I don't fully understand why this makes me so angry, but it does. The company you work for has no right to know anything about your personal life. To be expected to disclose things to HR is ridiculous.
I think market research helps. One approach could be: investigate the competition, see how your idea differentiates, and create a simple landing page to draw traffic to.
At first I was skeptical about fullcontact, afraid of the big-brother like effect.
Then I met the CTO at a hackathon, and it turns out he's really concerned about privacy and respecting opt-outs. I highly recommend the company.
We created this project in response to seeing many clients making changes blindly based on gut feeling, and not being completely satisfied by the existing multivariate testing solutions. We wanted a simple way to write variants in HTML(or haml or jade).
For those of you unfamiliar with this design technique, new designs are tested on a statistically significant portion of your users to test for higher conversion rates.
Cool use of clojure. I like your background and typography choices.
A few things:
1. Creating a new account directs me http://gratefulplace.com/favorites/3 and says "Sorry, there's nothing here." Could be because I favorited a post before creating an account.
2. Have you thought about integration with twitter? Seems perfect for quotes. Plus, marketing.
3. Keep making cool stuff! With a little work you could have "the angry place" :) !
Don't worry about it. Hard advice I know, but google is just as desperate as everyone else for quality candidates. Get some sleep, drink some coffee before your interview, and just talk through the problems as you get to them. If this is your first interview it's likely a phone interview. They usually last about an hour, and they just want to make sure you can think through a problem.
Also, regardless of whether it works or not, don't let it affect you. I know some really brilliant people who couldn't get into google, but are masterful coders.
I found the breakdown between customer and problem hypothesis very interesting. I'm currently working on a tool to store ideas(blatant self promotion: http://www.255ideas.com). I was very interested in the customer/problem/solution hypothesis model. I think having directed fields may help guide the user in writing down their idea. But I also have to wonder, does it force the idea into a structure that it wouldn't take otherwise? Perhaps it would filter ideas that aren't focused on creating on solving a problem. Awesome ideas might not make the cut, for example, draw something.
IMO the most effective way to show an idea is with a prototype. It's also the hardest.
I also like the ability to add assumptions that are validated/invalidated. The focus on business plan is very cool.
Hey man, that sucks but it's nothing you can't get out of. If you have to go work consulting, or some entry-level thing for a while. Apply everywhere. If you are a decent developer with a CS degree, you should eventually land a job. It may not be the perfect role right away, but there's nothing wrong with climbing the career ladder.
Edit: If this is up to date https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dynos
Then heroku uses ec2, so it should be possible.