I am kind of sad that Ron Conway is no longer a part of Y Combinator funding team. I really thought of the original Y Combinator team as a dream team!
PG - will cutting the initial funding to 80K give Y combinator a better chance to scale? Will you be giving opportunity to diverse companies due to more money being available at your disposal?
PG- my humble request to you is - can you invest the money saved due to this change in diverse companies/founders?
I know you have always said - that you like to invest in people who are like you - i.e. hackers. I, however, have always thought of Y Combinator as brewing pot of coffee. The only issue is the person brewing the coffee - i.e. you, PG, - only likes cream (i.e hackers) in his coffee (Y Combinator) and therefore, the only choice the world gets from this, otherwise brilliant coffeemaker, is a plain black coffee or a coffee with cream.
My humble question and a request is can the person brewing the best pot of coffee be more inclusive and experiment with other choices such as coffee with sugar (single founders) and coffee with splenda (non-technical founders)in a statistically significant way?
PG - I know the final product will be very different but the world will get more choices and, more importantly, the reduction in funding from $150K to 80K would actually create additional opportunities for diverse group of deserving companies!
The answer to this question very much depends on your niche market. The assumption is that the founder is a domain expert in what ever niche (domain) he/she is starting in. Keeping this assumption in mind, one should at a minimum know who the competitors are.
In my humble opinion, the more important question is: does your competitors know who you are?
If they know who you are, then I would have tremendous trust in your execution.
I am sorry, I was out of town. My bad, I now see what you were suggesting. I am much clear about the concept. I also looked at your source code and I am assuming that amazon is paying you CPA right?
May be you should apply for shopping.com partners program and negotiate CPC payment based on their rate card. That way, you immediately start making CPC money when you drive traffic and you are not just bound to amazon. Though, amazon is good starting point as Shopping.com will ask to see your website (as a small demo). They are little slow but you can also try shopzilla affiliate program (CPC only).
Once you get good traction and traffic starts building, you will start getting offers straight from various merchants.
A real hacker would not really care about title. I have never looked at the title when accepting a job. I much rather look at job description and see if it's something cool, refreshing, novel and challenging. Otherwise, I simply say no - thanks.
My question is - if they are buying a product from amazon - why don't they check product reviews posted right on amazon? Why do they need a different site? I do agree that opinions from friends and family counts a lot but the concept has many unknowns.
1. You need to communicate (with friends and family) what product you want buy from amazon
2. Then your friends and family need to have purchased the same product
3. Now, when you are looking for a product, you need to drive them to make a recommendation.
I think you should quickly test the concept and obtain some real feedback before scaling it up.
Interesting, though I would like to caution you regarding your assumption that it may go viral. In the world of business - assumptions are very dangerous.
Let me give you an example of what goes viral. I recently came across an app for calling a cab using a smart phone. They advertised it very cleverly. They said, think about you are stuck on the road at an unknown location. It is 2:00 AM in the morning and there's no one around! With our app, you can call a cab with a single click without knowing a thing about your location. All you have to do is click the button, stay put and a cab will be there promptly.
Now, I travel a lot so I realized that this could be really nice and handy. So, I immediately downloaded the app. I spoke with my wife and guess what? She downloaded it as well as she thought this could come in handy for her as well. My wife is more social than I am so she posted this newly found app on FB and within no time, most of her friends had downloaded this app as well.
The important thing I am trying to convey about virility to you is that it has to have two key ingredients - utility and the sense of urgency. If you can effectively communicate those two ingredients - your app will go viral. Otherwise, it’s a rat race so before you develop it a whole lot - test out the concept and its virility!
Finding a business partner (co founder) is just like finding a life partner. You have to start out with a business date and see if you can take the relationship to the next level. Running a business is all about conviction and hard work. You will go through lots and lots of ups and downs and for better or worst your business partner will be there to share your burden. You should try to get a co-founder with skill-set that is different from yours. So, if you are a coder, try to bring someone who is great at sales and marketing especially with user acquisition experience. Two hackers are good but diversity in co-founder is even better! Especially, if you can get someone with user acquisition experience upfront, it will make all the difference. Building some thing that every one wants is the hardest thing to do so in a team try having one person focused on building the product and the second person on bringing users to test it.
