dhouston

27 ms·

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by dhouston 19y ago
i saw enough of a need for my idea to quit outright and just go for it (although i have some cash saved up and can live off a low burn rate). i think that if you have the right idea and are truly passionate about it, you just know that yo
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by dhouston 19y ago
see you all there!
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Reminder: Boston YC meetup: Tonight 7pm Espresso Royale(news.ycombinator.com)
1 points by dhouston 19y ago|1 comments
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by dhouston 19y ago
now it's down; http://www.getdropbox.com/u/2/digg.gif if you want a screenshot of what it looked like before it died :P edit: back up now
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by dhouston 19y ago
there's a group like this that does monthly dinners (open invitation): http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-startup-meetup next meeting may 9th: http://www.mypunchbowl.com/publicparty/05c98908a9a3e84e593d see you there!
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by dhouston 19y ago
cool. i'm in; i'll hopefully drag some of team dropbox along with me :)
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by dhouston 19y ago
i think another factor that distinguishes skype (and joost, and xobni, etc.) as not inherently "web 2.0" is serious secret sauce/engineering under the hood (protocols, algorithms, search, scalability, etc.) see http://www.blackhat.com/pres
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by dhouston 19y ago
is that a subtle kick in the ass? :)
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by dhouston 19y ago
for me it was the same way that i learned programming or guitar: 1. start with tutorials or poking at an existing design until it does what you want; learn the fundamentals of html and css from a dummies-level book or tutorials 2. find moti
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by dhouston 19y ago
One at startup school '05; one was a friend of a friend I met at MIT (who then co-founded a YC-funded company.)
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by dhouston 20y ago
memcached (google it) implements this idea (giant in-memory hash table), and scales to multiple machines. used by facebook and lots of other very high volume sites. it's often also used as an LRU cache on top of a normal database so that yo
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by dhouston 20y ago
barcamps (at least in boston) bring together pretty much exactly the people you're looking for, and the group is fairly diverse (young, old, hardcore hackers, serial entrepreneurs, more "corporate" developers, a couple investors/service pro
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by dhouston 20y ago
what do people recommend for handling subscriptions/automatic recurring billing that can change over time?
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by dhouston 20y ago
haha, the feed is off.
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by dhouston 20y ago
a fair question -- i would have loved to work with adam and matt, but at the time my stock hadn't yet vested in another startup where i had been working for a while, and i was also running another company i had started in 2004, so the timin
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by dhouston 20y ago
they are looking for employees :P but it would be a much better learning experience than a typical job; you'd be joining early enough that you'd be with the company basically from the beginning and would have much more of an opportunity to
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by dhouston 20y ago
let me +1 this post.. adam and matt are not only damn smart but awesome guys (i worked out of their living room last summer and we had a great time.) xobni's on a fantastic trajectory and this is a rare opportunity for a smart hacker to get
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by dhouston 20y ago
if you're thinking of developing a web app in lisp but haven't looked at python or ruby, you might consider them -- remember, it's not just the raw language but also the surrounding infrastructure, and python (django, turbogears) and ruby (
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by dhouston 20y ago
there are some other signs they don't really get it, as far as dealing with students. the most obvious one to me is requiring teams to be on site in lexington. first, commuting from boston or cambridge is a pain if you don't have a car (the
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Students: yet another summer founders program (due 4/19): Highland Capital Partners(hcp.com)
7 points by dhouston 20y ago|18 comments
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by dhouston 20y ago
couple of clarifications :) 1) i have other people working with me on this. i did prototype it alone, but i don't intend to be a single founder. i won't belabor it here, but it's really a good idea to get other people on board and the reaso
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by dhouston 20y ago
haha, great (tragicomic) headline. but i think this is an important lesson. api/platform providers and the startups that build on top don't really have aligned interests when it comes to building companies. mashup makers (e.g. frappr/platia
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by dhouston 20y ago
1. re: the first part, many people want something plug and play. and even if they were plug and play, the problem is that the user experience (on windows at least) with online drives generally sucks, and you don't have disconnected access.
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by dhouston 20y ago
nope. informally came up with and tossed around 6 or 7 ideas at the same time -- not so much coding as investigating/talking to potential customers and bouncing them off other friends and entrepreneurs. this was crucial -- ideas don't reall
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by dhouston 20y ago
yup; i'd be happy to talk offline about it; shoot me an email at drew@getdropbox.com .
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by dhouston 20y ago
thanks :) a linux port is doable (mac will come first) -- everything's written in python and was designed from the outset to be portable. although this isn't the initial focus of dropbox, a linux port would be interesting for maintaining sm
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by dhouston 20y ago
data's stored on s3, and encrypted before storage -- there'll be another option to enter in an additional passphrase (or private key) when installing in order to encrypt your data before it leaves your computer (kind of like what mozy does.
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by dhouston 20y ago
it should degrade gracefully and work without admin rights; in addition you can download (and soon, upload) via the web interface if you're not at one of your computers.
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by dhouston 20y ago
yup -- i didn't get to mention it, but a big piece of dropbox is that it's a local/"normal" folder that's synced in the background -- you can work on your files offline (that, among other things, drove me nuts about typical online drives) a
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by dhouston 20y ago
oh, and a mac port is coming :)

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