Steve, thanks for the feedback. I appreciate you taking the time to read the post, but am sorry that you felt it was terrible. Hopefully I can help to ease some of your concerns.
Although Maslow's assertion that humans progressively strive to fulfill needs was not relevant to the point I was making, that's just one part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. His classification of the needs into categories was still very relevant, as it served as the backbone of my argument re: how need fulfillment in the startup community differs from mainstream need fulfillment.
As for the perceived bragging, I did not intend it to be so and am sorry that I came across that way to you. My goal here was to briefly tie in the experiences from my life that had triggered my awareness of my own potential so that readers would be able to identify experiences in their own lives that had played a similar role. If you have any suggestions for how I could have conveyed my experiences without coming across as "bragging," I would be happy to hear them and to take them into future consideration.
I should have clarified that I wasn't looking for advice for a specific startup, but rather to draft up a general guide of pros and cons to consider for any startup facing this decision.
I'll absolutely take all of the comments made on this thread into consideration when I write the post!
Yeah, I realized that going in, but unfortunately it was the only way for me to track the donations while still complying with THON's collection policies.
For what it's worth, it's not as if the fraternity "wins" anything for raising the most money (and Theta Delta Chi is far from the top of fundraising organizations, anyway). The money is simply tracked so that each student organization can challenge itself to improve each year.
InternMatch.com. I was in Startup Roots this past year and feel like the majority of interns that I met in the group had found their internships through there.
With that being said, if you're an amazing engineer you can just reach out directly to the founders of startups you'd like to work for. They'll listen.
Re: uniqueness, you're right. Take a look at my reponse to dwolfson20's comment.
Re: Facebook page status updates, some do, some don't. Take a look at the pages you "like" and check out how much of the published content has never appeared in your feed.
You're right - this isn't specific about the sports industry. However, sports properties do tend to be a bit behind the rest of the business world when it comes to understanding and successfully adopting new media. It's a shame, because they're playing on such fertile groups. Few brands are so lucky to have such a captive and engaged audience.
This article was targeted at the sports industry because a) I'm working on a sports startup and b) it was written for SportsNetworker - a sports business blog.
It's understandable that businesses are seeking metrics to measure the effectiveness of their initiatives, but problematic when they give credence to completely useless numbers solely because they haven't yet identified effective metrics.
I actually already posted a wanted ad on Craigslist and that got me a lot of weird offers. I'll post another, though, and see if I have better luck the second time around.
Unfortunately sports franchises don't have the technology in place to effectively segment their market. Consumer research firms survey a small portion of their fan base and then generalize those findings to all fans, but that data isn't actionable.
One thing I'd like to reemphasize is that, although I only have $6,000 in the bank, the friends and family round is a lock for a minimum of $50,000. Does that change your answer?
Yeah, the name is pretty generic and U believe that it will have a high resell value if things don't work out. However, that also depends on finding the right buyer...