of IM communication. Instead of defining the chat by the people in it, Convore define it by the threads topic. Definitely an interesting take on group IM/chat. Also - easy to use, clean design. Me like.
Actually, you don't even need to switch users to listen to your girlfriends music. The social layer they've integrated via Facebook makes it possible for you to listen to her playlists as well, from your account ;) #win
As you might now The Pirate Bay and piracy have been huge in Sweden. Spotify have changed that when it comes to music. By making it _easier_ to listen to music via their application than via bittorrent/kazaa/napster/dc++ downloading, they're now the most used music player in Sweden. Just a few years ago the Pirate Bay top 100 list was full of music. Now there's two (2!) music albums on it, the rest is tv-series and movies.
If you look at it that way, that piracy is the competitor not cd sales, the music industry has a great opportunity in Spotify in the long run.
I would recommend you to focus on the busines side for a while. Your minimum viable product seems to work, you've already a pricing strategy and a few customers. To validate your pricing and offer you need to get a few more customers. 5-10 at minimum.
Do everything you can to get your first 10 paying customers, you'll learn a lot, and after that focus on your product roadmap. You don't know what your customers need, or want, until you have a bunch of 'em.
So, call people, sell, market your site, try to get some PR and do everything you can come up with to get these 10 customers. When you've done that, you will start to get real feedback from your customers not other entrepreneurs and will a better clue on how the product roadmap should look like. And how your product will fit into the market.
Then, it's time to get 100 customers. Do everything you can to get them.
Then, it's time to get 1000 customers. If you have 1000 customers, you know you have a scalable business. Time to celebrate!