The VC firm in question is trivial to figure out. Just look for a firm that had a board seat that is no longer listed on the site and that does not list Circlecup on their site.
Triggit is hiring engineers of all types. We are looking for ruby, hadoop, C++, and engineers who like to work at huge scale (100,000+ requests a second). We are in the exploding demand side platform space of display advertising and the company has been growing at 200% a month for the last six months. Come get in early on a fast growing company and space (one of our competitors just sold for over 100 mil). We are venture funded by top tier VCs and angels. Email me directly zach@triggit.com
Triggit is hiring. We are looking for engineers, online ad sales people and account managers. We are in San Francisco CA, venture funded and profitable. Come check us out
Paul, you should certainly take a look at dropping affiliate links into your post. At Triggit we have bloggers making really good money with content like yours. With shopping.com paying a buck a click for gadget traffic it can be really lucrative. Best of luck.
No need for fancy phones unless you are a heavy telephone sales operation. A web startup ought to be able to get away with mobile phones or a Vonage line (well until they die anyway). At Triggit we use vonage.
I have to disagree with all the hackers in this discussion. Code is super important, but a startup is still a business. Business is a team sport that requires many different talents. If you can't code move out to San Francisco or someplace where startup congregate and find a startup that needs your talents whatever they may be. Learn the ropes and meet people. Repeat. Thats what I did. There are lots of non-technical people who have done well this way. Read Mark Cuban's posts on motivations. He was non-technical and kicked ass.
I moved out to SF as a non-technical biz guy two years ago and now I run a VC backed startup. It can be done.
There are so many reasons to give up, and "I can't program" is one of them. "I'm too old", "I'm too inexperienced" seem to be a couple of popular ones.
There are advantages and disadvantages, and I admire every person who decides to put everything he/she has into it.
That said, we don't have to work this one out through logic - we can look out into the world and observe. Think of the top ten start-ups that IPO'd or were bought last year, and take a look at the bio's who founded them. The numbers don't look good for founders who can't program.
Thing is, hacking is something you can learn to do. You can't make yourself younger, or taller, but there's nothing stopping you from downloading ruby (or, if you have a mac, opening a console) and get to it.
It does take a while to learn to program - but if it didn't, then it wouldn't be much of an advantage.
If you really don't want to go through it, there are certainly some notable successes for non-programmers. If you can add a lot of value as a founder and help make a lot of people successful, then go for it.
Ryan is right. Cutting interest rates is great for startups. But, that is not what people are scared. The problem is the economy might tank as a result of all the money being lost in the equity, and debt markets right now. If that happens we are in for some pain.
