I was part of LaunchBox Digital class of 2009 in DC. We entered the program as http://www.ubernote.com ended up presenting "KeepFu" and ultimately are back to UberNote.
In the program itself we had a lot of really good speakers. Tim O'Reilly was probably my favorite. LBD had a great connection with the local DC tech scene. We got to talk with a lot of good startups from the area. Not to keep name dropping, but it was pretty cool to pitch Steve Case one on one in a meet and greet.
My biggest complaint is it went too fast. There is so much going on with the speakers and advisor meetings that it was difficult to be productive on the startup itself. Everything was geared towards demo day and the pitch.
One of the most beneficial things was the peer reviews. I sort of wish we had more peer to peer discussions as it proved very valuable.
Overall it was great experience where I gained valuable understanding on the funding process and some awesome connections. Pitching, going through investment meetings, and connecting with people pretty much sums it up.
Entrepreneurship truly is a journey and the program gave me a look into a areas that were previously harder to access. Even though we didn't secure additional funding for Ubernote, we are still bumping a long and LBD will always be part of our story.
That's what happens when you depend on solely on a user community for everything. You can't control it and the sooner digg realizes that and deals with it, the better off they will be.
They've created a monster and are trying to control it by cheating.
You would think that they could have come up with more creative names than ddX and such... If you are going to create shills, at least come up with some better names and change up some of the account creating dates and such. No wonder they are having such problems as a business.
Aside from the items you've mentioned you should also consider these items:
Proving your market - Attracting and registering large numbers of people prove it's something people want. If you can't give it away for free, there's a problem. (Good for funding)
User feedback and "The up sell" - With the right features that non-paying customer may be a paying customer waiting to happen. You'll also have collection of emails of people interested enough to try your product, where you can up sell them to paid later. (Good for your product)
Scalability - Testing your product in the real world with real traffic patterns, live servers, and people depending on your service is very valuable. (Good for funding AND your product)
I'm a huge believer in the freemium model. Just don't give the cow away and try to position your premium product where users feel like they are getting real value when they have to take out their wallets.
It's a good idea. I like the idea that this can get around the high transaction costs per transaction, but the points system is a little confusing. The one line of code thing is cool and should be easy to get publishers to try it.
CEO pay is a very good indicator. You should also pay attention to perks. Not all compensation is in terms of pay.
A CEO to taking a lower compensation says to me they are taking the company seriously. It's another way they have skin in the game.
If they aren't willing to sacrifice a little for the end game, may mean they are either purely in it for themselves or don't have confidence in the company. Either one is not so good for the company.
If your CEO requires a healthcare-nanny in order to stay healthy during a ~4-year start-up run, perhaps you should be shopping for a new CEO. IQ codes for both business-competency and self-healthcare competency. High-IQ individuals with little money and no health insurance tend to be healthier than the average person. Linda Gottfredson details this further:
"Tend to" is a nice statistic on a population level but has little relevance to you or me as individuals.
I live in the UK were basic health care is free so perhaps I don't have the experience to comment but healthcare wouldn't be somewhere I would be trying to save a few pennies/cent.
By that argument, it's not "free" to just walk down the street, because your tax dollars are paying to maintain that street - and reading a book at the library isn't "free" because you're paying for it through taxes. Heck, almost nothing's "free" by those criteria.
Come couch surf at my place. I pay for it, but you enjoy it: it's free to you. Here's an ice cream cone. Once again, I paid, but you enjoy it.
To you, it's free.
Now -- use the powers of government to force people to pay taxes to buy you an ice cream cone? It's not free to you any more.
The danger is that you start feeling like I'm going to give you ice cream cones anytime. I can correct you of that assumption pretty quickly. But when the giver is some anonymous blob, starts looking like free money.
The marginal cost of walking down the street is nearly zero. Likewise, the marginal cost of reading a book is minimal. But since we're discussing an industry with very high marginal costs (doctors' time is expensive!), not to mention higher depreciation (libraries have plenty of books that are more than fifty years old; hospital equipment ages a little faster).
You're right. Almost nothing is 'free' by those criteria. Economists like to say that "There ain't no such thing as free lunch."
It does reduce a source of friction in the economy, people aren't going to stick with crappy underperforming companies just because they have health care.
Social health insurance is a larger risk pool, and if managed correctly should be a lower cost overall; something which is borne out by the UNHCF numbers.
The essentially random and punitive nature of health care financing in the US means there are plenty of people who are foregoing entrepeneurial activities because the health risk is too high for them to do without the bargaining power of a large employer to restrain the cozily corrupt arrangement that makes health 'insurance' one of the most profitable businesses in the world.
By supporting private health insurance you are essentially supporting a barrier to entry in all industries...
So do most government controlled facilities. Everything you get "free" costs in the long run, but something as basic as health insurance should be something that is 'free' for everyone regardless of their circumstances. Also the idea of big companies profiting from illness is not good IMHO
In the US you pay a massive amount towards warfare - I don't think that is a good thing.
Also the idea of big companies profiting from illness is not good IMHO
Ah. You know, I never really thought about how when I buy food, I am helping big corporations profit from hunger; when I buy books, I am helping big corporations profit from ignorance; when I buy clothes, I help big corporations profit from the wrath of nature. Fortunately, I am more concerned with getting what I want than with worrying that someone might, as a terrible side effect, benefit from my actions.
something as basic as health insurance should be something that is 'free' for everyone regardless of their circumstances.
