Everest

I'm getting to the point where Gmail is so slow that its borderline unusable. I've followed all the Internet advice on how to speed things up, but to no avail. Its particularly frustrating because our startup uses Gmail....

Just thought I would vent...

As our startups grow, my co-founder and I are moving into more operational and business development roles. We are at the point where forming partnerships and cutting deals is a full time job. I would love to hear any suggestions folks here have on how to best reach out to potential partners. I've had terrible luck cold calling. Also, any general advice on how to close deals would be helpful. I know that this is a super-general thread, but biz dev seems to be a role at many startups but I haven't read many great posts on the subject.

Hi, I occasionally see sites reference awards in their press section. This might include Webby, Time 50 Coolest Sites, SIIA Codie Awards, etc... I think they add a lot of credibility to sites and probably could increase conversions in an e-commerce site like ours. Have any companies applied to these awards? Any recommendations on for paid and unpaid awards? Did you feel ultimately feel like winning an award helped your business or was it a distraction in hindsight?

Thanks!

Hi,

our site displays a "how it work" diagram as the entire above-the-fold content of the homepage. This is really useful for first time visitors and makes our sites value prop crystal clear. However, after a user visits the site a few times, the "how-it-works" isn't very useful and it takes up the most prime real estate on our site. We were thinking about dropping a cookie for all visitors and only showing them the "how it works" diagram the first time they use our service and having an alternative homepage for returning users. Do any sites do this? We've had a hard time thinking of example.

Thanks!

Hi, I am the co-founder of a startup in the process of moving to NYC. We spent the summer at the incubator DreamIT Ventures in Philadelphia and loved the experience of sharing space with other entrepreneurs. Does anyone know of any great shared space / incubators in downtown NYC or Brooklyn? Any startups have any space that they are leasing?

Hi, I've noticed that my concentration tends to lapse after spending 12+ hours in front of a computer. At a startup thats a way of life so I want to find good ways to concentrate better and remain focused even while working long hours. So far, I've tried drinking a lot of water throughout the day, eating a lot of light meals, avoiding sugar. Also, I try to avoid multi-tasking. Its hard to avoid checking email because you always feel like you are missing something impt but thats an area where I definitley waste a lot of time.

Any efficiency gurus out there with any tips?

Hi,

I make a ton of sloppy mistakes when I code. Stuff that leaves me kicking myself when I spend 20 minutes trying to debug it. Even though I've gotten better at programming, the number of sloppy mistakes I make is still way too high and its my biggest time drain.

I think part of the problem comes from writing code, glancing through it quickly, and then testing it with a large number of "F5s". I'm trying to get away from this and am reading my code more thoroughly before testing to see if it works. Anyone struggle with the same issues? HOw did you improve?

Thanks!

I've been toiling with this question this morning and curious to hear the thoughts of HN. This isn't a purely academic exercise as I'm planning on launching a startup in the next couple months and this is an issue I have to grapple with. Rather than speaking in generalities I'll layout an example. Say you are Pandora and you are building the first music recommendation engine or you are Farecast and building the first prediction model for airline tickets. These companies spent years developing their predictive technologies and they are assuredly extremely comprehensive and robust. However, say they gave themselves a 2 month deadline and released a service which they strove to improve over time. Their service was not nearly as prescient as it could be if they took 3-4 years to develop it. Still, there was some data analysis that went into the service and Pandora and Farecast could advertise that fact on the website and indicate that the results will get better over time.

How many users would these services have lost? Some users will be dissatisfied with the services so they would lose potential customers. Also, another competitor could see that they could do better and launch their own service, diluting the market share for these comapnies. But these companies sacrificed revenue by not releasing their service until it was very strong. Also, there are other companies that took years of work and flopped miserably upon release. Farecast and Pandora faced the risk of joining that unenviable pool.

It's hard to argue that Farecast and Pandora went down the wrong path since they were super-successful startups. But if I'm not mistaken, both started in academia so they have a higher standard to live up to in terms of rigor. Most startups are under the pressure to launch something quickly. If you were running a similar company, when would you launch?