

Ask HN: Review IGF, a site to find co-founders and stay motivated - astartupaday

Last year when pg posted his list of 30 ideas, I wrote up full startup ideas for each one on my A Startup A Day blog, one each day for the next 30 days. It was a fun exercise, but thanks in part to some great comments on HN, I learned that for most entrepreneurs ideas are the easy part.  The hard parts are meeting the right co-founders and staying motivated to work on something for an extended period of time. Recently I've shifted focus from my blog to building something to help solve those problems, which I call the Italian Graffiti Factory (IGF).<p>To kick things off, the alpha stage of IGF will be primarily focused on a very specific scenario.  I want to bring together potential YC applicants to discuss YC's new RFS proposals (or other ideas) with the goal of finding co-founders, building a prototype, and submitting an application to YC Winter 2010.  Along with the site, I'm also planning a series of live online meetups centered around things like co-founder speed-dating, prototype reviews, milestone check-ins, or just open conversations.<p>Unlike most "Ask HN"-style posts, I'm not necessarily looking for feedback on design and initial first impressions. Instead I would like to hear more generally if you think that these problems are good ones to take on, and if so, what else can be done to help solve those problems more effectively?<p>Site URL - http://www.igfactory.com
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johnbrunswick
@astartupaday - This is definitely an interesting idea.

A company that I have been working with is doing some similar - they have
created a private, invite only community for connecting with talent,
resources, capital, promotion of ventures on a global scale. It is geared
toward early stage ventures of all types and the collection of people within
the community is great. They are currently partnering with government
incubators across the world and various private agencies focused on helping
startups.

For more information - take a look at <http://www.incunation.com/>

Because it is private - if anyone is interested in joining contact Incunation
using the "Contact Incunation" link at the bottom of the home page and we can
make sure that you are added.

Startups are all about passion! I love to see people do well with their
efforts and hopefully this can help someone's venture or ability to support a
venture.

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astartupaday
Awesome, checking it out right now. The primary reason for putting this
together is to scratch my own itch, so this sounds very interesting to me.

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johnbrunswick
Thanks - we would very much like to hear your thoughts. Please drop a line
using the contact form and we can sync up. I really like the energy in this
forum and this culture is exactly what gets me up in the morning! :-)

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icey
This is about as minor as it gets, but I thought you might like to know - your
contact form confirmation has a typo in it:

"Our team will respond to your inquity within one business day."

I assume you want that to say "inquiry".

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astartupaday
Clickable link: <http://www.igfactory.com>

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icey
I think the idea is great, but man the signup process is terrible. I went
through it with a bunch of b.s. data because it's irritating to have to
provide my birthday, zipcode, email address and gender just to take a look at
the messages. I don't know if that's a ning thing or not, but it's a real
turn-off.

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astartupaday
Yep, it's a Ning thing. I'll see if I can cut out some of the signup options,
thanks for the feedback.

EDIT: Just removed b-day, gender, and location. Thanks again, sorry for the
poor 1st impression.

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icey
Hmmm, it's still asking for birthday and gender when I try to re-register.

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astartupaday
Strange, I just tried to register as as new user and the only options were for
username, password, and birthday. I think b-day is mandatory for legal reasons
around online child protection laws.

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icey
It asked for gender and location on the second page of the registration. Now
that I look at it again, it's not mandatory; but that's not very obvious.

Anyways, cool idea, it's just a shame that Ning's signup process is so
convoluted.

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brk
This is a very neat/noble effort. However, I personally would never co-found a
company with a person that I essentially found on a 'dating' site.

I see that you "built" this on Ning. Are your plans to actually move it to a
more robust platform if it takes off?

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markbao
Co-founders, like women, are often found randomly.

I found two of mine on Hacker News. They rock.

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aditya
Two of whom? Women or co-founders? :)

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matt1
Why does it have to be one or the other? :P

