If this counts as launching a startup then I've "launched" about 27 startups over the past 8 years. Others might call this a feature or clever hack. (not to denigrate at all what Mark did here - it's cool stuff, just not a startup in the traditional sense)
While you might not see it as a start-up, it is generating significant number of users and there must be some value in the type and volume of data being collected.
What we see depends mainly on what we look for. I prefer opportunity.
The thing that I like about this is that he distilled it down to a hypothesis/test.
Hypothesis: Bloggers/site owners would like a stream-like display/understanding of who's visiting, where they come from, and where they leave to. Something a bit lighter and more fun than a standards analytics package.
Do you need registration/passwords to test that idea? Focus groups? Customizable widgets? Public profiles? Fancy graphs? Historical data?
Nope. Apparently all you need is 10.5 hours. ;-) If he sees any traction, he can start piling on cool features based on user feedback. If not, he can let it be as is.
Good things happen when you put everything aside and really focus on getting Version 1.0 done. Imagine what you can do if you did that for 3 months and had YC's advice.
Right! When you're moonlighting, it's difficult running on 6 hours sleep each day while managing 2 projects. Being able to focus on one thing 24/7 would be great.
After working 8 hours, I end up avoiding working on my website. Instead I end up playing wow or watching TV. I long for school to start so I have more free time.
What works for me is, while I'm at work I think of one little feature I want to accomplish. Then when I come home I immediately work on that feature, telling myself "When it's done I can take a break". Then I never take a break because I get so involved.
It's so satisfying watching a project come together and become polished and pretty that once I start polishing, I don't want to stop.
Same here. The trick is to start to care less about the day job and more about the real job. Start to think about the day job as a contracting/consulting gig to support R&D. That's how I generate motivation, even though I know I have a mortgage to pay.
The draining part of work is the fact that you have people expecting you to get X done absolutely as fast as you can, recurse with Y. And the micromanagement. By the end of the day it's mentally draining.
At school, nobody cares whether you do anything. And when you do something, it's by your own decision. I mean, I know you decide to do something at work, but.. It's hard to put into specific words. School lays all its expectations out in front of you; work shoves them down your throat.
This is really brilliant. Imagine what people would say if you traveled 50 years in the past and told them you could launch a new business in less than 11 hours.
No, AdSense is a business model in which there is a simple javascript widget interface. The model is money in exchange for advertising across billions(?) of websites. A startup is created and launched when there is a business model that uses the widget. Otherwise its a programming exercise. Any reasonable programmer can create a program in <10 hours, but unless there is a business model it is not a startup.
A good example being YouTube? Or Google (before adwords)? Twitter? Delicious? Reddit (before advertising)? If you build something people want to use, monetizing it is always something that you can pull off.
I would say that a business model has to exist eventually-- and a startup ought to have a few in mind. But I don't think an active business model is required to be labeled as a "startup".