I think it can be done but have you thought about your competition? I see thousands of such companies driving the price down on a daily basis. Just type Web Development on Google and you will see how many companies pop up on the first page? I have seen international companies who put out ads on adwords for as low as $5/hrs rate. Granted, these companies may not be very reliable but unfortunately they do form a price ceiling. Ask how will you and your partner compete against such low prices?
In my humble opinion, the web development model is highly outsourced model and while I agree that it is broken, you will have to be very careful about entering into it. You should first identify and validate a proper niche that will provide you a steady stream of revenue. The unfortunate and brutal truth is that as soon as you put out your value proposition in you niche to earn a steady stream of revenue, 10 other international companies will simply copy your value proposition and advertise right underneath your ad for much lower prices.
Hmmm...Interesting post. Typically - I would say something that is illegal is illegal but in your case you were a minor so couldn’t really hold it against you. In my opinion - you have two options:
Option 1: Apply to a company on international grounds and ask them to sponsor you on H1-B Visa. (Very-Very Difficult)
Option 2: Apply to a MS program as an international student and get your visa status changed to Student Visa. Upon your graduation - you will have work permit to get a job in US and then your job will apply for H1-B Visa. (You should consult a lawyer)
In any case, you will be in limbo for a long time.
Third and most expensive and unlikely option is that you can invest one million dollars in a start-up that creates a minimum of 10 fulltime US Jobs and you automatically get US Citizenship :)
Of course - you have already identified 4th Option of finding a spouse here who is already a citizen of US :)
The short and sweet answer is NO :) Just because you build something does not mean everyone will come. Actually, at times - even if you build some thing absolutely awesome - people may not come.
The reason behind this is called "Value Attribution" - if you really want to understand the concept behind this - please refer to a very famous experiment conducted by Washington Post but here’s the summary of what they did.
The Washington Post asked world renowned Violinist – Joshua Bell to play on his 3.5 million dollar violin at Washington D.C metro station without revealing his identity.
The hypothesis was that Joshua Bell, who had given tons of sold out performances on auditoriums where tickets averaged $100/person, would be able to gather a large crowd just based on his sheer talent.
But, after playing some of the most intricate music ever written on a 3.5 million violin that was hand crafted by Antonio Stradivari in 1713, Joshua Bell could not get ANY TRACTION. During his 45-minute performance – no one really stopped by to listen to his performance let alone gathering a crowd to appreciate it!
So we might wonder – what went so wrong? Why did Joshua Bell fail to get any traction?
Well the answer lies in Value Attribution and Crowd Mindset!
The people traveling through Metro station that morning did not recognize that the person-playing Violin was a world famous violinist Joshua Bell. They also did not realize that the violin that was being played was worth 3.5 million dollars. To them, it was simply a guy playing violin on a busy morning. What is a value of a guy-playing violin on subway station? Nothing right? So – no one really stopped or even paid much attention.
The same thing is true when you build a product. People subconsciously attribute value to every product. This is the primary reason I believe that no one will come just because you build a product.
From above example, you should be able to tell that even if your product is world-renowned but if people fail to recognize the value of your product, they will not come.
So, it is very important to create a good product but then it is even more important to communicate its value to the users. Once you are able to do those two things then only are you ready to talk about user acquisition and user retention.
Your product value creation is your sales funnel or better known as your value proposition. The users whom you plan to acquire must first travel through your sales funnel in order to understand the value of your product. So where or how you pick up your users it is not that important. What is critically important is what you show them along the way.
