Right, the original article by Priceonomics was submitted weeks ago. This is a follow up by NPR that included an interview with Priceonomics' Rohin Dhar and some other interviews including the SFPD, etc.
I dont think this article is comparing apples to apples. There are no single family homes to be had in most of manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. I'm living in pacific heights now and also live in lower manhattan. Manhattan is still a bit more expensive IMHO.
I had two friends who regularly hosted on couchsurfing in the early 2000's when it wasn't that popular yet. I thought at that time it was insane for two young girls to host random strangers on their couch. They loved the experience and I guess couchsurfing paved the way for sites like airbnb. Good for them, I hope they do well.
I think a really nice feature would be to let me send some voice feedback to MYSELf instead of to you guys, so I can test it. I wanted to test it but not necessarily send you feedback.
That's an amazing video, really made me want to plan a camping trip. I love the ability to integrate photos and video in my spreadsheet. Will I be able to share a read-only link to a mobile site or is it iOS only for now?
With our current understanding of physics, it doesn't seem possible but the key word is current. Scientists recently measured particles going faster than the speed of light. Granted it was not much faster and is still not verified, but if that's possible, it'd stand to reason that there could be other advancements that could do it. If you asked anyone a hundred years ago if they thought they could have real-time communication with someone half way around they world, they would think you were crazy.
I don't agree with the assessment that NYC startups are more "smoke and mirrors". I will concede that there seems to be more of an engineering culture in SV and more of a design culture in NYC but if you look at NYC it's to be expected.
That's going to be a tough one. Are you technical yourself? Are you looking for free collaborators or willing to pay? I'd start with going to some meetups just to get more exposure to the community as a whole.
Beyond that, you should more actively/aggressively go through your circles. There might not be any tech people in your first degree but if you can cast a wide net, you'd be surprised who your friends know.
After playing around with it some more, it's working. Question, are you going to introduce REGEX or any other rules or even some helper functions to further process the API? That would allow us to drill down even further. It is really great for bootstrapping and getting some live data quickly. Kudos!
I think this is a great way to use technology. I think that there is a great opportunity for using game dynamics to get kids excited about nutrition in a way that abstracts out the concepts and just makes it fun.
I think if someone can distill that formula, it could be a life changer - esp. if you can appeal to kids now in their formative years.
In the same vein, here is an iPhone app that extrapolates on the concept (ie: making nutrition fun):
My main concern with crowdfunding is the level of protecting the crowd gets. Assuming that startups and founders do align their interests with the crowd, how and where does the crowd get to help guide the direction of the company?
What mechanisms are in place to keep the founders honest? I've seen many success stories on Kickstarter, are there any widely known failures?
Beyond the privacy implications, I wonder if the technology actually works. I'd be amazed if it's accuracy was even higher than 50% but I guess this kind of tech has probably been perfected by the gaming industry.
It does go down a scary path. So beyond gender and age, what's to stop tracking by race, etc?
I, for better or worse, decided to invest some of my dollars in Facebook. Like many others, I received radio silence about my trade. At EOD, I got a call from my brokerage, Fidelity, apologizing about the trading issues and offered to cancel my trades. They were going to absorb the costs to make me happy... And I didn't even complain. I was on the fence about canceling my order but that was besides the point, for me Fidelity just secured a lifelong customer and now, apparently a Fidelity evangelist!
1) So after I signed up to host or join, it's really a waiting game until the 15th, right? Is there a way to make it stickier that would encourage me to come back? Some kind of game dynamics?
2) Great!
3) What happens if there are no matches? I would expect an email anyway to let me know it's still working on finding matches.
4) Okay great. Maybe it's just based on personal experience but I'd like you to flesh that out more. My wife and I throw dinner parties for our friends all the time but they are always "guests" and not "hosts" so the lack of reciprocation can be tiresome. Depending on how you figure out the secret sauce, I think people like us would be some of the early adopters/evangelists.
Have you guys thought about "ratings"? I guess you wouldn't want to introduce the idea of negatively rating someone but I think there's something to be learned from Facebook (gasp). After an event, can I like some of the other participants or something similar (+1 good dinner convo dude, etc) to rise those people to the top of the next matches and to start cultivating a community of leaders, etc.
Overall I like it. I do agree that hosting it at your house is going to be a big barrier of entry. I WOULD do a dinner with random people but NOT in my house! Also after I signed up and added a party, there was really no clear indication of where to go next. I didn't get any confirmation or messaging or next steps. I had to go back to the dashboard and figure out that I might get an email by the 15th of the month. Is it fully functionally? Am I going to get an email tomorrow with up to five people? And what about couples ? How are you appealing to them? Couples might be more likely to do this (for example if a new couple moved to a new town), might get rid of the 'brave' factor.