This is the philosophy behind http://spinnakr.com. It is still a work in progress, as getting the thresholds right and making sure events are the important ones across a whole range of different sites is on ongoing effort, but I totally agree this is the way analytics should work. Right now we're just focused on traditional web analytcics but you should see user focused data soon as well.
The OS integration is really interesting and compelling - sort of a Dropbox + eCommerce. I wonder if more services will start to look like this (at least those that involve files).
Do you have data on desktop vs web engagement of the product?
Great thoughts, Jason. Your point about the change in valuations is more than an observations, though. Implicitly, it suggests that valuations are less a function of the companies themselves and more a consequence of exogenous macroeconomic and industry specific factors.
This is sort of a scary realization to me, because it means that "crushing it" isn't a strategy to preserving valuation. Perhaps the Dropboxes of the world will always be able to name their price, but for the rest of us valuations will come tumbling down if the outlook turns negative on the startup asset class or economic activity broadly.
Startups taking a more conservative approach to valuation and amount of capital to raise may be much better positioned to raise subsequent rounds of financing when the market, as all markets do, regresses to the mean.
Really clever! I guess the challenge would be keeping users in the group rather than reverting back to email the next time a big discussion is about to start. Are there tools to keep users updated? Like a daily digest maybe?
Thanks for the feedback, and I appreciate you sharing the pic! Yeah, that doesn't look very good. I'll test it on XP and see if I can improve. Personally I really like the text-shadow/bevel effect, but I've always worried it reduces readability.
I could see this being really useful for contact emails addresses (like [email protected]). This would be perfect to pull out all those addresses of people that have contacted you to include in a newsletter or update.
I was running a dynamic dns updater with some settings on my router and everything, and you can definitely do that. ProxyLocal is just so easy though - you just type "proxylocal" and it gives you a url that works, regardless of your ip address, router settings, etc. The other advantage is then you don't have to permanently open a route to your dev box just to let people check something out.
From talking to the founders of some of the biggest local startups, most seem to prefer recruiting in the DC region though it remains a challenge to find the right people. I've heard from a few people that hires in DC are much more "loyal" than they are in the valley and there is much less turnover.
One of the main advantages DC has is there is a huge supply of engineers and developers working for major defense and government contractors just waiting to be poached by a hot new startup.
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