

On Starting a Startup - luigi
http://luigimontanez.com/2012/on-starting-a-startup/

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tjic
> they call themselves “domain investors” and believe that they’re a
> legitimate market force. But all they’re doing is stifling innovation

You can't get the domain name you want for the price you want to pay.

Boo-hoo.

I can't get tons of things for the price I want to pay.

That's life.

You've got no moral claim on a domain name that someone else already owns.

If you're use of that domain name is going to generate a ton of value, you'd
find a way to get the money and buy the domain.

In fact, you don't do this. The market is working properly: you're not
prepared to demonstrate with cold hard cash that you're the best use for the
name, therefore you probably are NOT the best use for the domain.

* UPDATE *

Just noticed this:

> when multiple people register a backorder on the acquiring backorder
> service, there’s an auction held for a few days and the domain goes to the
> highest bidder. It’s capitalism at its not-so-finest.

What alternative do you propose? The person who really really wants it bad
gets it?

Isn't that what's already happening?

~~~
davidw
Without saying whether it's a _good_ solution or not, in the real world
"properties" (as some people have taken to calling web sites) get taxed.
Amongst other things, this encourages the property owners to "shit or get off
the pot" in terms of utilizing the property: if you are not making anything
off of it, you will actually lose money because of the taxes, so you're
encouraged to sell it, or dedicate some time and effort to fix it up to a
point where you can rent it out or otherwise gainfully employ it.

With domain names, there is a fixed yearly "tax" of something like $10.

There are a lot of things to dislike about property taxes on domain names, but
it would be one way of encouraging people to either do something or let them
go, which hopefully would encourage them to end up where they are most
'productively' employed.

~~~
tjic
> this encourages the property owners to "shit or get off the pot" in terms of
> utilizing the property:

And why is that good?

Imagine that someone has good reason to believe that item X will be worth
$1,000 in three years, which means that in a 3% interest rate regime it has a
NPV (Net Present Value) of $915.

Right now he's got an offer on the table for $800, but if he accepts that and
the resource gets used up, he (and society) lose out on $115 of value.

Slap a 10% annual tax on the asset, and he WILL sell it, right now.

...and, congratulations, you've destroyed value.

~~~
crazygringo
What about the value that someone else could created by using that property
productively over those three years? And the likelihood that, three years from
now, item X turns out not to be worth $1,000 at all?

Then _that_ value has been destroyed in your scenario.

This is why property tax can be a good thing: set properly, it creates an
incentive for conserving property for future productive uses when those seem
likely enough, but also incentivizes people not to waste current possible
productivity.

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hajrice
This article should be renamed to "On Starting a Project". You built something
using some cool technology, bought some Facebook ads because some of your
friends had some luck, now you have to get paying customers.

Until then, it's all just a (side) project, not a startup.

~~~
luigi
We do have paying customers.

~~~
ericabiz
Care to explain?

You don't have a clear strategy for "pro accounts" on your site, you don't
have a pricing page--there's no indication that there's even anything for sale
on your site.

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VuongN
For what it's worth, I thought the name is quite clever. I'm more impressed
with the name actually :)

I am, however, feeling cautious about the internet as well. There are so many
curated/aggregated content sites these days; Each one claims to be the best at
stringing popular content together. For instance: Reddit, HN, Digg, Slashdot
etc. Obviously new sites further break this down into specific niches.

I hope there isn't less of an appetite for original content creating platform
going forward (or else my officecheese site isn't going to be fun!)

-V.

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RahCom
I've always enjoyed seeing what other startups choose for their stack. With
your thoughts on heroku, what do you think about the new Google Cloud aimed at
competing with AWS?

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robinjfisher
> Until I started at Upworthy, I didn’t appreciate how nearly everyone is on
> Facebook. Normal people.

I wouldn't call it nearly everyone when there are 7 billion people in the
world and only 1 billion of those are on Facebook.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
That number seems a bit much. Aside from even teenagers with multiple
accounts, pets, and such.. let's not forget spammers. They'll create accounts
as fast as they can.

Just google search for buying facebook accounts, and you'll find a simple
paypal transaction will get you thousands of phone verified accounts.

Even if facebook can claim 500 million active users, I would question how many
of them are actual people.

~~~
swombat
Question all you want... I don't actually know any people IRL who don't have
an active or semi-active Facebook account (except a handful of contrarian
geeks, of course).

Nearly everyone is on Facebook.

~~~
kirubakaran
So you've changed your mind about Facebook?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=251205>

