"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." -- President Kennedy, welcoming forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962.

I'd so go back to those folks that have given you a lukewarm reception and change the question -- what are they looking for? What do they want? What are the problems they're trying to solve?

Take a really close look and make sure that you're not a hammer looking for a nail, but that you're solving a problem people actually have.

Three months is nothing in the B2B space. It usually takes longer than that to figure out the stuff above. I'm not saying to continuously beat a dead horse -- if you solved the wrong problem you need to find the right one, but that's a process not a crap-shoot.

The article makes some strong claims about the statistical validity of their results. However, 1,000,000 observations is not always better than 3,000 observations. If the data are not representative, then a Gallup poll (which is) of a order of magnitude smaller sample is much more powerful.

I have 2 signs above my desk.

One says, "It doesn't matter". This is for when I get so stressed out, I have trouble doing anything. It helps keep things in perspective.

The other says, "Jabez Wolffe". His guide boat forced him to abandon his swim across the English Channel because they couldn't see through the darkness and fog, and it was too dangerous to continue. What they didn't realize was that they were only 100 yards from shore, but they had no way of knowing.

How far from shore are you?

I would suggest doing whatever you can to find out before making any decision.

[Aside: Please contact me off-line. I am in a similar situation and would like to talk.]

"I have just read that companies routinely review Facebook and MySpace activity when screening prospective candidates. One allegation is that if your profile is blocked to non-friends, they may ask you to log in in front of them to let them have a look."

Is this allegation backed up by any fact? Besides that one town in Montana which got in trouble for doing this and has since stopped (I believe this was posted a few days ago).

I may be naive but I really can't imagine this practice being all that widespread - if it's not more than a myth spawned by one or two idiotic hiring managers.

Seems like a lot of passion spawned by not a whole lot of fact.

Why not just open source your code (MIT-licensed perhaps), then give away the domain in one month to the person who takes it in the best direction? That would be easier than trying to evaluate people based on a HN comment and would almost guarantee a more fit selection.

An few arguments for giving up:

You aren't ready, financially, to see through even 1 year of unprofitability. Give up while your credit rating is intact and before you have to fire your friends who might go along with your idea/dream. The market is a disaster for unproven, new offerings that you describe as 'mildly postiive'. Hell for most companies, if you cut a sale -today- you wouldn't be paid until October or later. I'd say that if you give up now you'll have enough time to get a job worth going to work for and get paid in time for your November deadline.

If you shut down now, you can skip a bunch of calender year bs in 2010 and keep it all in 2009. You can stop paying/playing accountant, lawyer, marketer and pr person. You don't have to clean the toilet, do the corp taxes and reporting, ship an mail, vacuum the floor and maintain the copy machine. :-)

Sorry if I seem negative, but not every idea works out the way you might like. Don't send good money and time after bad. I've had two companies fail, both taking time and one taking big old hunks of cash with it. I don't regret it, but I don't regret shutting them down, either. Well, maybe a little....

Perhaps a young fogey alert would be more appropriate. ;)

Here is the moonwalk, probably his most famous move (he wasn't the first to perform it, though): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnIDfDFqGWc

Here is the anti-gravity lean relevant to this patent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HJbGSHtFYQ

Here is a montage of many of his dance moves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKBLxh3u0tM

Counterintuitively, if the sample is truly randomly distributed, you gain very little additional information as you go beyond 300 samples. This is why every political poll has an error margin of + or - 3%.

Fine, don't use Clojure. Myself, I'll get stuff done, and not whine about the fact that my laptop's BIOS is not written in lisp.