Wow! Thanks a lot DanBC, VMG, proexploit and andrewthornton. Really wonderful feedback from all of you; will work on implementing most (if not all) of the suggestions so far.

Please keep more of it coming folks, on all aspects of the site.

Great initiative :)

Please checkout: http://www.StartOpedia.org

in conjunction with this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3548292

Thanks for the feedback. Graphics design is not an area of primary strength or interest for us. Perhaps, you'd like to contribute an alternative logo?

Have you thought of using Twitter Bootstrap (http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/) or Zurb Foundation (http://foundation.zurb.com/) to help you out with a cleaner and easier UI?

Thanks. :) I'll ask my people to check these out.

Just ran a scan - sleek UI :) I can see a freemium business model working on this with some twists here and there.

Will look at the results of my scan closely (it showed up some errors which should not be there) and then report the specifics to you if I find any errors on the report.

Feel free to ping me (address in profile) and all the best moving forward.

Hi, Thanks for the feedback, yea probably will do a freemium at some point - really just want to get some people using it constantly each day so I can see there is a need for it / it's helpful.

I think you just may have a great possible opportunity staring you in the face. At the minimum, don't just wash it off.

> Have you heard of startups pivoting and making their internal side tools into their main business?

Even if it may not have happened before, it doesn't mean it can't happen. After all, there's a first time for everything. :)

All the best moving forward.

I guess those falling under #Win are too busy growing/spending (the later applies to exits :)) and those under #Fail are too disappointed/dejected to post here.

If you don't mind something that has neither Won nor Failed yet, here goes:

http://GetLocalNe.ws (my self-funded startup).

Launched about 10 months ago. Have been at it since then (using a goodish number of people I employ), pumping in cash/time/effort etc.

Still working largely on back-end, but it seems to be gaining at least a small (and growing) user base slowly. Started averaging 5k unique visitors/day since the beginning of this year/month.

Will keep at it through 2012. :)

Thank you for sharing! I should have mentioned 'midway' or 'undecided' to the list as well. Duhh.

Its kinda topical what you are trying to do. If you see the Summify exit and the News.me uptake afterwards, it seems you are in a hotish space.

I would think that your landing page needs a UX/IA review. The onboarding process should be super easy in this case and instead of giving me a form to start with, you would be better off pre-loading relevant/contextual content.

Hope that makes sense.

ps - I hope you didn't mind my $0.02

I remember reading a similar thread here in the last couple of weeks or so. Perhaps, someone (more proficient than me) could dig it out and post it here as a reference?

Oh, you better be sure - it (NorthernLight) did use to matter alright. Used to be mentioned in almost every print article related to the Internet/search. :)

Was not at all on my radar as IBM’s CTO in the 1990s. Perhaps it catered to a more specialized audience.

Here goes nothing :) :

The Northern Light - 1995/1996

Northern Light was to the search engine world what Apple was to the computer world. Shortly after its launch, Northern light like Apple, developed a fanatical following, but held a relatively small market share compared to the likes of Lycos and AltaVista.

From: http://www.salientmarketing.com/seo-resources/search-engine-...

Also: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067807/Northern-Light-...

Clickable: :) http://www.paulgraham.com/vw.html

Agreed. I've always been 'rolling my own', even before I stopped coding. Now, things like thinking up a new app, spec-ing out the UI/UX, iterating, marketing and promotion etc. also provide a lot of thrill but all the same, the ghost of 'hand coding thrill' comes back to haunt from time to time. :)