LeBlanc

9 ms·

31.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
Cool app idea! You should integrate with the WePay API so that when you remind people, they actually have the ability to pay. https://www.wepay.com/developer/reference Feel free to email me if you have any questions about the API.
32.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
http://railstutorial.org is the best Rails 3 intro book I've found. The HTML version is free or you can buy the print edition + screencasts. Agile Web Development With Rails by Sam Ruby et al. is also good.
33.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
There was an issue with the pledge buttons - it's fixed now. Thanks for the advice though, I think it's spot on. I'm going to put in "X people have committed $Y" ASAP.
34.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
That is very valid concern. I built in 'stealth mode' so your startup is only available to people you send a special link (with a generated key) to. Check 'stealth mode' when you create a startup.
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by LeBlanc 16y ago
Good point. Email addresses are now only shown to the actual user. Also, I made it so if you choose to make your startup stealth on signup, your user will be stealth too.
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How to be 100% sure your startup idea is good(upstartly.com)
144 points by LeBlanc 16y ago|60 comments
37.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
What are you accepting payments for? WePay is great for anything based around a group. They have a really nice API - I built http://www.everribbon.com with it Amazon FPS is also really great if you want to do anything complicated. Unfortu
38.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
One thing he needs to have figured out is: how are you going to get people to come to your site. Since he has a background in sales, he should already have a solid plan for how to get visitors and turn them into users. If he doesn't that is
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Pioneering Edsac computer to be built at Bletchley Park(bbc.co.uk)
2 points by LeBlanc 16y ago|0 comments
40.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
WePay can handle the bills/rent side of things. http://www.wepay.com
41.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
If you DO decide to switch from PHP to Ruby on Rails make sure to get very familiar with Ruby before you dive into Rails, otherwise learning rails will be very frustrating. You can also try out Sinatra before Rails. Sinatra is a great light
42.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
Sinatra is a great very simple Ruby framework based off of Rack. It's great for making simple apps that don't need the complexity of Rails. http://www.sinatrarb.com/ Kohana is my favorite PHP framework. It is very similar to Rails and mak
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by LeBlanc 16y ago
Check out the open source Stanford Parser (Java) http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/lex-parser.shtml I also wrote a free open source javascript API for the Stanford Parser if you want to play around with NLP in JS. http://nlp.naturalparsin
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by LeBlanc 16y ago
Specifically regarding learning Ruby/Rails, I would recommend taking a look at http://railstutorial.org/ - this is the best rails tutorial I have come across. Also, you might try learning Sinatra before Rails. Sinatra is very simple and s
45.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
Completely agree, often I find the best articles on /new and not on the front page. I think a great experiment for pg would be to set /new as the front page for HN and see what happens.
46.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
Very cool! Congrats on launching something. One thing I would absolutely love is a way to convert HTML into FBML, which is currently just an awful awful process.
47.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
You could look into the Open Calais API. http://viewer.opencalais.com/ Newsley uses it to categorize financial news items - http://newsley.com
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by LeBlanc 16y ago
You should do some reading into the economic theory of bundling. While custom pricing gives the user the most freedom, it may be confusing, and you may make more money by bundling your services. The classic example of this is movie studios
49.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
WePay has a great API - https://www.wepay.com/developer/api I built EverRibbon with it http://www.everribbon.com
50.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
Given that this angel wants an equal stake and directorship, and has said that he wants to live the start-up life vicariously through you I would expect him to be quite hands on in his role with your company. Expect him to try to make a lot
51.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
If you want to change this then you and anyone who agrees should do the following: 1. find and submit interesting stories to HN 2. visit /newest often and upvote stories that aren't fluff If you and all the other people who lo
52.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
I'll have to put this on my 'to read' list, it looks really interesting. I think natural language processing/understanding may become one of those next 'big things' like mobile and social media simply because understanding what a user is tr
53.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
Why raise money at all? To deploy a web app all you really need is a virtual server like SliceHost, Linode, etc. This costs $20-40 per month and should have enough resources for a regular web app until you get really big (in which case you
54.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
PHP is not equivalent to Rails. It would be more accurate to compare PHP to Ruby and compare Rails to a PHP framework like Kohana. I've worked with both Kohana and Rails. Rails is more popular so it is easier to find solutions and add-ons.
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by LeBlanc 16y ago
WePay lets you collect money (people can pay you with credit card or bank account) and then you can send money that you've collected to whoever you want. So you could, if you wanted, put money in your group and then send it easily to whoev
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by LeBlanc 16y ago
One cool thing you could do is to allow the user to put a widget on their site showing their uptime percentage. Uptime Robot is, in essence, an impartial 3rd party that can guarantee website's uptime claims. This might be something you coul
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by LeBlanc 16y ago
Ruby is a good choice and is similar to Python. However, if you do choose Ruby, I would recommend starting out with Sinatra instead of Rails. Sinatra is simple and easily understood so it makes a good starting point. Rails does a lot of thi
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by LeBlanc 16y ago
You should check out this talk that Jason Putori, the designer for Mint gave titled "10 Things: Design for Non-Designers". http://vimeo.com/15066599
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by LeBlanc 16y ago
If you go searching around for comparisons between the two, keep in mind that Rails just released v3 which is significantly different and improved over versions 2.
60.
by LeBlanc 16y ago
I assume this is going to be done in an interview. One thing you could try is to see how the person handles constructive criticism. Try to get them engaged in a discussion about what they did wrong and how they could do better in the future

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