We did a startup that used the same model in stopping online procrastination: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2268710, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuc0_ZMQ4P8 and our competitor in productivity space blogged about us :http://blog.beeminder.com/timecarrot/. My experience is that, it is really hard to build a business model around behavioral economics, be it weight loss, quitting smoking, or anything else. Based on the data I have seen, people who will think they need commitment device are also sophisticated enough to know that they might fail, hence won't signup. In the end, you always end up serving significantly smaller number of consumers than you have initially assumed.
I am super excited, I have been doing backend development with rails and been kind of intimidated moving into doing more front-end stuff. I think LT is the answer.
I do believe that the best engineers of the world read HN. Perhaps this belief is fueled by my recent admiration for the way software engineers solve problems and the intellectual rigor and diversity of submissions and discussions here. Why then, one of us couldn't crack the code left by the victim? I would think that the FBI appeal to the public is more likely to be seen at HN by potential hero of the day than the general readership of NYT.
Here is what I would do:
1. Assign numbers to each symbol
2. Iterate through each word in dictionary and check whether the sequence of numbers or part of the sequence is encountered in the code.
3. If so, then assign the appropriate letters to the symbols in the code and run a regex check on each sequence. Unknown letters can be left as empty space (code doesn't have empty space so it works perfect)
4. Get the results and see if there are alternative sequence matching
Now, I am recently new to programming, but I look up to most of you out there are and if there is any possibility that this can be cracked by programming methodology, then it is one of you that can solve it.
Only way you compete with Wall Street is you increase the utility of expected payoffs, not just the wage. People who are going to WS have different risk profiles than entrepreneurs. You can have low participation in entrepreneurship as long as participating ones are competitive and innovative. It is better use of talent and time if those who would have failed anyways (because they don't have the guts, etc) go and make themselves useful elsewhere.
Economics of startups and ad industry is a lot like that of farmers and corn. Hard to find quality food without junk load of corn syrup in it, and farmers are always poor. Ads, like corn will keep winning unless tech crowd is able to think of equally innovative ways of monetizing their innovative ideas.
rexreed is right, it shouldn't take long to set up the system. Most of the time is wasted waiting to get approved. I integrated Braintree api in half a day, while the application process was taking a few days. We had to drop them and go for paypal because it had a masspay option, otherwise we are looking for ways to avoid using paypal.
Honestly, I wasn't aware of the convention. Seeing DropBox's color, we went with our own. Thanks for letting us know, we will definitely try to include it for our next update.
It is better if NGOs are promoting the service to their existing and potential donors. It is possible that revenue from giving away $150,000 with a buzz brings in more users than 2 engineers can.
I have explored this kind of marketing before. This creates a buzz among the non-profit organizations and non-profits will be doing the marketing for you if they consistently receive funds through SwipeGood. Instead of asking for $10 one time donation, they can say "Hey, enroll in this program and indicate us as a recipient." This strategy is utility maximizing, bc small amount of funds given away over some period of time is less painful than parting with $10, especially the effort of donating is attached to other types of activities we already are used to, like purchasing stuff.
I can sympathize with discontent about this, but almost nobody has brought up the positive uses of unique Internet ID.
Suppose you want a system where you want to signal to all internet companies that you don't want your browsing data to be harbored without your consent. The ID system would allow the creation and enforcement of such system.
The support for this comes in part because of pressure from the groups who are concerned about privacy and fretting over how their browsing data is used. While infringement of privacy hampers the growth of ecommerce, complete ban on harboring data hurts e-businesses (they won't be able to advertise efficiently). The solution to it is to create a free market: assign everyone a unique id, to which your preferences about harboring date will be assigned. Even better, data associated with that id can be considered proprietary, and users can license it to companies who are willing to pay for it and users can sue companies that infringe on this proprietary data bc courts will recognize it as solely yours. This is a good start if government wants to step in to protect your privacy from the "evil" corporations, while not hindering the growth of e-businesses.
Ideally, you will be protected from corporations who are after your private data. Government, however, will surely continue using it the way you don't want.
I am not familiar with B2B, but I had the impression that the B2C companies in the area of technology and manufacturing have been mostly founded by high-net worth individuals, and scalability has been a function of enlisting the help of provincial leaders and state-owned banks.
Nice job! I used to be in translating business for a short while.
I would suggest that freelance translators are asked to enter their profile information in all languages they translate to and from. Depending on initial language a site user has chosen, profile information can be updated to that language. That way a customer who speaks only one of the languages can understand too.
Problem rises when gas station operators, assuming they are rational, know that customers are using this strategy. In this case, they will set a price that will be function of how far and frequent other gas stations are located. The favorable outcome for customer is random chance here, somebody with less gas who would have used the same strategy would end up at more expensive station.