I run Techspace London (http://techspace.co). We have coworking spaces for tech startups near the Old Street roundabout. Contact me through the website - we can probably accommodate you for a couple of days.
Thanks for the feedback - really helpful. I've been thinking about adding a poll feature (e.g. "Which of these dresses should I wear for a party tonight?"). Making that the main focus of the site is an interesting idea.
I'm trying to keep the homepage as free of clutter as possible but I do think this would add a bit of personality to the site (as opposed to the sterile, crowdsourced feel that you mentioned before). I'll have a think about a creative way to put this in.
Gotcha. How about this then: The users are putting in some nice personal words about each of their submissions. However, these extremely valuable words kind of appear as if they're coming from the vendor's site (watering them down, making them seem like catalog copy).
Suggestion: Put the words and user's avatar closer together. Move the vendor-link farther way.
This will emphasize the conversation. Perhaps even go crazy with a word bubble shape a la Twitter?
Thanks for the feedback. I will have a careful think about anonymous submissions (obviously spam is a big issue). Anonymous voting is definitely on the cards.
Most of the startups that are making money are the ones you've never heard of. This is a pointless exercise...however, here are some that I believe are making money that you may have heard of (happy to be corrected as I don't know for sure that they're all making money):
Although I have no idea if it's even classed as a 'startup'.
I wonder if some of the reason for the recent backlash against advertising supported models is that some techie types install adblock, and perhaps assume everyone does? In my measurements only 6% had adblock installed, and that's for a very techie early adopter crowd.
The truth is, there are millions of websites out there, making millions from advertising. It's so much more scalable than charging users.
If facebook+digg etc cut back spending, they'd be making millions in profit from advertising. I expect they have bigger plans though.
A ton of SaaS apps are, I think. Like Lighthouse, the 37signals apps, Freshbooks... SlideRocket probably will in the near(ish) future, if they're not already, etc. Then there's the micro ISVs like Balsamiq.
Plenty of startups are making money.
(Quick caveat: I haven't actually read the article yet... so it might be talking about a totally different kind of startup.)
All of the businesses you mention solve real problems that other business people are willing to pay to have solved.
The way I see it social sites need to climb a very steep peak before they have any chance of making money from ads - how many facebooks (which is still a long way from profitable) can the web ecosystem support? - If you do reach the top of that peak which only has room for 2-3 big players you have a chance of banking millions.
B2B services on the other hand are much safer. Business people understand that products and services cost money - and they are used to paying for the services they use.
My advice to developers looking for a product is to forget about the 1 in a million chance that they will develop the next great social app and cash out rich. By focusing on customers that are willing to pay, your venture has a much greater chance of becoming profitable and sustaining itself.
I think that, fundamentally, a lot of startup founders don't charge money because they lack the confidence to ask people for it. Which is crazy, because the people who would be your customers spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on things they care about less than your software.
I know I was TERRIFIED of charging money 2.5 years ago. What if it breaks?! What if there is a bug?! What if no one cares about what I'm doing?! But charging money is the BEST MEDICINE for this fear because people will pay you money. And after that happens a few thousand times, you start to lose the sense of "zomg, I am totally unworthy of being compensated for improving people's lives, perhaps I could put out a tip jar in a suitably discrete location and hope some money falls into it."
Dude, not all startups are in the software business. I know a few startups in the hardware business which are growing spectacularly. Contrary to popular belief, not every startup wants to be the "next Facebook" ;-)
I prototyped a Rails-like framework in JavaScript using Rhino and Servlets and was suprised how feasible the whole thing seemed for a production website. JavaScript is perfectly capable for this IMO.
The benefits come when you start to re-use code on the front- and back-end. An obvious example is form validation business rules. Using the same models can be really handy in AJAX-heavy apps, too. It can be very DRY if done right.
I saw that someone recently wrote a V8 module for Apache - that could lead to some really interesting developments.
Yes. This (Penryn MacBook Pro) is absolutely the best developer computer available.
Amazon had the 2.5 GHz model (the one Apple was selling for $2500 a few months ago) for $1500, but it looks like that deal ended with December. Maybe it will come back.
You can still get the 2.4 GHz model (orig $2000) for $1400 from MacMall and maybe other places.
Agreed. Find a mac addict on craigslist who bought one right before the new ones came out. Spend 50 bucks at crucial to max out the memory to 4GB. Mmmm. Tasty memory.
Not a bad idea at all, finding one that is affordable is critical. Also, I don't even own a mac other than my powermac G4 and I still check (macrumors is it?) that one site that has a guesstimate on when new models are due to come out. That way if I buy a new one, I don't get screwed.
I bought mine new a while back (~$3000 AUD) from Apple. Just looking at eBay, they seem to go for a touch over $1000 USD at the moment. I figure they're a bit of a bargain at the moment since they're perfectly capable and have just been replaced by the shiny new model. I mainly develop Ruby Rails/Merb apps with TextMate.
