"So don’t join an accelerator unless you can win it." So we're basically in a situation in which self-selection rules now. In the future, if you made it through an accelerator and "won" it you were already in a position to do so. That means that the benefit of actually winning the round from the accelerator was minimal since you most likely would have succeeded anyway.
Given the massive difference in funding between an accelerator seed (tens of thousands) and the first raised round (millions) it seems like the accelerators disproportionately gain from having these self selected success stories.
Accelerators, more recently, really seem to provide business direction and a stream of well documented CEO advice which, for a lot of these startups, solves zero of their engineering or customer problems. It's not that the mentorship provided at the labs is not useful but rather that it seems to solve a less important part of the overall problems early companies have.
And to top it off, like the article mentions, the effort rewarded during an accelerator is often related to pizzaz, flash, and cool demos rather than core product. I hope the accelerators look to strengthen their offerings to seed companies and really incubate them rather than slip further towards the "gateway to VCs" which, at times, seems like the predominant movement.
The mobile quora experience is pretty horrible. The site has some gems of information but at the same time a vast amount of questions go unanswered and there is a not insignificant troll ish community growing. Hopefully they can find a way to turn it around.
Pretty cool. Once tiny design hitch would be the flash that accompanies scrolling through the quotes. Each time the screen flashes a few times which is off putting.
A side note on that: There are people from non-profit photosensitive epilepsy foundations that scour the net for that kind of stuff. I've gotten emails about it before...it was an interesting discussion about such design features.
It's not at all clear that advertising on a blog will increase sales just because blogs are influential in the buying process. If I read a blog post that is an honest, unbiased review of a product it will likely contribute greatly to a decision to buy that product. But the power of the blog's suggestion had little to do with the fact that it was a blog and a lot to do with the fact that they were not paid to review.
If I'm reviewing simply to advertise then I lose a great deal of credibility and influence as far as the consumer is concerned. Advertising on blogs will simply shift them from the blog category to the retail or brand site category which may cost them influence.
It's very customizable and has worked for me across at least three versions of os x.