But it's only 'free' because the necessary resources are taken away from other people. Saying you are entitled to healthcare is saying that no doctor or nurse is entitled to their own time -- it's yours, until you declare yourself satisfied with the health care you've gotten. Similarly, no researcher is entitled to his own ideas, property rights dissolve when the property is something you want but for which you are unwilling to bargain, etc. That is barbaric.
In the US you pay a massive amount towards warfare - I don't think that is a good thing.
Neither do I. Unfortunately, the cheap kinds of war are unpopular.
Your argument is bogus. Food is an ongoing thing. We never stop being hungry. We always need food.
Medicine however, we need as long as we are sick. Therefore, there's quite an incentive for medical companies to keep us sick so we'll keep using their medicine.
Doesn't that worry you? Don't you see a sort of conflict of interests there between them wanting to cure you, and them wanting to make money?
If they develop a one shot cure that is cheap, and an ongoing vaccine that people need once a year, obviously they'll hide the cheap cure, and get you to sign up for once a year medicine, because it'll make them more money.
Golly. It's amazing that every single provider of healthcare would conspire to keep me sick, so I would never notice that customers of health care company A are healthier than customers of B. That kind of conspiracy would be a little bit totally unprecedented in all of human history and impossible to initiate, much less maintain. But I concede the possibility.
If that's true for private enterprises, why is it not true for the government? If a politician can make me reliant on him forever, why won't he do it?
If they develop a one shot cure that is cheap, and an ongoing vaccine that people need once a year, obviously they'll hide the cheap cure, and get you to sign up for once a year medicine, because it'll make them more money.
If there's only one 'them' (as in the government example) that is true. If there are many 'thems', and a new 'them' can be started for fairly little money, one would expect someone who developed such a cure to market it independently. Yes, a multi-million dollar lump sum from curing everything is less than the billions of dollars in revenue generated by health care companies. But 100% of that lump sum is more than this researcher could expect from the companies.
On a startup-related discussion site, it's pretty foolish for you to argue that nobody will ever market the cheaper, better solution, and that we'll always be beholden to the big companies. Nobody here believes that about software -- do you?
Another bogus argument... You assume that others know about the cheaper better cures.
Software is just building stuff. It's easy.
If you don't build X, someone else can. But if you hide cure X for an illness, there's nothing to say that anyone else will find that cure at all - ever.
The statistics speak for themselves. Countries with government provided healthcare pay less on healthcare, and have a higher life expectancy.
Whether it's a good thing isn't in the perception but the reality. The reality is that costs within the UK NHS are significantly lower than those in the US with its $50-per-mile ambulance rides and $10 aspirins.
While paying for medicine from tax money makes it look like more of a free ride, and potentially open to abuse, it seems that having a cartel of medical insurance companies and hospitals all jacking up the fees works out a lot worse for users in the long run.
Fooled again by the normal distribution I see. Too bad the outliers are what matter here. That is the whole point of health insurance. You don't get health insurance because you expect to get sick, you get it in case you get sick. Moreover the benefits far outweigh the cost. There are many non-sickness-related healthcare issues that may affect you as a startup founder. I know a number of people with really bad RSI and no health insurance who sure wished they had it right now.
It's quite interesting how this has morphed from a discussion on the pay rate of a CEO being a good predictor of the success of a start-up to health coverage.
One of the interesting ideas that many of the state-based health care systems have (Sweden for example) that the US should adopt is small out-clinic centers. The centers tend to have 1-2 doctors on staff and several nurses. People can either call in for a consult or walk in to the center. If they call in, the nurse will provide treatment options over the phone when possible or either ask the patient to come into the center or send a doctor out for a home visit. The centers have been very effective at reducing cost and giving people an alternative to going to the emergency room for things that do not require emergency treatment.
While I tend to believe that private industry can do things more efficiently (cost-wise and man power required) than the government there are some things that really should be available universally, like health care. Removing the need for all of the currently uninsured people from going to the emergency room to receive care would probably save the industry a large amount of money and bring down costs significantly. I don't see private industry stepping forward to find a solution for this issue anytime soon so we'll most likely need the government to step in.
Haha.. At least he's honest with both TC50 and DEMO.
You could say the same about a lot of sites out there that launch, but knowing your site is going to get this much publicity and you don't do anything to at least grab some emails, subscribers or have some content that makes you want more... What a waste!
To have the top 50 companies seems does more of a disservice to the people named in the top. 50 is just too many! After that it just seems like you lose the attention, impact and intensity of being on top.
What is the success rate of the companies that have participated in the past? Does anyone have stats on that?
Maybe it was a rhetorical question but xobni, mint and flock are the only ones I recognize and the only one I really use everyday is xobni. Mint is OK but I really only read the summary emails and don't log in often.
In the program itself we had a lot of really good speakers. Tim O'Reilly was probably my favorite. LBD had a great connection with the local DC tech scene. We got to talk with a lot of good startups from the area. Not to keep name dropping, but it was pretty cool to pitch Steve Case one on one in a meet and greet.
My biggest complaint is it went too fast. There is so much going on with the speakers and advisor meetings that it was difficult to be productive on the startup itself. Everything was geared towards demo day and the pitch.
One of the most beneficial things was the peer reviews. I sort of wish we had more peer to peer discussions as it proved very valuable.
Overall it was great experience where I gained valuable understanding on the funding process and some awesome connections. Pitching, going through investment meetings, and connecting with people pretty much sums it up. Entrepreneurship truly is a journey and the program gave me a look into a areas that were previously harder to access. Even though we didn't secure additional funding for Ubernote, we are still bumping a long and LBD will always be part of our story.