Hello, This is a music player that I made for myself. Its very rough but looks promising. Its mac only, I'd appreciate it if you downloaded it and gave it a whirl.
Hello HN, we're looking for feedback on PuzzleChat, its a fun and quirky weekend project we built. Its surprisingly addictive! We'd appreciate any feedback at all.
An automatic retweet is an excellent way of describing it :)
To answer with regard to effectiveness:
A friend making an Indie-film used it to promote his film's trailer. He got 31 people to Ecko the trailer and in literally a few hours he crossed 700 views.
The added benefit was also that he got to see which friends generated the most amount of traffic to this trailer.
Thanks to FB's newsfeed algorithm the signal/noise ration greatly varies from person to person.
"In other words you think people just out fo school can't handle 10k$ without boarmeetings but you want them to build great companies for you"
Its one meeting to decide a budget and we're not going to demand a specific budget, the startup gets to decide how much money they're going to spend and on what. Whether they stick to the budget or not is up entirely to them, we aren't going to police their money at all.
We trust them to build awesome companies which is why we're funding them in the first place.
"YC-like, my ass"
While we're inspired incredibly by YC, there are certain things we do differently simply because of different constraints. There's a lot that we do that maybe YC doesn't do, we will subsidize your living costs & working costs as much as we can should you choose to work out of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore or Hyderabad for example.
"Its one meeting to decide a budget and we're not going to demand a specific budget, the startup gets to decide how much money they're going to spend and on what."
It is still unnecessary bureaucracy. 10k $ is not that much money even in India. The key point is that you still need founders to tell you upfront (in the form of a "budget") how they are going to spend the money. YC just writes you a check.
As for "policing", if a "Company Secretary" is needed to disburse funds (as per last years FAQ) you don't need to "police" anything and you have line item veto by default.
"We trust them to build awesome companies which is why we're funding them in the first place."
Which brings me to another question. How many of your fundees have gone public/been acquired etc in the last 3 years of your operation? I can't find that info anywhere on your pages.
If you don't trust them to spend the money as they like, you are risking next to nothing. (There seems to be some ambiguity on this. Do founders need a company secretary to disburse funds? Can they write their own cheques/draw on the money as they feel fit, once funded? a simple yes /no on this would help). Why would good developers trade away their freedom for this kind of bureaucracy?
"While we're inspired incredibly by YC, there are certain things we do differently"
Yet you still feel the need to add the "YC like" adjective while missing/perverting the essence of the YC approach.
So here's the thing... A vast majority of people who apply to us tend to have just graduated out of college and have never managed funds of any sort before. The idea behind putting a budget in place is only to give them financial structure and inculcate a sense of frugality.
That being said, if a founder tells us they'd like their money up front, we'll write them a cheque.
" A vast majority of people who apply to us tend to have just graduated out of college and have never managed funds of any sort before."
In other words you think people just out of school can't handle 10k$ without board meetings but you want them to build great companies for you. That makes sense ;-)
This (majority of applicants being graduates) is true for YC (and other funds) too. PG and co don't sit around holding board meetings every time a founder wants to buy a laptop or a monitor.
"That being said, if a founder tells us they'd like their money up front, we'll write them a cheque."
This is good to hear. Founders (desperate enough to go with these guys), do demand your money upfront.
You don't need to relocate to IIM, you just need to be there from the 1st of June to the 10th to get your company incorporated and some awesome workshops we plan to have.
Ideally, we'd like you to work out of either Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore or Hyderabad. We can give you living & working space in any of these cities.
Also, if you've just got an idea and no prototype or implementation of any sort as yet, we typically invest between 2-5 lakhs and take an average of 6% in equity.
If you've got a product out and some traction of some sort, we're open to other options.
Thank you!