User based growth, I would say no, the valley doesn't help grow that base is not tech focused. But word of mouth exposure, and the possibility of doing face to faces with potential experienced engineers/managers that you want to join,
If you already have all the pieces for partners, and your user base is dispersed, and you don't need capital for growth, then headquarter somewhere cheaper than the Valley (housing and office space can be half to a third the prices you pay here).
Just look at zappos.com. They moved away from the Valley, partly to be in a customer service hub in Las Vegas, and partly because is was just play cheaper.
It is tough acquiring a short (under 8 letter) meaningful domain name now. I am curious to know how much it cost just to buy that domain. Sometimes you can make a nonsensical name stick with enough effort/branding: see zillow.com, it is all in the sub title.
I agree. Creative and brilliant ideas can come at anytime, but putting in the work to get those ideas to market, or to polish them off until presentable to outsiders is where the disciple comes in.
I can wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea to improve a UI workflow, or to squeeze more performance out of a process, but if my disciple doesn't kick and I write the code to get it done,
Also it doesn't take intelligence to makes sure my Press page, About page and Resume stay current, it just takes discipline.
All of my prior jobs have been given to me based on my completed portfolio projects, not on my great ideas. And numerous co-workers have been let go because their brilliance never results in 'finished' projects.
Too much cash infused into a new or developing start-up can actually destroy the incentives needed for the start-up to be successful. Not needing to budget well and prioritize features (because we have cash to do them all) fights against the do the first things first, and do them well mentality needed to move a budding idea into an actual revenue stream.
Hmmm, I was trying to think how you can do such a thing on a smaller scale. You must have enough people in one geographic area to pull this off. So either you are launching in only a few locales, or you have a large enough national following to make this work.
Also, having this much overhead for such a small group demands that those chosen to participate must be networked type people who are willing and able to broadcast their experience. Otherwise the experience will only have a muted affect, and not worth the cost.
Looks like the freemium model for web hosting/construction. I have to agree with some other comments stating the staring templates are needed. People new to site construction will see the blank sites as too much, like when you give someone 25 choices to buy jams, they don't buy any. But if you give them 5 choices of jam, they are more likely to buy something.
Guide their design process a bit and they will grow their Orbs enough for it to really take shape.
Maybe programmers nudged out of the process is a feature not a bug. People who self select out of a hard hiring process may meet not Google's criteria for certain attributes they want to see in their candidate.
The costs associated with starting an LLC vary from state to state, but usually side jobs don't rise to level of needing liability insurance. If your side project is big enough to be a lawsuit target, then it isn't a side project anyway. Build it into something more, and form an LLC, or just get some kind of business/manager's insurance.
With new companies like crowdflower.com and cloudcrowd.com making large pushs into this space, along with ODesk.com and similar competition, I see picking the right solution as paramount to helping a small startup bootstrap well.
I have been using oDesk for almost a year for both side projects and regular company work. Finding good workers is the initial challenge, and can be very time consuming at the start. Once you have a reliable workforce tasks start being completed timely and accurately.
Some of the new cloud staffing groups are trying to remove the touch points with individual workers and instead you work with an account manager who distills the job requirements, fulfills the work in their cloud, checks the accuracy, again in the cloud or through proprietary tools and the delivers a completed task project to the buyer. Expect a price premium though.
If you have money and no time, a manage outsourced cloud would be good for, but for a cash strapped startup, managing individual will cut your costs.
I have a 15" (1680x1050) laptop with a 24" (1920x1200) second monitor. KVM switched to my Mac as well.
This setup is great. I have background tasks on the laptop screen (email, system monitoring, directories) with my main dev work and auxiliaries on the big screen.