

Tell HN: I'm building a startup aboard the Startup Bus en route to SXSW - newy

I'm aboard @thestartupbus along with 24 other coders, designers and bizdev folks who are building startup projects to launch at SXSW.  We began the trek 36 hours ago at the Vast.com offices in SF and are currently somewhere in southeast AZ (or maybe TX).<p>Me (@euwyn) and @shiftb are building Pairwise (@pairwiseinc), a Foursquare for business networking at SXSW and other conferences.  Other great projects are being built as we speak.  BeNeighbor.ly matches people with others that are willing to help.  Dormdorm is AirBNB for university summer housing.  Datebrowsr aggregates data from online dating sites.  Stalkbox aggregates information from Foursquare, Gowalla et al.  Txtli is a "Twitter for Cars".<p>A full description of our projects can be found at the following link, as well as a game that lets you virtually "invest" in the most promising ideas.
http://game.thestartupbus.com/i/2d8a97d<p>You can find our homepage with a live map of the bus and live video updates
http://thestartupbus.com<p>Feel free to send along tweets of encouragement to @thestartupbus and come find us at SxSW!
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idlewords
Bus full of conference-bound nerds working on a dating site.

This is why HN culture is impossible to parody.

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davidw
> southeast AZ (or maybe TX).

New Mexico is that forgettable, eh?

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pvg
So you guys have built this thing?

<http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/06.html>

The future. It's finally here.

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follower
Just make sure you don't get on this bus by mistake:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_&_Teller%27s_Smoke_and...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_&_Teller%27s_Smoke_and_Mirrors#Desert_Bus)
:)

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ahoyhere
These ideas are cute and fun.

Cute and fun does not a business make.

If cute and fun made a business, kittens would be rich.

Kittens are not rich.

Ergo, these are not "startups."

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starkfist
Isn't the lolcats guy rich?

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ahoyhere
They're not kittens, they're kitten pimps. Subtle but important distinction.

Also, I don't think they're "Google Bought Me Out And Then Killed My Project!"
rich.

Also, they were as surprised about it as anyone else.

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starkfist
Still, I don't think cute and fun is such a bad combo for business. Hello
Kitty, Harry Potter, Cabbage Patch Kids, the Olson Twins, etc. A bus full of
nerds working on "stalkbox.com" in the desert seems like the opposite of cute
and fun.

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ahoyhere
There's a difference between "cute and fun" IDEA, and "cute and fun" end
result.

"Let's build a startup on a bus!" <\-- cute and fun IDEA

"Twitter for cars!" <\-- cute and fun IDEA

"Let's have a shop full of disaffected and underemployed designers creating
frighteningly adorable characters with no story or purpose other than to
merchandise around the world and especially to produce in mass quantities in
China!" <\-- cute and fun RESULT (not so much the idea)

And don't forget, lolcats were invented on 4chan. The least cute and fun place
on the internet.