The second thing that is equally important during user acquisition cycle is to understand their mindset. For example, it is easy see that the mindset of the crowd on a subway station in above example was surely different from the mindset of the crowd in a live theater. The people at subway station were there to catch a train and you can safely assume that they were not interested in listing to music. The music was probably the last thing in their mind so even though, more than 1000 people passed by, no one really stopped or appreciated the music.
Similarly, bringing a crowd of 25K users to your site on day one may make you feel good but it does not add any value unless it’s the right crowd with right mindset! I think the focus should be on acquiring the right customers but that will only happen if you truly understand the value proposition of your product and then be able to communicate it with right set of customers!
Okay - that sounds good. Although, one thing I forgot to mention is - if you can - please stay away from angel investors who are non-value added.
The problem with non value added investors is that they may or may not know what you are trying to create (and how difficult it is or will be) so they will get impatient very fast and will run for shelter at the first sign of trouble. They are known for running start-ups down!
Instead, find a technical invester. Having an investor who is technically sound and who understands your concept well will be much harder to convince but in long run you will have great return from him/her.
There is nothing better than a technical expert committing money in your start up. It will instantly validate your idea and I think that is the first step to a great success.
In my humble opinion, you should leaverage you leaving your job based on an investment from a technical investor.
And, trust me - I know how difficult it is to have a technical investor commit their seed money but also trust me that if you can pull it - you will be a very happy founder even after leaving your job.
I just looked at your demo and spend only about a minute but my initial question is how do you diffentiate your company from dropbox?
I do not think the issue is building the code or encrypting the file or sending it out to non users. The issue is why will someone select your service over dropbox?
They have better market penetration and stronger cash position. The barrier to entry comes into play when I have about 1000 GB of my data already hosted on dropbox and now I see your company doing pretty much the same thing. Why would I leave dropbox and migrate my 1000 GB of data to dopdock?
Before you rewrite the code and encrypt the file and perform user authentication scirpts - I think you should answer that question first. If you have a great answer - then it's great. If your answer is will give them more free space i.e. 200 GB to start out with - it's good but I don't think it's going to cut it. So, my thing is answer that first and if you can - you will be golden.
The SCORE is Service Corps Of Retired Executives backed by SBA and they help you via email. Their service is free and you can have a Marketing Executive (As oppose to an intern) help you via email for your plans etc. You shold definitely take a look at it. What I am not clear is that if your idea is 90% ready then why not just test it to see if you get any traction? If you have users - I think the rest will really fall into place :)
I am assuming you don't really need a whole lot of marketing budget. Can you test your idea using adwords? For about $500 dollars, you can get fairly targeted customers and you can study their bheavior using analytics? Just a thought!
Finding a business partner is just like finding a life partner. You have to start out with a business date and see if you can take the relationship to the next level. Running a business is all about conviction and hardwork. You will go through lots and lots of ups and downs and for better or worst your business partner will be there to share your burden. From your post, it appears you are a coder. Are you a good marketer as well? In partner - you definitely want to look for something that you don't have. That person should be bringing you something that you cannot do. If you need marketing help, try your local SCORE. They are usually very good and are completely Free.
I would think of it this way. If the idea is that easy to steal (Or replicate) then (without knowing much about the idea) it sounds to me that it's pretty low barrier to entry idea so ask yourselves how big can it get. Really?
The other and more important thing is - ideas are dime a dozen but it's all about execution. My issue with stealing the idea is that you are not going to be able to execute it as it will never be your true passion. You will always have that doubt. And because of that, you will not have that bullet proof conviction - so essential to success of any startup -required to transform the idea into business.
The reason the guy whose idea you are trying to steal appears stubborn is because he has convection. Just know that execution requires absolute conviction - thousands of people during execution will say how terrible the idea actually is and it will require sheer conviction to transform it into a business model.
So - my suggestion is that the guy who had the idea should be the CEO and you guys should be the cofounders.
I am not big on stealing anything. If you are smart - you will have something original. Remember cream always rises to the top. So forget about stealing and start hacking something original!