Not really knowing what I need to take the site to the next level is probably my biggest challenge. I started off with high hopes and expectations for the site and now I am having serious doubts and questions about how viable and sustainable this concept can really be. I guess these are the high and lows of entrepreneurship, and I'm at a low point right now.
I tried looking for outside funding early on but eventually got discouraged and gave up. I've started working on a new project this year and so my focus has shifted a bit. I may reconsider outside funding once again in a couple of months if I still own the site and the traction metrics are positive.
Haven't thought about applying to YC because I'm not much of a developer and without a technical co-founder I figure my chances of acceptance are very low.
Haven't thought about applying to YC because I'm not much of a developer and without a technical co-founder I figure my chances of acceptance are very low.
Low, maybe. Non-zero, almost certainly, based on what I've seen pg and others say here. Especially since you actually have something "live" that already has some traction. I think I saw somebody say something like "traction trumps everything" not long ago. Anyway, just a thought...
What made Techcrunch great at one time was not only learning about early-stage startups, but reading Arrington's honest analysis, opinions, and reviews. His brutal honesty did upset founders who got a bad review, but at least he was offering readers more than a BS press release.
That is certainly what I used to love about Techcrunch, and whilst I think it is natural that as they have gotten bigger they have gone more mainstream and do a lot more coverage of Twitter, iPads etc, it also a shame and certainly taken them from my "first website of the day" to "if something interesting comes into RSS feed I'll click".
At the same time if you go back a few years there were quite a few startups that were really doing different things, and reviewing them was worthwhile. Now there are often so many startups trying to solve the same problem that choosing who to review and keep track of must be a nightmare, and half the comments will be "if you like X take a look at my company Y".
Speaking of Y's, is there an independent blog that just reviews (and meets with etc) Y Combinator companies - that actually would be an interesting read!
1. Get rid of the "Just another WordPress.com site" in the upper right hand corner. Pimp out your blog. Make the website look like you are serious.
2.Learn how to install wordpress directly on your website.It turns off people from your skills if it looks like you cannot even use the quick install most hosting companies provide.
3.It looks like you made just that one post there. Why? Starting a blog just to have a blog is not worth the time. Just use a separate page on the webpage and link to that. Format it the same way that the main page is. Keep visually consistent.
I've also started working on a similar concept. My approach to this problem is to use context based LISTSERVs. The goal is to help make social sharing relevant by targeting both interests and "social roles".
Mailchimp works pretty good. You can customize the front end of your landing page and use Mailchimp's backend to capture the email and manage the list. Here's my example: http://www.sharescribe.co/
Executing what? The word execution in the startup world refers to everything you do to build a startup, including cloning the competition. If you're talking about a specific type of startup, you need to identify what's hard beyond simply "execution" since that's a given.
I'm referring to executing the Groupon "business model" which is what this article is really about. It doesn't take much "execution" to clone and create a landing page for subscribers. But thank you for your insightful knowledge into the meaning of the word "execution" in the startup world.
